IEEPA tariff. A produce importer in Texas spent four months in 2025 filing paperwork to get his citrus shipments classified under an IEEPA exclusion code, convinced the exercise would save him money for years. It saved him money for exactly six months. In February 2026, the Supreme Court ruled that IEEPA never gave the president authority to impose tariffs in the first place, and the entire program he’d been navigating around ceased to exist. The exclusion he’d fought for didn’t matter anymore, because the tariff it excused him from was gone too.
That timing is the reason this question reads differently now than it would have a year ago. IEEPA tariffs, the reciprocal duties, the Canada and Mexico fentanyl-related tariffs, the China measures tied to the same authority, were all terminated by CBP on February 24, 2026, following the Court’s 6-3 decision. So asking which products qualified for an exclusion isn’t really a forward-looking planning question anymore. It’s a refund question. If your goods held an exclusion during the roughly ten months the program ran, you’re in the strongest possible position to recover what you paid, assuming you paid anything at all on those entries.
What actually got excluded
Two categories carried the clearest exclusions. Pharmaceutical products and medical devices were treated as humanitarian carve-outs from the start, largely untouched by the reciprocal tariff structure regardless of country of origin. Separately, goods from China, Hong Kong, and Macau could qualify for reciprocal tariff exclusions under specific HTS provisions, chiefly 9903.01.28 and the block running from 9903.01.30 through 9903.01.33. Anything that didn’t fall into one of those provisions had to report under 9903.01.25 and pay the additional duty, with USMCA qualification offering no help against that particular exclusion test.
USMCA-origin goods from Canada and Mexico sat in their own lane. Products that qualified for USMCA preference were exempt from the reciprocal tariffs entirely, which is a separate mechanism from the China-specific exclusion codes above, and one that stayed intact right up until the whole IEEPA structure came down.
Why this still matters after the program ended
CBP doesn’t erase liability just because a legal authority gets invalidated after the fact. Duties collected under IEEPA during the window it was in effect are now the subject of active refund claims, and the products with the cleanest paper trail are exactly the ones that held a documented exclusion. There’s no argument to make about whether the tariff applied to you in the first place. The exclusion already established that it didn’t, so the refund conversation is about processing, not litigating.
If your goods didn’t carry an exclusion and you paid the full IEEPA rate, you’re still likely eligible for a refund, just on a different legal basis: the tariff itself has been ruled unlawful, independent of whether any specific product-level exclusion existed. That’s a heavier lift administratively, since CBP is working through a much larger volume of claims in that category, but it’s not a dead end.
Frequently Asked Questions
Are IEEPA tariffs still being collected in 2026? No. CBP terminated the IEEPA tariff program on February 24, 2026, following the Supreme Court’s ruling that the statute didn’t authorize tariffs at all.
Can I still claim an exclusion if my entry already cleared? The exclusion question now matters for calculating what you’re owed in a refund, not for avoiding a duty going forward, since the underlying tariff no longer exists.
Did USMCA-qualifying goods automatically avoid IEEPA tariffs? Yes, for the Canada and Mexico fentanyl-related tariffs specifically. That exemption operated separately from the China-specific exclusion codes.
What if my goods never had an exclusion and I paid the full rate? You may still qualify for a refund based on the tariffs being ruled unlawful, though the documentation and review process tends to take longer than for entries with an established exclusion.
Do I need to file anything, or does CBP issue refunds automatically? CBP is not issuing blanket automatic refunds. Importers need to identify affected entries and file claims through the appropriate process.
If you paid IEEPA duties on entries between 2025 and early 2026, there’s a real chance you’re owed money back, and the fastest claims are the ones with an exclusion already on record. Book a Free Consultation Call with AIT TAHIPO LLC and we’ll pull your entry history and tell you what’s recoverable.