Snell & Wilmer filed a Day Two update Monday on U.S. Customs and Border Protection's Consolidated Administration and Processing of Entries capability — CAPE — after the system went live at 8:00 a.m. ET. [1] The Phase 1 composition the firm described is narrower than the universe the paper quantified Monday in the $166 billion tariff-refund queue that CBP opened: importers of record can file up to 9,999 entries per CAPE declaration in CSV format, and approximately 166,000 AD/CVD-suspended entries are flagged for future phases rather than Phase 1. [1][2]

That is the first-day composition read the paper committed to in Monday's major. The $166 billion headline remains the universe. The Phase 1 ceiling is what determines who gets paid first.

CBP has confirmed, per Snell & Wilmer, that Phase 1 processes only unliquidated entries and entries within 80 days of liquidation — the 90-day voluntary-reliquidation window minus 10 days of operational buffer — capturing roughly 63 percent of entries that had IEEPA Chapter 99 tariffs applied. [1] The remaining 37 percent waits for a Phase 2 CBP has not scheduled. AD/CVD-suspended entries form the largest excluded category: 166,000 entries, in CBP's own public count, flagged but not processable through Phase 1. [1] Troutman Pepper's pre-launch guidance April 13 had set the same 9,999-entry cap and the same CSV mechanism, and had flagged that post-summary corrections "may not be used to initiate IEEPA refund claims." [3]

There is no IEEPA amendment path. CBP's guidance is that a CAPE declaration, once accepted, cannot be amended — a single pass through a 9,999-entry CSV file is the mechanic available to each IOR or licensed broker per declaration. [1][3] Brokers can submit across multiple importers in a single declaration; importers of record can submit direct. [3] Refunds will generally be issued within 60 to 90 days of validation, CBP has said, by ACH only. [1] Post-liquidation refunds for the 166,000 AD/CVD-suspended entries are "pre-liquidation" flagged, meaning they will be processed upon eventual liquidation. [1]

What this means for who paid the IEEPA tariff is the frame the paper will track into Wednesday. The 9,999-entry cap favors large customs brokers — the consolidators who can batch entries across many importers — over single-importer filers with fewer than 9,999 entries in scope. The AD/CVD exclusion favors importers whose IEEPA exposure was not compounded by anti-dumping or countervailing-duty suspensions. Apparel, electronics, and furniture — the categories the March 4 CIT order hit hardest — are first through the portal; steel, aluminum, and solar categories under AD/CVD suspension wait for Phase 2. [4]

CBP has not published a first-day filer count. Lawyers tracking the portal reported sustained traffic through the Monday business day and into Tuesday morning. [2][4] The 63-percent-of-entries scope number is the operational ceiling the paper flagged Monday; the 9,999 cap is how that ceiling is apportioned. Whether any single retailer or OEM hits the cap in a single declaration — and has to split across multiple filings — is the Day Three composition question Tuesday's edition leaves open for the Wednesday file.

The Monday framing was $166 billion and 166,000. The Tuesday framing is 9,999 and 63 percent. Both numbers are CBP's own.

-- SAMUEL CRANE, Washington