Preserving refund rights on the expired Section 122 surcharge

If you paid the Section 122 surcharge between February and July 2026, you may hold a refund right. It will only survive if you act on it.

Expiry of a tariff does not refund it. A court found the surcharge unlawful, the government appealed, and there is currently no administrative process through which importers can simply claim money back. What exists instead are ordinary customs deadlines that keep running whether or not the litigation is resolved, and that permanently close entries once they pass.

This guide is dated. It concerns a specific window of entries and will be retired once the deadlines have run.

What happened

Under Proclamation 11012 the administration imposed an ad valorem surcharge on most goods imported into the United States, effective 24 February 2026, with specified exceptions. It was implemented under a dedicated tariff heading.

Section 122 permits a temporary import surcharge for no more than 150 days, to address fundamental international payments problems. That statutory limit set the expiry date of 24 July 2026.

On 7 May 2026 the Court of International Trade held that the economic conditions cited in the proclamation did not amount to the kind of balance-of-payments deficits the statute contemplates, and declared the proclamation invalid as contrary to law. The judgment ordered surcharges paid by the plaintiff importers to be refunded with interest.

Relief went only to the named plaintiffs. There was no universal injunction. The government appealed, and on 11 June 2026 the Federal Circuit stayed the CIT's ruling pending appeal, so collection continued for everyone until the surcharge expired by its own terms in July.

Why expiry is not a refund

Three separate reasons, and each is enough on its own.

The ruling is stayed and under appeal. It has no operative effect for non-plaintiffs while that continues.

Relief was limited to the plaintiffs. Even if the ruling is upheld, further steps may be required for other importers to obtain refunds. Being right about the law does not automatically produce a payment.

There is no administrative refund channel. The mechanism created for refunding tariffs under a different statute does not cover Section 122. There is no form to file that says give it back.

What remains is the ordinary customs system, and that system has deadlines.

The deadlines that actually control this

Liquidation is the point at which CBP finalises an entry. It normally occurs within about 314 days of entry, though it can be extended or suspended.

Once an entry liquidates and is not protested, it becomes final. A final entry is closed. No later court decision reopens it.

The protest deadline is 180 days from the date of liquidation. This is the deadline most importers miss, because nothing arrives to remind them.

Apply that to this window. Entries made between late February and late July 2026 will generally liquidate between roughly January and June 2027, which means protest deadlines running from mid 2027 into late 2027.

That sounds distant. It is not, because the work of identifying affected entries takes time and the deadline is per entry rather than a single date.

What to do, in order

1. Identify every affected entry. Pull your entry summaries for goods entered between 24 February and 24 July 2026 and identify those on which the surcharge was paid. Your broker can produce this from ACE. You need entry numbers, entry dates, amounts paid and current liquidation status.

2. Keep the records complete. Entry summaries, commercial invoices, proof of payment, and any documentation of who ultimately bore the cost. If a refund process appears later, the claim will depend on clean records rather than on recollection.

3. Calendar the liquidation date and the protest deadline for every entry. Not one date for the group. One per entry.

4. Check for entries where the surcharge should not have applied at all. Some goods were excluded. Goods qualifying as originating under the North American agreement may have been exempt, and qualification should be tested against current documentation rather than assumed from an old certificate. Where the surcharge was paid in error, the correction path may be simpler than the litigation path.

5. Decide on preservation with professional advice. For unliquidated entries, options may include post-summary corrections or requests to extend liquidation. For liquidated entries, a protest filed within 180 days keeps the entry open. Some importers with substantial exposure have joined litigation directly. Which of these fits depends on your entry history and your amounts, and it is a decision to take with a customs attorney or a licensed broker rather than from a guide.

6. If you are not the importer of record, talk to whoever is. The refund right follows the importer of record. If you bought on delivered terms and your supplier filed the entry, the money would go to them. Whether it reaches you depends on your contract and on the conversation you have now, before there is anything to argue about.

Whether it is worth the effort

Work out roughly what you paid across the five-month window. For most importers this is a straightforward calculation from the entry data.

If the number is small, the professional fees may exceed it, and the reasonable decision is to keep the records and do nothing further.

If the number is material to your business, the cost of preserving the position is small by comparison, and the cost of missing the deadline is the entire amount.

The one option with no upside is doing nothing while intending to act later. Deadlines pass quietly and entries close without notice.

What we do not know

Whether the appeal succeeds. Whether refunds become available to importers who were not plaintiffs. Whether an administrative process is created. How long any of this takes.

Nobody can tell you those things today. What is knowable is that preserving the option costs relatively little and losing it is permanent.

The short version

Pull your entry data for 24 February to 24 July 2026. Calendar the liquidation and protest dates for each entry. Take advice on preservation if the amount matters.

The litigation will resolve on its own schedule. Your deadlines will not wait for it.

Verified August 2026. This is a dated guide and will be retired when the protest deadlines for the affected window have passed. It is general information, not legal advice. Speak to a licensed customs broker or a customs attorney about your specific entries.