Alina Selyuk

That's as of Sunday or about a week into the process.

Court records suggest that refunds are already on the way for about 3% of the shipments.

Alina Selouk, NPR News, Washington.

Kind of, yes, just with a dizzying amount of paperwork and spreadsheets.

Yeah, so let me set the stage, I guess, pun intended.

About a year ago, President Trump set historic tariffs on virtually all imports into the U.S.

So for a year now, anything imported into the U.S.

has cost companies extra fees to get the goods through customs.

Then two months ago, the Supreme Court said the majority of those tariffs were unconstitutional.

And that's an estimated $166 billion that was collected illegally.

Yeah, so you can imagine every importer instantly going, how do I get that money back?

And they have been waiting for that answer for two months.

At first, it wasn't clear if the government would or even could do the refunds.

Then it seemed the businesses might have to sue the government individually to get that money back.

And just over a month ago, U.S.

Customs revealed in court that they were working on an online portal to file refund claims.

And this past week, it was kind of like, here it is.

The portal opens Monday.

I asked exactly that when I was talking to Jonathan Gold.

He is the customs expert at the National Retail Federation.