News / Customs brokers eyeing 10% to 15% of US tariff refunds, claim

Allegations are circling of customs brokers looking to exploit the confusion surrounding the refund of Trump tariffs, that some of the largest brokerages are demanding as much as 15% of any money received.

Pete Mento, director of global trade advisory services at Baker Tilly, brought the situation to the attention of The Loadstar with a post on LinkedIn that he was “consistently” hearing of the larger brokerages seeking a 10%-15% cut of the recovered duties to process submissions for doing very little work.

“Let’s be clear. They are not auditing the entries. They are not identifying errors. They’re not fixing declarations. They’re not filing post-summary corrections. They are not preserving rights through protests. They are not preparing for CBP scrutiny,” Mr Mento said.

“They are pulling entry data, putting it into a spreadsheet, and uploading it. That’s it. And for that, they want a double-digit percentage of your recovery.

“At best, this is opportunistic pricing based on the assumption that importers don’t want to deal with CAPE themselves.”

At worst, Mr Mento said, brokerages were “taking advantage of confusion in the market” just as companies were trying to get to grips with what they needed to do to recover monies paid in illegal tariff duties.

Following Mr Mento’s post, The Loadstar reached out to several sources to determine how widespread a practice this was, and while those we spoke to did not cite recovery percentages as high as 15%, it seems that demands for a 10% cut are a growing phenomenon.

One forwarder said they had “definitely” heard of several companies seeking 10% of any successful refund, but did not state whether or not they were aware of any importers that had agreed to pay that for mere administration.

“If you are paying a percentage of recovery, you should be getting judgment, accountability, and someone who is actually standing behind the numbers and not just hitting ‘submit’,” said Mr Mento.

“Do we charge a fee? Yeah. But we also audit everything and commit to fixing errors and still going after it. Commit to processing post-summary corrections (PSCs) and If we need them, protests, and litigation-ready documents. We follow up until you get paid.”

He said if importers were happy with the data they have, they needed to consider what they were getting from a broker after the Consolidated Administration and Processing of Entries (CAPE) was activated this week, providing a pathway to submit their own refund requests.

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