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Taiwanese Founders Tackle U.S. Tariff Pain with AI: Pax Reimagines Duty Drawback
Every year, companies in the United States pay about 100 billion dollars in import duties. But only around 20 percent of the money they could reclaim ever gets refunded. That leaves billions of dollars unclaimed each year, mostly because the process is slow, complex, and full of paperwork.
Penny Chen, Co-Founder and CEO of Pax, and Chris Le, Co-Founder, saw a clear opportunity to make this process easier and more accessible for businesses of all sizes.
From Flexport and Amazon to Building Pax
Penny Chen began her career as a research scientist, first at Flexport and later at Amazon. Her work focused on logistics and supply chain efficiency. It was during this time that she came across the duty drawback process, a long-standing but underused U.S. program that allows companies to get refunds on import tariffs if those goods are later exported, returned, or destroyed.
“Most companies just give up because the paperwork is overwhelming,” says Penny Chen. “On top of that, many service providers only take on large claims. If you’re a smaller company, you’re often on your own.”
Chris Le, meanwhile, was working as a software engineer at Amazon, building systems that helped route massive volumes of orders through warehouses and delivery networks. His expertise in building scalable, data-driven infrastructure turned out to be the perfect complement to Penny Chen’s domain knowledge.
The two met through a startup founder matchmaking platform. Chris Le, who was actively looking to work on a supply chain-related problem, found Penny Chen’s profile and reached out. They decided to team up to modernize how duty drawback works.
How Pax Simplifies the Refund Process
Duty drawback may be an old government program, but using it today is anything but easy. Businesses have to gather and match records from invoices, bills of lading, shipping documents, and customs entries — sometimes covering millions of transactions. The process is time-consuming, error-prone, and costly to do manually.
Pax automates this work using artificial intelligence. Clients upload documents in any format — PDFs, spreadsheets, even scanned files — and Pax’s system extracts and organizes the relevant data. It then matches import and export records, applies the appropriate regulations, and calculates the maximum possible refund.
Once the claim is ready, Pax submits it electronically using certified software to U.S. Customs and Border Protection. Clients can log into a dashboard to track progress, see refund breakdowns by product type, origin country, or destination, and understand how their claim was built.
“We handle the entire process from start to finish,” says Penny Chen. “Once we receive the data, we can usually prepare and file a claim in about a week.”
Combining AI With Expert Review
While Pax leans heavily on automation, it also relies on human expertise. The company employs a team of industry specialists with decades of experience in customs law and regulatory filings. These experts step in to manage edge cases, double-check claims, and help communicate with government agencies when needed.
“Our system handles huge amounts of data automatically,” says Chris Le. “But we also make sure the final results meet compliance standards, especially for complex supply chains.”
Pax uses a success-based pricing model. Clients only pay a fee if a refund is received, and the fee ranges from 1 to 30 percent depending on the complexity and size of the claim. This approach lowers the financial barrier, especially for small and mid-sized businesses that might otherwise avoid the process altogether.
Pax also works with customs brokers and logistics companies. Some partners license Pax’s software to improve their own operations, while others refer their clients directly to Pax and let the team handle everything in the background.
Their clients span industries including cosmetics, automotive parts, medical devices, jewelry, and electronics — many of which deal with high volumes of small transactions that make traditional drawback filing difficult.
Beyond Drawback: Pax’s Long-Term Vision
While Pax’s focus today is on helping clients recover tariff refunds, both co-founders see this as a starting point.
“Duty drawback is a great entry point,” says Chris Le. “But in the long term, we want to build a platform that helps supply chain partners share data and reduce costs in other ways too.”
Pax is working on expanding its tools to support bonded warehouse management, free trade zone planning, and broader supply chain analysis. The idea is to help companies identify savings opportunities they might otherwise miss.
“We want to create a platform where supply chain teams can collaborate more efficiently,” says Penny Chen. “With the right data and insights, they can make smarter decisions, not just about refunds, but about how they move goods and manage logistics.”
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