Expeditors International of Washington, Inc. ($EXPD)

Hello, everyone, and welcome to the next edition of Expeditors' U.S. Customs Market Update. We are happy to have you with us today. My name is Samantha Hurst, and I am supporting here in the background as your host today. If you have any technical issues while we are on today's webinar, feel free to e-mail me directly through the confirmation e-mail you received -- of course, myself and some other colleagues. We'll do our best to get those resolved for you, if at all possible. Just because we have had some sound issues in the past on the past couple of webinars, actually, I just want to encourage you if you have not already, to check your audio settings on your toolbar and just make sure that you have actually joined with audio, and we will remind everyone of that too if we see anyone coming through with concerns about that. But that is an important setting for some reason, Zoom requires you to do that when you get logged on. Otherwise, yes, we will -- I do see that a couple of people are already dropping those questions in. So we will give those instructions. If you can hear us properly, I would ask that I'm going to turn on the emotion or the reactions. Could you just give me a thumbs up if you can actually hear okay. Awesome. Okay. So at least hopefully, some of you can. We will address those that cannot hear in just a moment. Okay. Good. That makes me feel better that we can get started. Wonderful. Well, we will go forward now and talk a little bit about the rest of our housekeeping items before we dig into the actual content. Hope everyone's got a good cup of coffee or tea, whatever your choice may be, would love that caffeine because it's been a busy couple of weeks in logistics and supply chain and certainly in compliance. So we will go right up until 55 minutes of content most likely. And as always, we will do our best to answer all of your questions. We do ask if your question is hyper specific to your industry or business that you understand that may take a one-on-one conversation with your Expeditors representative, and we do encourage that. If you need to be connected with someone, please let us know in the survey that you will receive within about 2 hours of today's session wrapping up. That's one of the main questions we always get, of course, is how do I get the materials. We will make those available to you. Just a reminder, when you finish your survey, it immediately pops up on your landing page. Or a link with a thank you message it will take you to that landing page. So that's how you see that when you finish the survey. And then, of course, we're going to make sure you get the content. We are not going to hold you to the survey, although it does definitely help us to understand your feedback about how we're doing on these events. And then finally, if you scan the QR code here in the bottom right-hand corner, that will get you subscribed if you're not already to receive any of the webinar invites. And of course, a very important market updates, highly encouraged if you're not already to make sure you're signed up for newsflash and then also the operational impacts, which we are updating regularly right now on the transportation side of things. All right. So I will go now and introduce our speakers so that they can get started. We have with us today, of course, Madeleine Veigel, who's our Vice President of Customs for the Americas. Stephanie Holloway, who's our Director of Customs Operations for the Americas; and Kelsay Calvaruso, who is our analyst of Custom Systems here in the Americas. So Stephanie, I'll let you get started.

Thank you, Samantha. Okay. So I think our disclaimer is never more important than today. I'm going to ask everybody's just forgiveness in front of all of this. So obviously, we're in a heavy legal season of the IEEPA situation. So we are going to cover that, but we're going to cover it like a customs broker would. There's a lot of awesome people out there doing great commentary from a lawyer perspective. I really hope I don't accidentally use a word that lands me in kind of crazy legal land that I don't realize. But we are not lawyers. We are doing the best to interpret the way we can. And I think actually, that's one of the things that many of you guys appreciate is that we come at it with a very operational situation and awareness. So with that said, here's our agenda. So I'm going to cover the status of the SCOTUS IEEPA ruling and what are some of the major takeaways, especially what happened last week and what can we all anticipate going forward. let's see here, current operational notes. So this switch from IEEPA to Section 122 has created an interesting situation, and Kelsay on my team is going to come on and help answer some of those questions that many of you are asking. Then we'll transition to Madeleine, and she's going to touch on what's on the horizon as well as what are 4 things that you can do right now as an importer to help prepare yourself for IEEPA refunds. So let's get started. So what is the current status? So the last webinar we hosted was shortly after the Supreme Court made their decision. So they, 6 to 3, said IEEPA does not allow for the imposition of tariffs. and that all tariffs done under IEEPA are invalid. So that's not just the reciprocal tariffs, not just fentanyl tariffs. There's also the tariffs that were specifically for IEEPA on Brazil and IEEPA was used to put tariffs on India, and those actually were removed a little bit -- removed in early February. It did not impact the collection of tariffs under Section 301 or Section 232, okay? So CBP issued a CSMS message saying that they were going to stop collecting it effective 12:00 a.m. on February 24. So that is where this left all of us, okay? So here's the list of all the different tariffs that are being -- that are being collected. And really, it's this list of IEEPA tariffs that were removed, okay? So we left off, of course, Supreme Court decision was made and then the IEEPA tariffs stopped. And simultaneously, we started with the Section 122 tariffs the next day. So these are just 2 screenshots of that activity that we saw from customs perspective. So on the left being the IEEPA tariffs ending and then on the right, the 122 starting. And one thing that we try to do all the time in all of our webinars is make sure that I put those source documents there, right, so that you can go look at this on your own. So nobody really cares about what happened -- was that 3 weeks ago, 2 weeks ago? I have no idea. Let's talk about what happened last week. So last week, Wednesday, it was a very eventful day. The CIT, the Court of International Trade issued a very interesting order. So let's jump into this a little bit. This was issued by Judge Eaton on Wednesday, as I said, and it was a case between Atmus Filtration and the United States, okay? So Judge Eaton in his order essentially says that all importer of records are subject to IEEPA duties being refunded, okay? And they get the benefit of the Supreme Court's decision under Learning Resources. So Learning Resources was the case that went to the Supreme Court. He also goes in to explain why he has the authority to make this and also why it's not a universal injunction. So essentially, there's some language in there about how he's not overstepping. The Court of International Trade has this authority, and that is why he is doing it, okay? It says also that he has been assigned all the IEEPA cases for the Court of International Trade. So it will be uniform in application. And he very clearly at the end, directs customs to liquidate unliquidated entries without IEEPA duties. And reliquidate liquidated entries that are not finalized yet to remove IEEPA duties. So once again, I've given you the source document. And I absolutely -- I mean, beg might be too strong of a word, but absolutely strongly encourage you, go read this. It's only 2 pages. And I think in this era that we live in, where we think it's easier to read other people's commentary to read AI summaries, this is well worth your time to spend the 2 minutes reading this because you really start to see Judge Eaton and what he's trying to do. Even though some of the legal nuances might be lost on us, that's okay. As people in the trade, as licensed customs brokers, as importers, you really get kind of the understanding of what's trying to happen here, okay? So that was on Wednesday, okay? On Thursday, there was amendment to the issue -- to the order issued also by Judge Eaton. And it didn't change anything that was issued the day before, okay? But it really gets into a little bit more of, hey, it's kind of like a -- by the way is how I read it. This is like my layman's understanding. By the way, here are some other reasons why I have the authority to issue what I did the previous day, okay? So he's anticipating the arguments that the government might make in the future. And so he amends that previous order, okay? So the relief, meaning what he's saying in terms of all importers should get the benefit and should get their money back for IEEPA. Let me -- he just is saying, like let me just clarify a few things, okay? So you can definitely read this one, but by all means, please read the first order and just really immerse yourself a little bit in what the court is saying. I promise they're short, okay? So that was Wednesday and Thursday, very eventful situation happening from the Court of International Trade. On Friday, things even got more fun. So on Friday, you start to see the government response and conversations about implementation, okay? So let's dive into this a little bit. First of all, what you saw on Friday was a filing from U.S. Customs and Border Protection, specifically Brandon Lord. So Brandon Lord is an employee at U.S. Customs and Border Protection. He is specifically the -- as you can see here, the Executive Director of Trade Programs. So he has the authority to speak on this topic. So this document is -- I had a hard time deciding which of these documents I think you should more aptly -- if I had to beg you to either read the original order or read this response from customs, which one is more important. I couldn't decide. I really think they're neck and neck. The original order has the benefit of being very short. This one is 13 pages, yet it is double spaced. So it's like 7 pages but is rich in information. My brain was literally kind of exploding as I was reading it, thinking about the slides I was going to make. That's just where my head is. So we are going to go through this, and I'm going to give you 7 key highlights, just a nice round number of 7 key things. But please, this one as well as the original order, please, please, please read. There is so much stuff in there. So what are the key takeaways from what Brandon Lord said in his document? Number one, he talks about the magnitude of the situation. So there has been many numbers reported about IEEPA in the news. Most of them are wrong. So here's some actual numbers for you if you want to start pulling this apart. So this is where my, like, love of analysis and trade really got my brain going. It was just so happy. So it talks about that there was $166 billion collected for IEEPA, okay? That's 53 million entries and around 20 million of those are still unliquidated, okay? It also talks about how a large percentage are informal entries, which is kind of interesting, and we'll talk about those a little bit more. This was filed on Friday, and he gets into some of the mechanics of how liquidation works. Do you see why this is like catnip to me. Okay. So he gets into liquidation and how it functions. So that morning at 2:00 a.m., customs liquidated over 700,000 entries and about half of those had IEEPA duties, okay, or a little over half, which is, I think, pretty interesting. He also is like, hey, at 2:00 a.m. next Friday, this is going to keep happening. And he really says, I don't have a way to stop it, okay? I don't have a way to stop liquidating the IEEPA ones, they are just going to keep going because he has an obligation to meet that order, right, that was issued on Wednesday. He also gets into a conversation. Clearly, I felt like this was meant for me to read, but he gets into a narrative on informal entries and how they liquidate and that there will be a huge amount that liquidate on March 16 as informal entries liquidate at time of payment, right? He also talks about why entry-by-entry refunds are impractical. So he gives these little nuggets like the average entry summary is 20.5, just a casual 0.5, 20.5 lines. And he said, the way that the data was presented to customs, there's a lot of situations where it might not be able to be that IEEPA might not break out very easily, okay? He's like, if we tried to do this entry by entry, it would be updating 1.68 billion lines and take approximately 4.4 million staff hours. If we were going to do that, we're not going to be able to do our job, right? And this part, this last bullet here feels kind of benign, but this is essentially telling you this is what customs is being told is their #1 job right now. He's like, if I did this work entry by entry, I'm not going to be able to do my job, which my job is AD/CVD enforcement transship detection, revenue protection, national and economic security work. So he's really saying, I can't do it that way. We need a different way. One other thing that was in here that was gold to me is he gets into refunds. So we have talked ad nauseam -- ad nauseam, that's the very word, on the webinars about signing up for ACH refund. Clearly, we are failing because he gets into the numbers of how many importers are actually signed up for ACH refund. So customs has an obligation just like all government agencies that they have to comply with -- what was that, not a proclamation, executive order from President Trump that says everybody needs to convert over to electronic payments in all agencies, not just customs. So they went -- customs switched on February 6. He's like, we have 330,000 importers who need refunds, and I only have 6% of those signed up on the ACH refund. Like, whoa, right? This is a big deal. So he's like, even if I had the money to give back or even if I wanted to give back the money, how am I going to give it back? This is a mechanism that I need to give it back and people aren't signed up, okay? It's going to be one of the -- a taste of what Madeleine is going to talk about. This is one of the key things you can do right now is make sure you're signed up. And then at the end, like I forget what bullet point it is, maybe 27, he gives a clear list. This list that's on this slide is from Brandon Lord's document. So you can read at a high level. Now some of these are a little bit fluffy and you can argue they should be combined together, but there are some very interesting things in here. So this is his proposed solution. He says we should do importer level refunds in ACE, okay? A very loaded sentence that admittedly, I don't know what that means, okay? So the first bullet says the importer files a declaration in ACE that includes a list of entries on which IEEPA duties were paid, okay? So a couple of things stand out to me. First of all, it says the importer, okay? That's interesting. It doesn't say a broker, it says an importer, and it says it files a declaration in ACE. So ACE, it's kind of 2 things, right? So the way we interact with customs as an importer typically would be kind of through the ACE portal. But ACE is also the system that brokers, we transmit to them through ABI and it goes into their system called ACE. So ACE is this endpoint, but what I'm not sure is what does this mean, right? Does this mean that a broker is going to have a data set they send and then the importer is certifying that data set? I'm not quite sure. There's kind of a lot to unpack there. It also says that ACE is going to run a series of validations on each entry. But it does confirm too that those calculations will calculate the duty owed without the i.e, the tariffs and interest, which is good, okay? Well, I think it's good news for you as an importer. CBP verifies the declaration. It's going to get finalized. It's going to get certified and then the refund is going to happen. okay? So one other point, and this one, I didn't even attempt to put into bullet points because I really wanted to stand alone. It is point 29, the very last bullet that Brandon Lord puts in his paper, okay? So he says, and I'm going to read most of this, CBP is making all possible efforts to have this new ACE functionality ready in 45 days, okay? And that 45 days is quoted throughout the paper. This new process will require minimal submission from importers also seems like good news. It will also minimize errors by ensuring accurate IEEPA refund calculations through system validations and allowing for a review period for CBP to resolve any discrepancies with the importer, okay? Kind of interesting. And then it says, and to confirm, no other outstanding enforcement issues or no revenue is owed, okay? So I think depending on your personality and maybe the commodities that you filed, this might be an appropriate time to build a little bit of a tin foil hat here. I don't quite know what this is going to look like. But I think that they're not so subtly hinting at that they are going to consider the entire entry as it liquidates. And they are going to make sure there are no other enforcement issues. And I think if you needed a crystal ball to know what they're going to be looking at, it's the bottom bullet point under #4. They've already told us what they think their mission is and what they're going to be looking for, okay? So this will be a part of what Madeleine speaks about because I think that it is something that we need to really just at least try to get our heads wrapped around. We don't know how it's going to be implemented, but I think it is probably improper to think that you're just going to get a check and that there won't be other things looked at within your entry when it goes through this liquidation and refund process, okay? So I said many things and didn't say too much simultaneously, and I understand that. A lot to be said or a lot to see how it plays out. But I think these are the key things that us as brokers and importers need to be paying attention to, okay? So let's move on. So on Friday, a couple of other big things happened. One, Judge Eaton suspended his original order. So that's the one that was filed on Wednesday, amended on Thursday. It just suspends it. That's all. So essentially, he said, based on Brandon Lord's document, I'm going to put a hold on this, okay? And that apparently came after a meeting that was -- it was called a closed door meeting. So it's really ominous between the government parties that are involved, okay? And I think [indiscernible]. Then this is my last little piece here. On Friday, at the end of the day, this also came out. So this is a document. It's an order from Judge Eaton that says, "Hey, there's a huge burden to the taxpayers of the U.S. every day that, that delay happens." And he gets into the math. He says, every month, there's $650 million accruing. And if we waited to the end of the year, that's $10 billion of interest that will have accrued. So this is really huge numbers. And he says, I would like to see a report from CBP on the progress of this solution that they've outlined that will take 45 days by 2:00 p.m. on Thursday, okay, this coming Thursday. So with that said, what are the next things that you should be watching for, okay? First of all, the DOJ, the Department of Justice has said that they're going to appeal. Essentially, in layman's terms, they're going to challenge Judge Eaton's authority to say what he has said, okay? That will be appealed if they do so, which I haven't seen that yet, and maybe it has happened in the last 24 minutes, it will -- they'll appeal to the Federal Circuit, the CAFC, right? This is the same hierarchy that we saw in that original learning resources case, CIT, CAFC, Supreme Court. If they appeal, we don't know if CBP is going to keep working on their 45-day plan, okay? We will have to see. However, this link that I put in here, this is a link to the Atmus Filtration docket, okay? I don't typically have a habit of trying to go read dockets, but this was a little bit interesting, and I'm going to make an exception. So maybe you would like to as well. If you go out there, you'll actually see I highlighted a handful of documents, but there's actually some other things. There was a previous questionnaire that Brandon Lord had to answer that was a predecessor to the 13-page document. So things like that, they're out there, they're public, you can go read them, okay? There's -- it's not -- you don't have to be part of the secret society to read this stuff. So it's out there. It's kind of interesting. So all of this, of course, well, maybe looks may be promising from an importer's perspective in terms of getting your IEEPA duties back, there is still a long road, I believe, ahead of us in terms of those refund procedures actually getting rolling. So we will see, stand by. That was fun. Okay. So lots happened. With that said, I'm going to invite Kelsay on to have a conversation with me about current operational challenges because there are no shortage of those. And any time we transition between trade stuff, I wouldn't say trade deals, but that's not quite the right word, trade legal trade authorities, it always gets a little dicey. So Kelsay, I feel like I'm hosting you on my podcast here. Thank you for coming. We are lucky to have you. So with that, I'm going to ask you 4 questions. I guess this is more for the benefit of our audience, not for you, you know these. But help us understand. So any time we go through the transition, specifically, we just went from IEEPA tariffs to Section 122. It feels like we all get a little amnesia, myself included, in terms of how you calculate a duty, what date drives your duty calculation? And then how is that different than the entry date?

Yes. So let's start with the entry date. So the entry date is the date that customs is considering the entry filed and released. So there are a couple of criteria that also have to be met, namely that the shipment has arrived within the port limits and the carrier has submitted that conveyance arrival in AMS. So it is the entry date that is driving the timeline for a statement payment. The duty date is the date that determines the classification and the duty rates. It's often the same as the entry date, but it does differ for FTZ withdrawals and shipments moving under an inbound. So for FTZ withdrawals, the privileged foreign status date is our duty date. So that's the date that the product was admitted into the foreign trade zone in privileged status. If the product wasn't admitted in privileged status, then the entry date would be the duty date for that line. So on the FTZ withdrawals in particular, it's common for different entry lines to have their own duty dates with tariff classification and duty rates determined accordingly. So you might have one line with one trade remedy and the next line with the same classification in origin with a different privileged foreign status date and a different trade remedy requirement. So for shipments moving under an inbound, the inbound date is our duty date. So that's the date that the inbound is on file with customs and an accepted status. That shipment also has to have arrived within those port limits and the carrier has to have submitted that conveyance arrival in AMS just like for our entry date.

Thank you, Kelsay. Clear as mud. I also like that fun visual in your head of on like an '06 entry, every line just having a different duty date calculation. Also interestingly, I saw -- and maybe this has happened before with other big switches between duties, but I saw some carriers actually putting out notices because it's so heavily dependent on when the carrier arrives at within AMS. So the ship has to physically show up, everybody, and then the carrier has to arrive it in AMS. So that's the automated manifest system. I got nervous about the A. I hope A is automated. But they were saying, "Hey, this is the reason we did it." So it's like they're defending their part because they're really starting to understand how much they impact duty rates, whereas before, it just really wasn't that big of a deal. So I won't say a big deal, but it just -- it didn't have as much money -- not as much money was on the line in terms of when they chose to say a vessel arose -- got into a port limit. Okay. With that, you already touched a little bit on a special circumstance of inbonds. But inbonds have been a special sort of crazy this time around or I guess, every time around. But help us understand why are importers still paying or are they paying money if an inbound was issued for IEEPA?

Yes. So customs actually sets their validations up by the duty date. So those validations still require the IEEPA tariffs and the accompanying duties on entries with an inbound date prior to February 24. So unfortunately, there is not a way around that if that inbound date is before that 2024 date. Presumably, those duties will eventually be refunded in the IEEPA duty refund process, but they do have to be paid now in order to file these entries today. So please do make sure that your broker has the correct date for that conveyance arrival at that first U.S. port so that they can accurately report the inbound date, classification and the duties that are required.

Yes. And that one, I know you've had many conversations with...

I have.

[indiscernible] have had many. We don't want to pay them either. We're with you. It's just that this is how custom system is working. And for us to compliantly file entries, we do need to submit IEEPA if you have an inbound on file prior to February 24. Okay. So last -- this one is a little bit of a good news situation now sitting at March 10, not so much last Thursday. But help us understand what was happening with FTZ entries and where does this all stand right now?

Yes. So as I touched on before, the FTZ privileged foreign status state sets that duty date. And before last week, like for those inbound entries, customs required those IEEPA duties based on the duty date for FTZ withdrawals. On Wednesday night, though, customs deployed a validation change to start rejecting FTZ withdrawal entries with IEEPA tariffs. That validation change inadvertently included non-IEEPA trade remedies. So we ended up having conflicting rejections. We got to reject for having a trade remedy and we got to reject for missing the trade remedy. So this Thursday was rather stressful, but customs was able to get a correction out on Friday and IEEPA tariffs are no longer required on the FTZ withdrawals with privileged foreign dates between February 4 of last year and February 23 of this year. So it's the whole IEEPA time frame.

And what makes to -- and this isn't just Expeditors as a broker. This is any broker who's trying to manage '06 entries. These entries are often huge. As Kelsay said, I mean, every single line can have a different duty date calculation. And you have a short time frame, right, because you're closing out this week of zone activity. And so it kind of creates a unique nightmare of a situation where a huge amounts of duty can be due. Brokers have a very short period of time to get these on file with customs and paid before they become late. So really special thanks. Kelsay works very closely with our ABI representative at customs to get the issue identified and then he did a great job getting it communicated to his team to get that fixed. But as Kelsay said, I think she lost a lot of as I say, sleep, lost a lot of melatonin (sic) [ melanin ] in your hair. I don't know what the right phrase is. Okay. Lastly, this is a question I've been getting as I've been going around to many different offices and talking to customers, which is which provisions got end dated. So when we did that transition between IEEPA and 122, some of the stuff was trade deals. So what was an IEEPA trade deal? And what's just like a weird 232 side trade deal? What about civil aircraft? It kind of falls into all these buckets. Yes.

So all of the IEEPA tariffs under Fentanyl, reciprocal, IEEPA Brazil and the IEEPA Russian oil for India were end dated. So it does include the IEEPA-related tariffs tied to the trade deal countries. So the civil aircraft exemptions for Great Britain, Japan and Korea all have provisions exempting from certain Section 232 duties as well as IEEPA, and those exemptions are still valid for the Section 232 duties. The civil aircraft exemption for the EU, however, has been end dated with the rest of the IEEPA tariffs. And Section 122 does not include any trade deal-related exemptions at this time. They could, of course, add that in the future. But it does have a civil aircraft exemption that's actually available for all countries. It only exempts from those Section 122 duties though. So if those duties wouldn't be owed because of tariff stacking, the exemption wouldn't be needed on those. For the civil aircraft products of Brazil -- of British, Japanese and Korean origin, those exemptions still cover the same 232 duties, but the product also has to qualify for the Section 122 civil aircraft exemption in order to remain free from those duties. So there is a separate tariff list for each of the civil aircraft exemptions. So it's important to make sure that you're looking at both the trade deal exemption for your product and the Section 122 exemption list to make sure that your product is eligible for both.

Thank you, Kelsay. And the things like the 232 kind of breakouts for like autos and auto parts, those all are still fine. And those are all...

Correct.

Okay. And I guess I'm doing this off the top of my head, very risky business to do that. But that is like Japan, Korea and the EU, correct?

Japan, Korea, Great Britain and the EU, yes.

Okay. Perfect. Nailed it. Okay. Appreciate you coming on, Kelsay. Now I'm sure you have a bazillion questions to answer in the chat, but I appreciate you always helping to answer these hard questions. So with that said, Madeleine, help us understand what's on the horizon.

Oh my gosh. Okay. We'll try. Thank you, Stephanie and Kelsay. All right, everybody. So the big question -- well, another big question. Besides the refund question, which is the biggest, I think, there's also a big question on Section 122. So remember, everybody, Section 122 is part of the Trade Act of 1974 and Section 122 duties were implemented by the administration after, obviously, the Supreme Court ruling that said, hey, you can -- the government is not allowed to utilize IEEPA to implement tariffs. So they pulled out Section 122 of the Trade Act. And Section 122 allows the administration to put a tariff in place of up to 15% across the board, but it deals directly with a balance of payment issues. So this is kind of the interesting how does that work exactly? But anyway, the big question first is, is it going to go up? Currently, the percentage is at 10%. Will it go up to 15%? So remember, when this got implemented right after the IEEPA duties were removed, it was implemented at 10%. And the day after, which was on the weekend, I think it was on a Saturday, President Trump said, "Hey, we're going to go up to 15%." So we've heard about the 15%, but nothing official has come out on the 15%. So there's no official proclamation or executive order on 15%. It's only at 10%. However, there are lots of rumblings and you see quotations here on this slide of various folks in the administration and President Trump saying, "Hey, it is going to go up to 15%. We're working on it." The most recent quotation was from Treasury Secretary Bessent, who said, I think, just on Thursday or Friday last week that, "Hey, it's going to go up to 15%." But so far, there has been nothing official. So we're still at 10%. So the other thing that's happening is that 24 states, there were actually, I think, 22 attorney generals and then 2 governors from 2 other states. So a total of 24 states are suing the government saying, "Hey, this Section 122 should not have been used to implement these additional tariffs." And their main argument from what I understand is that the balance -- having a balance of payment issue really isn't the same as a trade deficit. So remember, a lot of the -- all the reciprocal tariffs were put in place because we run big trade deficits with other countries. But these states are saying and governors are saying, "Hey, balance of payment, not the same as a trade deficit. Therefore, Section 122 should not be utilized here in this case, and these tariffs are also unlawful." So we're going to have to see what happens with these lawsuits or with the lawsuits from these various states. Will this get resolved before the 150 days? Remember, Section 122 is in place, only 150 days. So technically, it ends the end of July unless Congress says, no, we were going to extend it. But what about the lawsuits? Is that going to happen? Or will there be a final determination before the 150 days? So that's a big question mark. We just don't know. So again, lots of question marks. We shall see. what will happen. The congressional response overall, it's been kind of a mixed bag. Obviously, you have some who are in favor -- were in favor of the use of IEEPA, others who believe that, no, this is actually Congress' role to implement taxes and tariffs. So it's been a little bit of a mixed bag. We have seen though that folks in Congress, and they have introduced a couple of bills where they say, "Hey, the U.S. should be getting -- now that the Supreme Court has ruled on IEEPA, this also means that the trade should be getting their refunds. So 2 bills were introduced restoring economic lifelines for independent Enterprises and Family Businesses Act. Oh my God, I can barely say that, that's such a long one. But basically, it says, hey, CBP should only -- should have 90 days to refund all the IEEPA tariffs that were collected. And then there's this Tariff Refund Act of 2026, which again, also requires U.S. CBP to refund with interest all the tariffs under IEEPA. So those 2 bills were also introduced. So we'll see what happens. And so there's a lot to watch what will happen with those bills. At the same time, we see this refund process starting to roll forward, though, again, still lots of things to solidify, and we'll see what happens with Section 122. So we can go on to -- yes, the next slide. So there's still -- what about the international response. So in general, I think most countries are kind of waiting to see what's going to happen. Many of them don't want to maybe jeopardize too much the trade deals that they have solidified with the current administration. So they're kind of waiting to see what's going to happen if the 10% is going up to 15%. I think many countries though that do have trade deals and have those all-in rates are, of course, concerned because if that duty rate under 122 goes up to 15%, it will sit on top of the MFN rate. And then in many cases, they may be paying more. So there's a lot of worry, I think, concern and sitting back to see what is going to happen, is it going up to 15% or not. You see here to the right, some of the reactions from some of the countries. Again, the EU is still finalizing that whole EU-U.S. deal on their end. Canada, I think, was fairly happy with 122, though they're still concerned about Section 232. China is watching this very, very carefully. And I think most of the countries in Asia. So again, most folks sitting on the edge of their seat and watching carefully to see how this plays out, but they don't want to maybe ruffle the administration's feathers too much at this time until they see if this is going to go up to 15%. We'll see. So anyway, so that is what's on the horizon. We are now going to transition into what can you actually do right now in terms of the whole refund situation and the Supreme Court ruling. So there are 4 things that we believe you can take action on today. And I'm going to go into these in a little bit more detail, but you see them here, filing timely protests after your entries have liquidated, those entries, of course, for which you've paid IEEPA duties, possibly filing a lawsuit in the Court of International Trade, but that is one that you definitely -- we can't -- I can't recommend whether you should do that or not. That is one where you definitely need to speak with internal counsel or get -- or talk to a trade attorney. Signing up for the ACH refunds, which we'll go into in a little bit more detail and really looking at the entries for which you've paid IEEPA duties and making sure that you're reviewing those and that they are squeaky clean. So we'll jump into each one of these steps here in a little bit more detail. So the first one, absolutely, right now, everybody, please make sure that you are monitoring your liquidation dates for all the entries for which you've filed or paid IEEPA duties. If we're your customs broker, we're more than happy to help you with reports. We are running reports on all of our -- for all of our customers showing which entries are getting close to liquidation. And for which you paid IEEPA duties. So we can certainly help with that. But please make sure that you are monitoring liquidation dates and you're running reports. Then for those entries that have liquidated, and again, they liquidate about 314 days after the date of entry, you should file a protest. And we say this because a protest will allow you to reserve the right to a refund, okay? And this is -- so this gives you added -- gives you the protection in a way that you need in order to get your money back when this refund process becomes official and formally rolls out. So please make sure that you are filing protests on liquidated entries for which you have paid IEEPA duties. So that's one thing that you can do. The thing about the protest is that you can actually file these yourself. So again, customs brokers can file them. We as your broker can certainly file them. outside third parties can file them. But it's really important to note that this is something you can actually do yourself, too. And you may want to, to take full control of the matter and getting these filed as soon as possible. In order to file them, you have to have an ACE portal account, but you file the protest through the ACE portal account. And we provided links here on how to do that. It's fairly straightforward, okay? The other thing to bear in mind is that the Center of Excellence and Expertise may be -- well, we've heard from one Center of Excellence and Expertise, and that's under the general notes here on the right-hand side of the slide, that this particular center provided some recommendations to an importer who was filing protest. And they said, hey, you can only -- we want you to limit these protests to a maximum of 50 entries. You don't have to provide any document packets. Again, this is specific to this -- where you're filing protests for -- to preserve your right to get a refund on these IEEPA duties. And please provide us an Excel spreadsheet with some of the information that's listed there on the slide. So they provided specific instructions. I do not know if every Center of Excellence and Expertise is under -- is providing the same guidance. So because we all know that the ports and the centers are not always consistent in how they implement things, I would strongly recommend that before submitting your protest that you call or get in touch with your center and just double check and make sure that either they have the same instructions that are listed here, maybe they're going to be slightly different. But I recommend that strongly so that you're not just filing a protest and then maybe because it didn't include all the information required or it included too many entries, it gets rejected. And of course, we want to avoid that. So again, reach out to your center and see what the latest instructions are in terms of filing these protests. So -- and in addition, what we've done, everybody, and you've seen this maybe before because we've talked about this before on previous webinars, I'm not going to read this language, but here is some suggested language that you can use to file your protest, okay? So again, you'll get a copy of this presentation. I think Samantha put instructions in the Q&A on how to get a copy of the presentation, and you'll have this. But this is just suggested language that you can use to file your protest. All right. So the second thing, and this is the one I'm sure you've all heard, there are a ton of lawyers, a lot of folks talking about this. And there are -- we heard even a couple of months ago, there were a few large companies that started this and many other importers have joined the bandwagon, you can file a lawsuit in the Court of International Trade to ensure that you are refunded your IEEPA duties. Whether you should do this or not, I am not able to say because I am not a lawyer. As Stephanie pointed out at the very beginning of the presentation, none of us are. So I highly recommend that you talk to internal counsel or talk to a trade attorney to find out whether your company should file a lawsuit in the Court of International Trade. Again -- and I would do this as soon as possible. The reason I say as soon as possible is because as you heard Stephanie explain, the ball is beginning to roll, right? And it sounds like the Court of International Trade, they want to try and expedite this. They may -- it may be stopped again or paused because of the DOJ appealing the case, but they're trying to get the ball rolling on all of this. So I would say you want to look into this sooner rather than later on whether this is something that your company should do. So then the third item here is make sure that you're signed up for ACH refunds. I guess we did fail in this respect on our previous webinars because we have talked about it, but we really -- this is -- you're not going to get your refund unless you sign up for ACH refunds. So this is a separate process than being on ACH. This is a separate process. It's not a difficult process to do. And let me just remind you, everybody, in that document from Brandon Lord, remember, and Stephanie had those stats on the slide -- the earlier slide, there's 330,000 -- over 330,000 importers have filed entries on which IEEPA duties were paid or deposited. And only 21,000 of those importers have been set up or are set up on ACH refund. That's not a lot. It's a very small number. Customs has said there are a bunch of pending refunds not having to do with the IEEPA Supreme Court case, but refunds on other matters that they have not been able to send out to importers because they're not set up on ACH refund. So this is super important. If you haven't done this, please do so today. We've said -- we provided a link on how to do it. And if we look at the next slide, the process is pretty straightforward. You can do it now in the ACE portal. You need to have an ACE portal account and you need to have access to the importer subaccount access is what they call it. And then through that access, you can set up your U.S. bank information to receive ACH refund. So it's fairly, I think, straightforward and simple process. Again, you will get access to this, you'll get access to this document. But please make sure you set this up. Otherwise, you're not going to see any refund, and that would be really terrible. So anyway, so you'll get access to this. And then the last step, step 4 is just make sure that you are reviewing your -- the entries for which you've paid the IEEPA duties, make sure you're looking at those carefully and that your i's are dotted and t's are crossed. This is important. It's always good, and we've talked about this on previous webinars that it's important to have a second set of eyes reviewing, looking at your entries, again, to make sure everything is very -- is the most accurate as possible because you don't want refunds to be held up because customs finds issues. And remember some of the verbiage that they used in that document that Stephanie reviewed at the beginning of the presentation that they're going to be -- it looks like, at least the way we're interpreting it, they're going to be reviewing everything. And so it's very important that you make sure that your entries for which you paid IEEPA duties that everything look is accurate and correct on those entries. So make sure you're looking at those carefully. And of course, that you've got all your documentation, supporting documentation for those entries. Okay. So again, none of these steps are going to guarantee that the refunds are going to be automatic or immediate. We hope it's going to be fairly simple and straightforward. We will hopefully get more information on that soon in terms of what customs is putting together. But again, if you please make sure you're taking those 4 steps. We do believe that this will give you the greatest chance of getting your money back. And obviously, there were a ton of duties paid out. So you need to make sure you do everything possible to get your refund if you do a refund. So I think we've made it to the end here, everybody. So I'm sure there are lots of questions.

So many questions. So I will answer one, and this is just my opinion, Stephanie's opinion, but a lot of people are saying, I filed suit in the Court of International Trade. Do I really need to be doing protest? I was just at ICPA last week, and there was a lot of lawyers walking around answering that question every way under the sun. So I think if I was in your shoes as an importer and I needed to stand in front of my C-suite instead of -- and stand in front of my Board of Directors and say, I did everything possible to protect our company's right to a refund, that means that you should absolutely be doing protest, and you don't need to do them on day 1. If it liquidates yesterday, you have 6 months. You have 180 days. You can let that play out a little bit, okay? But I would absolutely be doing them. And they can be -- it's not canceled, but you can cancel them depending on what happens with the situation. Nobody is talking about any downsides to doing protest at this point, okay? And all that does is allow you the legal right to ask customs to keep -- essentially keep your entry open. okay? Because once you get past that 180-day mark post liquidation, customs can't do anything, you can't do anything. We have had this happen where importers want customs to reopen the entry. By law, they cannot do that. So this is what that's doing is it's allowing you to have access to that entry, okay? So that's the first thing. The second thing, as Madeleine said, it is up to you and your legal counsel and if you want to file in the court of international trade. We cannot advise on that. Some people have said, hey, it looks like there's already action happening. Is there really a point in my company doing this? Can I just kind of ride the coattails of what other people are doing? I don't know. There's a bit of an urgency when you start reading some of this where people are like, hey, there's a reason lawyers, you can talk to them about why they think it might be very important to do that right now and that there's a window that's going to close. That's up to you. That's up to the risk, your company's risk, how much money is on the table. So that, unfortunately, we can't put a whole lot on. But if you want to say we did everything, it's those 2 things. That is the 2 things that you can be doing, protest and then file in the CIT. And indirectly, when you read that original order from the judge that was issued last Wednesday, he says in there, maybe it was not in the order, maybe it was a different commentary. It doesn't matter. But he essentially says, I'm not going to preside over thousands and thousands of cases, and this is one of the reasons I'm making this choice. So it was essentially because so many companies have filed that it led him as part of his rationale to issue the order that he did. So if only 5 companies had filed there, it might be a different outcome. So it's interesting to see when you start reading some of that, there's a benefit to lots of people doing something. So maybe your company should be one big, it shouldn't be -- that's not up for us to say. Let's see here. Madeleine, can I give you a question. How long are these refunds going to take?

Oh my gosh, I know. This is a loaded question, everybody. And as you saw those steps that Brandon Lord put in the document that Stephanie showed those 6 or 7 steps at the end, it's still not clear, especially the first one, that's what we keep asking ourselves, how the importer files a declaration in ACE. We have no idea what that means. We don't know if you need an ABI connection and the broker would do it on your behalf or if you're a self-filer or if that means uploading documents to the ACE portal only or through the document imaging system, we don't know. We're hoping to get more information very soon, but we don't know what that first bullet means. And this is the million-dollar question. So...

Yes. Absolutely. So more to come. And I think we'll know more when CBP needs to file that next report, which will be due next Thursday. One other question I'll do is somebody is asking about reliquidation. So reliquidation -- so once an entry liquidates, which typically is 314 days after the entry date. So liquidation, right, as I said before, it's kind of customs closing that book and saying, we're good, right, between the importer and customs. Reliquidation is after an entry liquidates 90 days. So it's not a full 180, it's 90 days post liquidation is when customs can reliquidate an entry, okay? So another reason making sure that you have those protests done to protect yourself if needed. Okay. So I think we are good. So we have had enough fun for today. My apologies to any lawyers if I accidentally use the word, that means something meaningful. And I use it a very customs broker way. So apologies for any of those mistakes. So with that, Samantha, do you want to touch on anything before we sign off?

I just want to mention, I know that many of you did have issues getting logged on today. We apologize for that with an IT issue that was putting a lower capacity on this webinar than what we know we typically need. So that was fixed, but we do recognize that many of you were not able to catch the first part of today's content. So we will get -- we'll expedite getting the recording and materials out to you all. We do just ask, of course, if you could complete our survey that we send out, we appreciate the feedback, as always. And we will work hard to make sure that does not happen again. Thank you all...

Bye, everybody. Thank you for coming.

Bye.