Washington, D.C. – U.S. Senators Ron Wyden (D-Ore.), Edward J. Markey (D-Mass.) and Jeanne Shaheen (D-N.H.) led several Senate Democrats today, including U.S. Senator Jeff Merkley (D-Ore.), in calling on the Trump administration to put in place an automatic tariff refund process that does not create more pain for U.S. small businesses and families in Oregon and nationwide.
In a letter to Customs and Border Protection (CBP) Commissioner Rodney S. Scott, the lawmakers wrote that the administration’s proposed refund process — the Consolidated Administration and Processing of Entries (CAPE) system — places an unnecessary burden on small businesses and individual importers.
“There is no principled reason for the Trump administration to conduct the refund process this way,” the senators wrote. “CBP already has the payment records it needs to issue refunds. As of March 4, 2026, CBP reported that more than 330,000 importers had paid or deposited approximately $166 billion in IEEPA tariffs across more than 53 million entries.”
The lawmakers ask the administration to use existing CBP records to automatically refund small businesses instead of forcing small businesses to opt-in. The letter comes as small businesses in Oregon and nationwide have not yet received their tariff refund following the Supreme Court’s decision to strike down Trump’s International Emergency Economic Powers Act (IEEPA) tariff taxes last month.
“If the government has records of every entry on which illegal tariffs were collected, it necessarily has records of every entry on which a refund is owed,” they wrote. “Requiring businesses to file declarations to identify those entries is an unnecessary process that seems designed to discourage and reduce the number of refunds the government must ultimately pay.”
“Every cent of illegal IEEPA tariffs must be returned,” they continued. “The only question is whether CBP will make that process as simple and equitable as possible, or whether it will implement a complicated and unfair system through which large corporations and Wall Street will benefit financially.”
The lawmakers requested answers to the following questions by April 8, 2026
- How does CAPE comply with the CIT order that the government issue tariff refunds?
- How does CAPE comply with representations from Administration attorneys in court that it would promptly, and at no cost to businesses, issue refunds if the tariffs were struck down?
- Why did CBP develop CAPE rather than repurpose the existing ACE system to automatically issue refunds? Please provide any documents analyzing the shortcomings of repurposing the ACE system to automatically issue refunds.
- Why is CAPE “opt-in,” requiring affirmative action by tariff payers?
- Why does CAPE require importers to identify entry summaries when CBP already has that information?
- How will CBP ensure that each step of the refund process is transparent and accessible to small businesses?
- Will there be a formal appeal system for businesses that dispute the amount of the refund issued by CBP?
The letter is co-signed by Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.), Sen. Chris Coons (D-Del.), Sen. John Hickenlooper (D-Colo.), Sen. Adam Schiff (D-Calif.), Sen. Angela Alsobrooks (D-Md.), Sen. Mark Warner (D-Va.), Sen. Raphael Warnock (D-Ga.), Sen. Jacky Rosen (D-Nev.), Sen. Andy Kim (D-N.J.), Sen. Jack Reed (D-R.I.), Sen. Tim Kaine (D-Va.), Sen. Michael Bennet (D-Colo.), Sen. Ben Ray Luján (D-N.M.), Sen. Mazie Hirono (D-Hawaii), and Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.).
The entire letter is here.
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