Trade Court Upholds De Minimis Suspension, Keeping Duty on Sub-$800 Parts Imports

This ruling cuts against the direction the tariff fight has been running. In February the Supreme Court voided the IEEPA tariffs and ordered the money returned; roughly $100 billion has gone back, and FedEx alone is issuing $800 million while UPS has applied for $500 million of the $5 billion it paid.

Detroit Axle argued the same reasoning should void the de minimis suspension, since ending an exemption creates new duty obligations for importers. It told the court that "if IEEPA granted the President the power to unilaterally rescind statutory tariff exemptions, it would be an unconstitutional delegation of Congress's legislative power." The government answered that lifting a suspension on duties already on the books is not the same as imposing new ones, pointing to IEEPA text letting the President "nullify, void, prevent, or prohibit" a privilege related to property. The court sided with the government. Customs and Border Protection says the suspension had produced more than $1 billion in duty payments by the end of 2025. Detroit Axle can still appeal to the Federal Circuit.

Detroit Axle's own filings put a number on what this does to a parts business. The company imports from Chinese manufacturers and now faces a 52.5% tariff on those goods; it told the court its "frugal buyers will not bear an increase in prices to match the tariffs," so the company absorbs the hit on margin instead.

Country-of-origin claims are getting harder to stretch at the same time. The White House trade office is deploying AI to flag transshipment, screening shipment routing, ownership, production capacity and port X-ray images across more than 40 countries flagged for elevated risk. Supply-chain firm Exiger estimates $75 billion in illegally transshipped goods in the year to February 2026. A supplier quoting a suspiciously clean origin on a part built elsewhere is now a liability that follows the buyer.

The exposure is not in big-ticket components — engines, transmissions and aftertreatment canisters already moved on formal entries and never touched de minimis. It is in the long tail: sensors, switches, seals, gaskets, filters, connectors, lamp assemblies and cab hardware bought in sub-$800 parcels, often several times a month.

Pull 90 days of purchase history and flag every direct-import line under $800, then re-price it landed with duty and brokerage added. Plenty of those lines will stop penciling out. For each one that does, take the OEM number and run it through an interchange lookup to find a domestically stocked equivalent before the next order goes out. Then confirm the substitute actually covers the truck — check the make, model and model year fitment rather than assuming a superseded number carries across the range.

One more item worth an hour this week: if your operation was the importer of record on IEEPA-era entries, check refund eligibility. That money is being paid out now, and it is entirely separate from anything the de minimis ruling decided.