• New 10% global tariff imposed effective February 24.
• Court’s decision did not affect Section 232 tariffs on steel and aluminum, which Trump increased in 2025.

The renewable energy industry is currently waiting for answers on what the refund process will look like following the US Supreme Court’s decision to strike down President Donald Trump’s import tariffs he imposed in 2025, but experts at a national law firm said there are several preparations importers can make now ahead of further guidance.

During a February 23 webinar hosted by K&L Gates, speakers discussed the impact of the US Supreme Court’s 6-3 ruling that Trump’s actions to levy tariffs under the International Emergency Economic Powers Act (IEEPA) were beyond the authority allowed by the act.

“What the court did is basically it invalidated IEEPA as an instrument through which the executive can levy duties or taxes,” said Steven Hill, a partner at K&L Gates.

In turn, Trump responded over the weekend by signing an executive order to impose a new 10% global tariff on imports beginning just after midnight on February 24, a minute after the court’s decision is set to go into effect.

Hill said the court’s decision is “a fairly straight up statutory interpretation,” of IEEPA following it becoming a law in 1977. The law gives the president the authority to take certain action when it comes to certain trade matters but has never been used on specific duties or taxes on importations, Hill said.

“What’s noteworthy is, in the list of all the powers that is given over to the president under this law, there’s a term or a couple of terms that are missing: one of which is taxation and one of which is duties. That was very important to the majority justices,” Hill said.

The tariff debate will now move to the US Court of International Trade (CIT) for further litigation.

Karla Cure, another partner at K&L Gates, said everyone is still in a “wait and see” period in terms of what a refund process for all the collected taxes will look like. She said the CIT and the US Customs and Border Protection (CBP) are expected to provide further guidance in the coming weeks and months.

“Will it be an automatic refund process? Will it require importers to submit post summary corrections and protests with the CBP, or even file a complaint with the Court of International Trade? We don’t know,” Cure said.

Cure said a relevant precedent case here is what happened with the harbor maintenance fees in the 1990s. Those fees were declared unconstitutional by the Supreme Court, and after litigation the CIT ordered the government to issue refunds for parties who had filed complaints and another process for those who hadn’t filed anything yet.

There are existing processes for importers that overpaid duties and want to recover them that involves submitting both summary corrections and protests with CBP, but Cure said the agency has been rejecting corrections until it receives further guidance from the courts.

“If you ask me today, it’s a bit premature to submit a post summary correction, because right now the HTS (Harmonized Tariff Schedule) codes that are associated with the IEEPA tariffs are still valid,” Cure said. “CDP just said yesterday that it’s going to invalidate those IEEPA-related codes tomorrow, so that that situation might change after those tariffs are invalidated from the HTS.”

Protests for import entries that have already been liquidated and fulfilled essentially entail sending a letter to CDP explaining and identifying the entries that are subject to the protest and a reason for the protest, Cure said.

For now, Cure recommended companies collect information and ACE reports of all their entries, in addition to all other relevant documentation related to those imports. That will help guide the refund path they pursue, following court guidance.

“Once you have that entry information, you can identify the entries for which you pay IEEPA tariffs, and you can also identify what the liquidation status is of those entries,” Cure said. “If it is not liquidated, you can consider submitting a post summary correction. If the entry is already liquidated, then you can consider submitting a protest.”

Importers should also make sure that they’re enrolled in the CBP’s refund program. As of this month, Cure said CBP will no longer issue refunds through checks, just through the accounts that are registered with the agency through the program.

“All of these steps … it’s just going to put you in a better position to quantify your claims, to identify those IEEPA duties and the claims that you have on those refunds,” Cure said. “It’s going to allow you to respond really quickly to whatever is going to be the instructions from CBP or the Court of International Trade on how to obtain these refunds.”

The court’s decision did not affect the Section 232 tariffs on steel and aluminum, which Trump increased in 2025.

“For some of you who may have been dealing with issues of importing steel products, or products made with, for example, aluminum or steel components, and you were doing a calculation of the value that was the steel component and the value that was something else, and having to apply two different tariff regimes to that. Well, this is saying that the 15% tariff does not apply to those products if they’re subject to Section 232, but it leaves unclear at this point exactly how that calculation is going to work out,” K&L Gates Partner Nathaniel Bolin said. “There are many permutations to this that have yet to be clarified by the administration. It’s a complex set of issues, understandably, and we’ll have to see how that plays out down the road.”

*This story was originally published exclusively for NPM subscribers.