Julio Rodriguez US Customs Broker
Insights

Insights from the entry desk

Customs runs on deadlines and definitions. These guides give you both, with dates on every time-sensitive fact, because a stale refund guide is worse than none.

Published September 19, 2026

IEEPA refunds and CAPE

The largest customs refund event in memory is underway. If your company paid the 2025 IEEPA tariffs, this guide covers what fell, how CAPE works, who CBP will actually accept a claim from, and which clocks are real once you strip out the ones being sold to you.

Published September 18, 2026

Protest vs PSC

Entries get filed wrong: a bad HTS number, a missed trade agreement, a value keyed high. Customs law gives you two repair tools, and which one applies depends entirely on one event, liquidation, and two clocks around it.

Published September 14, 2026

Refund fees, honestly

The refund wave built an industry of recovery firms overnight, most charging a contingency cut of your own money. Here is the honest teardown of the fee models, from a firm with an obvious interest, we file refunds per entry, and an obvious answer to it: we will put both numbers in front of you and let you do the arithmetic.

Published September 11, 2026

Do I need a customs broker?

Legally, an importer can file its own entries. Practically, almost nobody with real volume does, and the reasons are better than habit. Here is the honest line between need and want, from a firm that obviously sells the answer, so check our reasoning, not our incentives.

Published September 17, 2026

Postal informal entry

Since July 24, 2026 a shipment arriving through the international post can carry an obligation its receiver never had before. Three parts of it catch people, and all three are easier to handle before the package lands than after.

Published September 16, 2026

The $800 rule is gone

Every week somebody calls having read that shipments under $800 enter the United States free and without paperwork. That stopped being true on August 29, 2025, it has been reinforced twice since, and Congress has already written the ending into statute. Here is the whole picture, including the small allowances that did survive.

Published September 12, 2026

Duty drawback guide

Drawback is the oldest refund program in US customs law and the most underused: import, then export or destroy, and up to 99 percent of the duties come back, reaching five years into the past. Here is how it works and where the sharp edges are.

Published September 15, 2026

Section 301 refunds

The Section 301 China tariffs have been stacking onto import bills since 2018, and unlike the IEEPA tariffs they were not struck down. But recoverable money hides in two places, and importers walk past both.

Published September 10, 2026

Broker vs forwarder vs carrier

Three names, three licenses, three different jobs, and when freight stops moving, calling the wrong one costs a day. Here is the clean division of labor, from the broker's corner of the triangle.

Published September 13, 2026

The in-bond clocks

Everyone who touches in-bond freight knows the 30-day transit clock. The clock that actually writes the penalty letters is the second one, and half the industry has never heard of it.

Published September 23, 2026

Perishables through MIA

Most of the flowers in American supermarkets enter the country through Miami. Perishable freight is unforgiving in a way dry cargo is not: the clock that decides whether you have a shipment or a loss is rarely the customs clock. Here is what has to be filed, when it has to be filed, and the one requirement almost everybody gets backwards.

Published September 22, 2026

PortMiami or Port Everglades

They are thirty miles apart, they compete for the same cargo, and almost everybody assumes the bigger one is obvious. In fiscal 2025 it was not. Here is what each port actually reported, what the difference means for your freight, and why the answer is rarely about size at all.

Published September 21, 2026

Whose clock is running

An importer gets a bill, sees the word demurrage, and assumes the port is charging for the days the box sat there. That is usually wrong, and the misunderstanding costs real money, because the charge you are being billed and the charge in the port's tariff are two different charges from two different parties on two different clocks.

Published September 20, 2026

Held for examination at MIA

The status changes, nobody explains it, and the first thing everyone wants is a date. We will be straight with you about that up front: CBP does not publish how long an examination takes, and anybody quoting you an average got it from somewhere other than CBP. What we can do is explain exactly what is happening to your freight and what actually moves it along.