Duty drawback is the refund of duties, taxes, and fees that CBP collected on imported merchandise, paid back when that merchandise, or an article made from it, leaves the United States or is destroyed under CBP supervision. The statute sets the refund at 99 percent for the main claim types. For unused merchandise, the law says the regulations shall provide for a refund equal to 99 percent of the duties, taxes, and fees paid on the imported merchandise. The program has existed in US law since 1789 and was substantially modernized by the Trade Facilitation and Trade Enforcement Act of 2015, with implementing regulations under 19 CFR Part 190 that took effect in 2019.
Drawback works in five steps: duty is paid at import, the goods or articles made from them are exported or destroyed within five years, each export is matched to the import entry line that paid duty, a complete claim is filed in ACE within five years of the import date, and CBP reviews and liquidates the claim and pays the refund. The duty must have been paid, because drawback refunds money already collected at entry. It does not defer or waive anything. The goods must leave or be destroyed: export, or destruction under CBP supervision, triggers the refund, and goods sold and used in the United States never qualify.
There are three main families under 19 U.S.C. 1313: manufacturing drawback, unused merchandise drawback, and rejected merchandise drawback, each in direct identification form and, where the law allows, substitution form. Manufacturing drawback applies when imported, duty-paid merchandise is used to manufacture an article in the United States and the resulting article is exported or destroyed under CBP supervision without being used in the US. Unused merchandise drawback applies when imported merchandise is exported or destroyed in its imported condition, without being used, though testing, cleaning, repacking, sorting, and relabeling are not treated as use.
What stops most claims is the record: proving which import paid the duty on which export. Every claim links an export or destruction to the import entry line it draws on, either by tracing the same goods, direct identification, or by matching goods the law treats as interchangeable, substitution. CBP refunds against the duty reported on a specific import entry summary line, usually as an average per unit, and the statute lets CBP require exactly that basis.
Substitution has its own cap. When the claim substitutes, the refund is 99 percent of the lesser of the duty paid on the import and the duty the exported or substituted goods would owe if they were imported. For substitution claims, the exported merchandise must be classified under the same 8-digit HTS subheading as the imported merchandise. And substitution unused merchandise drawback is not available for exports to USMCA countries, Canada and Mexico, which require direct identification. Under the USMCA rules, drawback on goods exported to those countries is limited to the lesser of the duties paid and the duties that would apply.
A complete drawback claim generally includes the electronically filed drawback entry, applicable import-entry information, evidence of exportation or destruction, and, when required, a Notice of Intent to Export, Destroy, or Return Merchandise for Purposes of Drawback on CBP Form 7553. The right to claim belongs to the exporter or the destroyer, and the exporter can waive it to the importer, the manufacturer, or another party in the chain with a certification filed with each claim.
All drawback claims are filed electronically through CBP's Automated Commercial Environment system, through the Automated Broker Interface. Paper claims are not accepted. The money arrives electronically: CBP has issued refunds that way since February 6, 2026, unless a paper-check waiver applies. As of August 2026, CBP has a separate Consolidated Administration and Processing of Entries process, and the filing system continues to change, so the broker's current procedure matters more than last year's.
The five-year clock is the hard limit. Claims must be filed within five years of the date of importation of the designated imported merchandise, and within that window the goods must be exported or destroyed and the claim filed. A claim filed on time with a missing export record fails. A claim with a perfect record filed a day late fails. Both halves have to be inside the window.
For importers paying duties on merchandise that is later exported or incorporated into exported products, drawback is worth pursuing, and it is one of the most underutilized refund mechanisms available. The importers who collect are the ones who keep the record from the day of import: entry summaries, CBP Form 7501, or the import entry number to prove which goods were imported and what duties were paid, matched to the export evidence as it happens. The claim is won in the filing cabinet, not at the filing deadline.
Keep reading: Bond saturation: when your continuous bond stops covering your duties, ACE error reports: a census of your own mistakes, filed monthly.
The maximum drawback refund is 99 percent of duties, taxes, and fees paid, not 100 percent, because a 1 percent retention is built into the statute to cover administrative costs. The 99 percent cap applies to all drawback types, though for substitution claims the refund is calculated on the lesser of the duties paid on the import or the duties that would apply to the substituted goods.
No. Antidumping and countervailing duties are not eligible for drawback. Ordinary customs duties, certain internal revenue taxes, Merchandise Processing Fees, and Harbor Maintenance Taxes are among the amounts that may qualify, but AD and CVD duties never do.
Five years from the date of importation. Within that window, the goods must be exported or destroyed, and the drawback claim itself must be filed. The export or destruction and the filing both have to happen inside the five years, not just one of them.
Direct identification traces the same goods from import to export. Substitution lets you claim drawback even when the exported goods are not the exact items imported, as long as the exported merchandise is classified under the same 8-digit HTS subheading as the imported merchandise. Substitution is not available for exports to USMCA countries, which require direct identification.