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Section 301 refund

Paid Section 301 tariffs in 2024-2025? You may be owed a refund.

Recent court rulings struck down certain Section 301 surcharges on Chinese-origin goods. If you paid them, some of that money may be recoverable. The catch: each entry has a deadline, and once it passes, that refund is gone.

Check if you are owed a refund How the refund works ↓

Free audit. 15% contingency only if CBP pays you. No recovery, no fee.

What is a Section 301 tariff?

Section 301 of the Trade Act of 1974 lets the US Trade Representative impose extra tariffs when a foreign country is found to use unfair trade practices. The version that hits most importers is the set of additional duties on Chinese-origin goods, phased in from 2018 across four lists:

  • List 1 and List 2. Mostly industrial and intermediate goods.
  • List 3. A $200B sweep that pulled in a huge range of consumer products.
  • List 4A. Another broad consumer tranche: apparel, electronics accessories, household goods.

These surcharges sit on top of the normal duty rate for each HS code. That is why a wrong classification compounds: you can pay the base duty and the Section 301 surcharge on a code you never owed.

Why some of it is refundable now

Recent court rulings struck down or limited certain Section 301 and IEEPA tariffs, in particular the surcharges tied to List 3 and List 4A. Importers who paid those duties in 2024 and 2025 may be able to recover them. Recovery is not automatic. It depends on what you imported, when the entry liquidated, and whether your right to a refund was preserved in time.

HS Mate files refund paperwork as a service. This page is general information, not legal advice. Your audit report sets out the basis and the deadline for each entry so you can decide what to file.

Are you eligible?

You are worth auditing if most of these are true:

  • You imported Chinese-origin goods in 2024 or 2025.
  • You paid a Section 301 surcharge on at least some entries.
  • Your annual customs spend is meaningful (even $50k/yr is worth a look).
  • The entries are recent enough that the protest window has not closed.

If you are an Amazon FBA or Shopify importer sourcing from China, you almost certainly paid Section 301 duties. See FBA HS codes for how those duties show up on your shipments.

How a Section 301 refund is filed

A refund is not a form you fill in once. It is a claim against specific customs entries, each on its own clock:

  1. Pull the entries. CBP form 7501 entries from 2024-2025, or a CBP ACE export. Your customs broker can supply these.
  2. Match each entry to a voided regime. Check the duty line against the List 3 / List 4A surcharges the rulings affected, and confirm the classification was the most favorable available.
  3. Preserve the right before the deadline. For an entry that has already liquidated, that usually means a protest, generally due within 180 days of liquidation. For one that has not, a post-summary correction.
  4. File and wait for CBP. If the claim holds, CBP reliquidates the entry and issues the refund.

The deadline is the whole game

The reason to move now is not urgency for its own sake. It is that each entry has a hard cutoff. Once an entry liquidates and its protest window closes, the refund for that entry is generally lost, even if the underlying tariff was voided. Your 2024 entries are closing first. Waiting a quarter can quietly forfeit the oldest, often largest, claims.

Do it yourself, or have it filed

You can file protests yourself. The procedure is public. What makes it slow is matching hundreds of entries to the right voided regime, confirming the classification on each, and tracking a different deadline per entry. That is the work HS Mate does:

  • Free audit. We tell you, per entry, what is potentially recoverable and by when.
  • 15% contingency to file. If CBP refunds you, we take 15%. If nothing comes back, you owe nothing.
  • You stay in control. We draft, you sign, we submit.

Start the free Section 301 audit →

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