Carra Globe Global Customs & Compliance Services

 US importers are dealing with the highest effective tariff rates since 1972. Even after the Supreme Court struck down IEEPA tariffs in February 2026, the duty burden has barely moved for most businesses. Section 301 tariffs on Chinese goods are fully in force. Section 232 tariffs on steel and aluminium are fully in force. And a 10% global surcharge under Section 122 applies to virtually everything else until July 24, 2026. The frustrating part is that a meaningful portion of what most businesses are paying is avoidable. The legal tools exist. The deadlines are running. Most importers just have not taken the steps to use them. Your IEEPA refund will not arrive automatically The Supreme Court ruled that $166 billion in IEEPA duties were illegally collected from more than 330,000 importers. CBP is not sending automatic refund checks. You have to register for ACH refunds in the ACE portal. You have to identify your liquidated entries and file formal protests within 180 days of liqu...

 If your business is importing goods into Canada and paying full tariff rates on every shipment, there is a reasonable chance you are leaving money on the table. Not because you are doing anything wrong, but because there are legal tools specifically designed to reduce your Canadian customs bill that most importers have simply never been told about. Canada's headline tariff rates look modest at 4 to 5% on average. The real cost sits in what stacks on top. GST and HST apply on both the declared value and the duty. Missed free trade agreement claims add up across dozens of shipments. And since CARM launched in May 2025, compliance failures have been generating unexpected penalty assessments that catch businesses completely off guard. The most common reason businesses overpay is not a wrong duty rate. It is a missed claim, an incorrect valuation, or a compliance gap that triggers an assessment nobody saw coming. CUSMA should be your first stop If you source goods from the United S...

In 2025, the message from every logistics consultant, trade publication, and sourcing platform was the same: move from China to Vietnam . Escape the tariffs. Lower your landed cost. Reduce your supply chain risk. The logic was simple and the tariff maths supported it. In 2026, that advice needs a serious update. Not because Vietnam is the wrong destination. For the right product categories, it remains an excellent one. But the conditions that made the China-to-Vietnam migration look straightforward have changed in three significant ways that most sourcing guides have not caught up with yet. Change 1: Vietnam's Tariff Advantage Is Under Investigation On March 11, 2026, the US Trade Representative launched Section 301 investigations into 16 countries for industrial overcapacity. Vietnam is specifically named, flagged for what USTR describes as "untethered" growth in electronics, semiconductors, batteries, and automotive components. The target date for inves...

On April 2, 2025, the Trump administration launched the most ambitious tariff programme in American history. On February 20, 2026, the Supreme Court ruled that programme illegal. On April 2, 2026, the government is still processing refunds to more than 330,000 businesses that paid duties they were never legally owed. The $166 billion being refunded is not just a legal footnote. It is the most precise measure available of how much the Liberation Day tariffs cost the businesses that import goods for a living. Every dollar of that $166 billion was extracted from an Importer of Record, passed through supply chains, absorbed into margins or pushed onto consumers, and is now being returned through a refund process that CBP expects to have operational around April 20, 2026. One year on, that number is the scoreboard. What the Data Actually Shows The Trump administration's explicit goals for Liberation Day were measurable. Reduce the trade deficit. Bring back manufacturing. Low...

Most of the trade coverage in 2026 has focused on what the Supreme Court did in February. IEEPA tariffs struck down. Refunds incoming. A temporary 10% global rate slapped on in its place. Crisis averted. That reading is wrong. The Supreme Court ruling did not end the tariff story. It started a new chapter with a harder deadline and a more durable legal mechanism. The businesses treating this moment as breathing room are the ones that will be scrambling in August. Here is what is actually happening. The 150-Day Bridge Nobody Is Talking About On the same day the Supreme Court struck down IEEPA tariffs, the Trump administration invoked Section 122 of the Trade Act of 1974 and imposed a flat 10% global tariff on all imports. Section 122 is a rarely used emergency authority. It is also legally capped at 150 days and a maximum rate of 15%. That clock started on February 24, 2026. Do the arithmetic. It runs out on July 24, 2026 . The administration has been explicit ab...

 Every company plans their outbound shipments carefully. Importer of Record arranged. Customs clearance configured. Duties calculated. The goods move, the shipment clears, and everything works exactly as it should. Then a customer in Germany returns a faulty unit. A server deployed in Saudi Arabia needs to come back to the Netherlands for repair. A product safety issue triggers a recall across twelve countries simultaneously. And suddenly, none of that carefully built compliance infrastructure works in the other direction. This is the reverse logistics compliance problem that almost nobody plans for, and it costs businesses far more than a standard import or export ever would. What most businesses get wrong The assumption is that returning goods is just the outbound process in reverse. It is not. The moment goods start moving back, the IOR and EOR obligations change completely. The original Importer of Record on your outbound shipment is not automatically the correct party fo...