The Trump administration has yet to deploy a key legal move that would render tariff refund applications a ‘waste of time,’ federal litigator warns

Leading up to Monday, when the Trump administration launched its online tariff refund portal , Lynlee Brown, EY partner of global trade, said she had importers texting her, somewhat incredulous the refunds were actually happening. Back in March, following the Supreme Court’s decision to strike down tariffs under the International Emergency Economic Powers Act (IEEPA), Court of International Trade Judge Richard K. Eaton ordered the Trump administration to refund all tariffs collected illegally, not just for companies that sued over the tariffs. To the shock of legal and logistics experts alike, the administration has not appealed the ruling. “Everybody’s wondering that,” Brown told Fortune . “It’s genuinely surprising that the government hasn’t appealed the universal refund order already,” Matthew Seligman, a federal litigator of constitutional law and principal of Grayhawk Law, told Fortune . “The government has opposed universal injunctions in every single context since President Trump retook office. If the government appealed the universal refund order, it would win.” The decision by the administration not to appeal drew renewed skepticism in the leadup to Monday, when Customs and Border Protection (CBP) launched the Consolidated Administration and Processing of Entries (CAPE), opening the door for U.S. importers to apply for tariff refunds totalling $166 billion. The administration has until May to petition the order. According to Seligman, an eventual appeal on the universal refund order would jeopardize the refund application process, which CBP estimated would take 60 to 90 days after entries were processed. “The government can reverse course again,” Seligman said. “That would be jarring, but it’s something they could do. And so then submitting CAPE would have ended up being sort of a waste of time.” But the reasoning behind the Trump administration’s lack of appeal, though unclear, may give insight into the White House’s priorities as it navigates midterms, t…