CAPE, Eight Days In: The First Numbers Are Out, the First Refunds Land May 11, and the System Is Showing Where It Strains

CAPE has been live for eight days. CBP filed its first formal progress report to the Court of International Trade on Monday, April 28, and the numbers are concrete enough to start drawing real conclusions about what the system is doing and where the friction is. Approximately 21% of the entries that paid IEEPA duties have been accepted into CAPE and had the duties removed. About 3% have made it through the full process to liquidation and are in the refund stage. CBP told the court it expects the first refunds to actually land around May 11.

That is the date worth marking. Up to now, every estimate of when refunds would arrive has been a projection. May 11 is what CBP is telling a federal judge under oath. The next CAPE progress hearing is set for May 12 at noon ET, with a closed settlement conference at 2 pm. The legal track is being deliberately scheduled to follow the first payments by 24 hours.

Where the numbers actually stand

The 21% figure represents entries accepted into CAPE for the removal of IEEPA duties. That is the front end of the process: a declaration was filed, the validation checks passed, the IEEPA Chapter 99 codes were stripped from the entries, and the duty was recalculated. Those entries are now moving through the liquidation engine. The 3% figure is the back end: those entries have been liquidated, the refund amount is fixed, and the payment is queued through the ACE Collections module. The gap between the two numbers — roughly 18 percentage points — is what is currently in flight inside the system.

In raw terms, this means that of the roughly 53 million entries that paid IEEPA duties, about 11.1 million have been accepted into CAPE, and about 1.6 million have been fully processed through to the refund stage. That is non-trivial throughput for a system that has been live for eight days. It is also a reminder that the absolute volume of entries to process is enormous, and even at current pace, working through the full Phase 1 universe will take months.

What came out of the April 28 hearing

The status conference surfaced a set of operational issues that anyone using CAPE will recognize. ACE access has been the most common bottleneck. Username and password resets are taking longer than usual because CBP support is overloaded. CBP-hosted training events have been filling up faster than the agency can scale them. And there is genuine confusion among filers about how to correctly identify the importer of record on a declaration, particularly in cases involving multi-IOR brokers or assigned refund recipients under Form 4811.

Two technical concerns also emerged. The first is the interest rate applied to refund amounts and the method CBP is using to calculate it. CBP regulations specify the rate but the implementation details affect the actual refund amount in non-trivial ways, especially for older entries. The second, more concerning issue, is that IEEPA duties are reportedly still being collected on reconciliation entries in cases where the value of an entry is adjusted upward and the duty calculation is run again. That is a system behavior issue rather than a CAPE issue, but it directly affects the refund outcome for any importer with reconciliation entries pending.

CBP told the court it will address these concerns by issuing additional guidance and updating the CAPE FAQ on its website. There was no announced timeline for either, but the May 12 hearing creates a natural deadline. If the FAQ has not been updated and the guidance has not been issued by then, expect Judge Eaton to ask why.

Categories of entries still waiting

The court and participants also discussed entries that are not eligible for Phase 1: reconciliation entries, certain suspended entries, and finally liquidated entries. These categories have been excluded since launch and the discussion did not change that. CBP has committed to addressing them in subsequent phases. The CIT's prior orders make clear that finally liquidated entries are part of the overall refund mandate, but there is still no public timeline for when Phase 2 functionality will go live.

For importers with significant exposure in those excluded categories, the practical advice has not changed. Maintain protests where they exist. Consider parallel CIT action where the volume justifies legal cost. Track the Phase 2 development on a CIT calendar rather than a CBP calendar, because the court is the entity actually setting deadlines.

The ACE Portal modernization

Separately, CBP released a modernized ACE Portal account application on April 1 that has been quietly making the setup process faster for new applicants. The new web form replaces the legacy PDF for most use cases and supports three things: applying for a new ACE Portal top account, requesting updates to Account Owner information, and direct communication with CBP on account setup.

There is now also a streamlined process to update the Trade Account Owner for an existing active ACE Portal account, which has historically been one of the slower administrative tasks in the portal. If your TAO information is out of date, your contact email is wrong in CBP's records, or you need to transfer ownership for an existing account, the new web form is the path. CBP is strongly encouraging the web-based application going forward but will continue to accept the legacy PDF during the transition. Companies that need to set up an Importer sub-account view for multiple IOR numbers still need to use the legacy form for that specific case.

CSMS message 68228015 has the full details. The relevant CBP webpages are 'Applying for an ACE Secure Data Portal Account' and 'Managing an ACE Secure Data Portal Account.' For new applications submitted via PDF rather than the web form, the email address is ACE.Applications@cbp.dhs.gov.

What to do this week

If you have already filed a CAPE declaration and your entries are in the 21% accepted bucket, watch for status changes in ACE Reports REV-603 over the next two weeks. Refunds are consolidated by liquidation date and importer of record, so payments will arrive in clusters rather than one-by-one. The REV-613 report will catch any rejections caused by stale ACH banking information.

If you have not yet filed and are still working through entry compilation, the 80-day window on liquidated entries continues to run. Each day reduces the pool of liquidated entries that qualify for Phase 1. There is no benefit to waiting unless you are still completing ACH refund enrollment, which remains the prerequisite for any refund being issued.

If you have ACE Portal account issues that have been blocking you, the new web application is the faster path. Account access bottlenecks were the most common complaint in the April 28 hearing, and CBP is aware. The web form lets you skip the email-and-PDF queue.

How ShipTech can help

Our customs brokerage team is filing CAPE declarations on behalf of clients, monitoring liquidation progress through ACE Reports, and tracking each CIT update as it comes in. We can also help with ACE Portal setup, TAO updates, and Form 4811 designations if you need a third-party path to receive refunds. If you want a current view of where your specific entries stand or want help moving them through the process, reach out to your ShipTech account manager.