A growing row of British exporters hoping to recoup money lost in Donald Trump’s now-unauthorized emergency spending may find they have a right to do nothing, the audit, tax and business advisory firm Blick Rothenberg has warned.
According to John Havard, a consultant to the company, approximately 126,000 applications have been filed through the US Consolidated Administration and Processing of Entries (CAPE) system since it opened for business on April 20. But most of those applications are expected to be repeated, either because the applicant is not legally qualified or because the documents did not pass the strict requirements of the portal.
“Some UK businesses hoping for compensation may find they are ineligible and get nothing,” Mr Havard said. “Many of Britain’s small firms may not have had to deal with taxes until President Trump’s second term. They probably don’t know that, although the drop in sales and higher transport costs have hurt their finances, legally they owe nothing to the US Government.”
Who really owns the tax bill
The crux of the matter, Mr Havard says, lies in the sub-category of international trade contracts. When British firms shipped goods to American customers on an “ex-works” or “cost and freight” basis, the legal obligation to pay the tax rested with the US seller rather than the UK seller.
“Reimbursing a US consumer for their additional costs is not appropriate for a UK company to apply for a tax refund,” he explained. In other words, even when British exporters voluntarily take on costs to maintain customer relationships, they cannot now enter the CAPE system and apply for it again.
It’s a harsh reality for a group of SMEs that have sought to keep American consumers on their side after Mr Trump invoked the International Emergency Economic Powers Act (IEEPA) to impose tariffs on a range of imports, measures which were overturned by the US Supreme Court, opening the door to retaliatory claims.
A program that goes under the weight of claims
The official report at 7am in Mpumalanga on Monday 11 May 2026 revealed that of the 126,000 applications received, approximately 87,000 have been confirmed. The rest sit in limbo, with most rejections traceable to common formatting issues in CSV files uploaded to the portal.
“Rejections may be because CSV files submitted to the website could not be read and processed by the system due to formatting errors,” said Mr Havard. “But some of the rejections will be because the claimants are not eligible for a refund.”
He also added that before businesses try to apply, they must hold an account with US Customs and Border Protection’s Automated Commercial Environment. “There has already been a lot of activity in signing up new accounts since the High Court ruled that IEEPA’s tariffs were illegal, but this brings another system for businesses to navigate before they try to get a refund.”
Another trap is mistaken identity. “Another reason for rejection can be that the person who applied for a refund is not in the government records as a listed seller, or the seller of that person, for certain taxes mentioned in the claim. This could be people trying to game the system, but it is also because people do not fully understand who should make the claim.”
The refund goes out – and the bank details are missing
Although Washington indicated no payments would be forthcoming before May 12, Mr Havard said there was credible evidence that some refunds had been paid, with at least one claimant receiving interest on top of that.
But the program is at a dead end for nearly 1,900 applicants who failed to provide bank details. “As of 7:00 a.m. Eastern time on Monday May 11, 2026, there were a combined 1,880 returns that were not transferred from the Trade Office to the US Treasury for payment because the claimant had yet to provide the required bank account information,” Mr. Havard said.
Submitters whose applications have been rejected can correct the errors and resubmit. “However, no amount of resubmission will help if the application is illegal in the first place – or if they do not receive clear messages from CAPE to explain why they have been rejected.”
Next legal charge: 10% global tax.
Even as IEEPA tax refunds begin to flow, a second court battle is brewing over Mr. Trump’s rollback measure, a 10% “worldwide tax” introduced under Section 122 of the 1974 Trade Act after the Supreme Court struck down the original duties.
A coalition of small businesses and about two dozen states, mostly led by the Democratic Alliance, challenged the move in the US Court of International Trade, which ruled by a 2:1 majority on May 7 that the new rates are also invalid. The government appealed to the US Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit, which granted a stay, meaning the 10% tax continues to be collected on goods to the US while the legal process continues.
“Whatever decision the Court of Appeals ultimately makes, it seems inevitable that the losing party, like the IEEPA tax, will seek to appeal to the US Supreme Court,” Mr Havard said.
The numbers at stake are far from small. Estimates suggest that $8 billion of Section 122 tariffs were collected in March alone, a large part of the wider tax burden on British exporters, weighing heavily on UK trade and prompting British industries to reduce their exposure to the US market.
For SME traders watching across the Atlantic, the message from Blick Rothenberg is sobering: those who think a check is in the mail would do well to check the terms of their export contracts, and the bank details in their CBP account, before they start using it.
