Expeditors International of Washington, Inc. ($EXPD)

Good morning, everyone. We are going to get started. We just hit over the little bit past actually the 1,200 mark of participants. So we are going to get things growing as we have a lot of content as usual to cover. We know plenty of people will still be coming in and -- we're going to go over some housekeeping first, so many of you know this probably by heart at this point if you -- webinars. But for those of you that haven't, my name is Samantha Hurst, and I'm the host for this webinar supporting in the background for all of our very knowledgeable speakers who will come on here in just a moment. And if you have any questions or technical issues, questions about technical issues, you're welcome to e-mail me directly. You can find my e-mail address on the confirmation that you received when you signed up for today's webinar. We will go over about 55 full minutes of content today, again, these U.S. Customs Market Update, we've got a lot to cover. Every time we think we don't, we do. So we will have efforts in the background that are going to be answering your questions as we go through. I do encourage you, as always, if you have something, a question that's just really specific to your business, your industry or how you're set up in ACE or with Kate, please understand we may not be able to address that. We can really only hit those questions that are more applicable to a wider audience. So do not discourage you from asking us questions, but we just encourage you to understand that. We will get to everything we end today and then anything that cannot be addressed on today's webinar, we will connect you with an Expeditors representative, whether that's someone with our customs team or with your account management team, make sure you get supported. So do type your questions into the Q&A box. One of the questions we get very frequently is, can we get access to the slides, the recording, the links that are in the presentation, the certification for uses credit, continuing education, yes, we will make sure that you get that content. You can get that by completing the survey that you will receive from myself via e-mail in about 2 hours after today's webinar. We know some of you, your sand filters for whatever reason, blocks e-mails, please give a bit about 24 hours to 48 because we will send out the material as well, anyone who registered for today's webinar. And if you still for some reason, do not get that e-mail of the survey or materials, then we absolutely will get that back to you or get those to you as soon as possible. And then finally, to stay informed, you can subscribe to future webinar invites and market updates via the QR code or will also drop a link in the chat here So now we are going to go over an introduction of our speakers, although they don't need too much introduction for those of you that have joined us in the past at this point, they've sort of become compliant customs influencers as we joke because you all have come to rely on information that they provide, which we think is fantastic. We have those Madeleine Veigel, he's our Vice President of Customs for the Americas; Brenda Smith is our Global Director for government outreach; Ted Henderson is our Senior Adviser for Customs; and Stephanie Holloway is our Director for Customs operations here in the Americas region. So Stephanie is going to get us started off today. I'll let you take it away.

Thank you, Samantha. Okay. So every good webinar, as I say, starts with the disclaimer. So here is ours. We are just going to give you the best information we have and it's not through the lens of a trade lawyer, it just to the lens of a whole bunch of U.S. licensed customs brokers doing the best they can in 2026. So with that said, we actually have a really good agenda. You may think it's only going to be IEEPA refunds in Cape, and we are going to cover that. That is what we're going to hit. That's, of course, our headliner. But there's a lot of other stuff going on that we didn't want to lose sight of. And frank -- and luckily, I would say, Cape and IEEPA, is kind of not as exciting or thrilling this week as maybe we may have anticipated. So Ted is going to touch on the changes with metals and what we have coming with pharma. Brenda, of course, is going to use her crystal ball to see into the future; and then Madeleine is going to walk through really related to Cape and IEEPA, some of the common questions we're getting in terms of how to do some practical management and things like that. So that is -- we're kind of starting and ending with Cape and IEEPA refunds and then have some other stuff that's going on that we can't lose sight of. So this is rock and time line, I'll tell you that. But it really is trying to capture how much bigger and how our world is not quiet. Occasionally, I think we get kind of honed in on stuff right now. We're very honed in on IEEPA duty refunds, but really stepping back, there's still so much going on. So I want to highlight just a couple of things here that I want to make sure that people know about and call attention to. So Brenda will be talking about some new Section 301 cases that opened. Unfortunately, the comment period opened and closed while we were between webinars, but there's still more to happen on that. So we have -- you see here on April 28 and May 5, there's going to be public hearings on those 2 Section 301 cases that we want to call attention to. Also, if you look at the bottom of the time line, there was somewhat, I won't say quiet, but it didn't get a lot of press in the midst of all the IEEPA refunds. They -- we actually had an auto, auto parts, so that's a Section 232 case. HTS inclusion process starts. So this is kind of what I'll call the suggestion box. We saw this with steel and aluminum. We went through this 1 -- 2 times -- yes, 2 times. This is now starting on auto and auto parts. We haven't seen this, but essentially, what happens is commerce goes out and says, "Hey, would anybody like to add any HTS numbers to the auto and auto part list?" And if they do, it gets put into a public comment period. So the submission to kind of put your request in ended on April 14, but now we're in a 2-week cycle that ends on April 29, where your HTS number that you use might end up in this Section 232 case. So this is really important. It can cause a lot of disruption. It can change the amount of duties that you pay. So if you're even tangentially involved with auto and auto parts, it is worth clicking on this link and seeing which HTS numbers are being requested to be included, and you can make comments on that, okay? So outside of that, you can see some other things in the future, but that's really the most pressing stuff outside of other items we'll be covering. Okay. Now the part that you all came for, let's talk about IEEPA. What a pleasant surprise as I alluded to this week. So where are we at? What's important about this week? So I think most people know, back in February, the Supreme Court found the use of IEEPA, right? So the President using this legal statute to apply tariffs with a legal, you can't do it. So during the month of March, we saw some -- I almost said cool that might be a little excessive award, but we saw some back and forth between the Court of International Trade and U.S. Customs in terms of how are they actually going to get all of the money paid back to importers, okay? So we covered that in other webinars. But through that kind of back and forth that you could see with the court, customs had this plan. And their plan was to deploy an automated refund process, and I'll say automated, not automatic. But to kind of do these mass refunds, and they were building a system called Cape, okay? And they said that they were going to deploy Cape -- what would -- I don't remember the exact time line, but it was essentially April 20 -- this week was April 20, and customs absolutely delivered on that date. What they said they were going to deliver, which is pretty cool. Most of us know, especially if you're in the software world, hitting a date like that is really hard to do. So that was really impressive. You, like I said, aren't going to just get automatic refunds, you got to go and request them. And it's either you as an importer or the customs broker who did that original filing are the ones that are allowed to go indicate and request it, okay? So a couple of things to call out. The way that they're rolling this out in the way that we saw back in March during the court filings was that customs was going to have to deliver in phases, okay? So Phase 1 is happening now, and it will do any entries that are unliquidated or up to 80 days post liquidation, okay? So if you're on that, then the Cape Phase 1 doesn't capture those entries. It also doesn't allow you to file it if you have a protest open, if it's flagged for reconciliation, if it's already been included on drawback, some other types of scenarios like that, okay? So really, what we're seeing is that Customs is going to -- is expecting that we're going to have multiple cape filings, okay? Per importer, that's okay. That's not strange or weird. That's kind of how this process is going to work. We're going to have a bit of a long tail. Some of you might capture 100% of your entries on Phase 1 and some of you might just capture 5%. If you flag everything for reconciliation, Phase 1 is not for you. You're going to have to wait for a future phase. CBP, we haven't seen money come yet, but they're saying 60 to 90 days after Cape acceptance, okay? So that puts us somewhere in the June time line, maybe to start seeing that come. So let's look at some actual examples of what we're seeing this week and piece some of this together because it's kind of cool to see what we can tell, both as a broker and then, of course, you as an importer. So this flow really shows what customs laid out and what we pieced together during those court filings. So the first thing they said was they were going to build a portal within their -- are they going to build a module within their ACE portal system. That's their online platform. And to that, here it is, this is a screenshot from this week, Monday morning, you were able to go into ACE. And you can see here, this is our Expeditors account. But there's this tab at the end, has that little blue underneath. It says, Cape is very exciting, and there's this up the button, okay? So on the upload, customs been it pretty simple. You just have to upload a list of entry numbers, okay? So no other data is needed. There's a little bit of an art to this, obviously, because of the phases and some other kind of order of operations that matter, likely you should not just be throwing all of your entries in there. There is kind of a thought process that needs to go into this. But you load it up here. And you can see there's 2 different tabs. This is a screen shot from file uploads, which is here in the underlying in red. And you can see Expeditors has been loading files up and you get claim numbers. And then essentially, your file tells you whether it's accepted or not. So that leads us into the second bucket of what customs said they were going to do and definitely delivered on. We're seeing this play out. So layer one, it checks to make sure that you have the authority to request this. So is that imported record tied to your ACE account. And then as a broker, is that entry that I'm requesting part of our filer code. So at Expeditors, we use 231, that's our filer code. Of course, I can only request things that start with the 231. Then the second layer, and we were a little nervous about this. I'm going to be honest, it was going to look for entry validations. And we've seen that play out as well. So here's an example. Once it makes it through that first step saying, is it good -- am I good to ask for this. It gives me back a claim status. So you can see here the claim number once it gets accepted, they're a claim status. So it's accepted or accepted with errors and then you can see how many were successful and how many errors occurred, okay? And then this is a copy of the spreadsheet. So for this claim number, you can see here by entry, I wiped out the full entry number, but you can see what the status is. And this particular spreadsheet is showing really the one status that is going to probably be the store in all of our sites, which is unable to calculate duty, okay? So there's other status is coming back. One of them is like not paid on statement that's because there's still some stragglers and those probably got paid this week on periodic monthly. But otherwise, what we'll be doing and what a challenge will be for all of us over the next couple of weeks is kind of picking apart and trying to understand what this message means, which is unable to calculate duty. So this is one of the things a customs broker when you hire us to do your entries. We're not only submitting data, understanding what's required and what. You also start to learn and a big part of a customs brokers job is to understand how the data needs to be sent to customs. And this is kind of that pulling apart, as I say, similar to what we've done with every trade remedy trying to figure out what customs is programmed what they expect. Is it something we need to change on our side? Is it something that they need to change? And so we're doing that. We're starting all that work. I think it's going to take us a little bit of time. Our general acceptance rate right now is extremely high. We're getting unable to calculate duty on less than 1% of the entries we've submitted. So this is not huge amounts, but it is going to take a lot of work. And I'll say all of us are going to have to have patients with that as we figure out what's going on with those entries and how to get them fixed. I think some will end up with an adjustment. Customs will need to adjust some of their tables. And some of them might end up with a post-summer correction, we'll have to see how those sort out. So we're at the beginning of this process, just have patience with it. This is not alarming to a customs broker. We deal with this all the time. But I know it's a little annoying when you want to check the box, right, which is what we're all trying to work towards. With that said, custom has been said we're going to move it to a mass processing state. They're going to remove IEEPA HTS numbers, and then it's going to approve. So we don't have complete kind of proof of this yet. But if you use ACE, you can start to pull some of this apart. So this is a screenshot of some ACE reporting. I'll make sure Samantha includes, if you've never used ACE reporting, it is worth your time to watch a little tutorial so you don't lose your mind. We did a webinar about a month ago, and we'll share that link. But there are some tips and tricks that will make your life easier. However, if you are familiar with ACE reporting, know that customs added 2 data elements regarding Cape to the entry summer universe, and they are well worth your time to understand. So one is Cape indicator, meaning, "Hey, was it submitted to Cape?" And then secondly, there's this Cape decision. And right now, it's just showing Cape approved. So that -- it feels like there'll be other milestones, I don't know what they will be, but this is where it currently stands, okay? One thing we peak together too on the Cape indicator, we're seeing Ps and Ys. The P seems to be ones that had already liquidated and need to be reliquidated, and then Y means it was pending liquidation. One other report that customs put together, that would be worth looking at is this ES022-Cape entry summer report. And this showed kind of more of an overall view of the different claim numbers, let's say, your entry summary numbers. And then what it looks like is all the refund information is going to go to the far right. This one, even though it's accepted, it doesn't look like that refund, of course, it doesn't look like it's all blank. It looks like this is going to be populating over time, okay? So this is going to help us pull this portion apart. One other thing I forgot to mention on this, you can actually see here, this is kind of cool, this HTS number here, the 9903, you can see that in custom systems now under line tariff duty amount, it's been zeroed out. So you can see that this step, right, where it's going to go in and 0 out, has been done on custom side. This is going to get a little bit tricky for many of us because what's now reflected in your broker system or maybe other entries is not the same as what custom SaaS. So this is going to be kind of this top to every world to know how do you get your data right, and what are you using as your source data. So more to come as we discover all of this together. Once it makes it out of mass processing will be over in this review and liquidation as well as refund issuance. So this step, even though we've made it through these 3 milestones, this next part, we do anticipate it's going to take 60 to 90 days, and we're going to keep an eye on it and see what happens. I think the thing many of us in the trade are really paying attention to is that customs in their court filings really alluded to the fact that they're going to allow CBP to manually review things and look for compliance concerns. So we don't know what that means. We don't know how many things will get caught up here. So there's a lot here that will be kind of interesting to see play out, and it's going to take a few months to see that play out and see what happens along the way, okay? One other thing about this playout period, the 60 to 90 days is that customs. The U.S. government has until the beginning of June to file an appeal. So that kind of lines up and allows them not to issue refunds until we make it past that beginning of June time frame where they potentially could appeal and say that the judge in the international court doesn't have the authority to make the choice that he did essentially saying that Atmos filtration gets their money back and this extends to all importers. So we'll have to see we're going to be in this holding period now for a while. The last thing I'll highlight, and this is something that my teams really wanted me to make sure that we share is Cape is really intended to be end of the road, okay? So we need to make sure all of our post-summary corrections or other things that you want to do with the entry are done before we do Cape submission. I kind of like that order of operations that we learned in math in elementary school. So really making sure that this is -- we're not just loading up entry numbers and pushing send and then sitting and waiting for 60 to 90 days. But we really need to make sure that the entries are done in the correct order because if we don't, once we do Cape and there needs to be a change. We think it will then need to be a protest, and we hope that we don't have a reason to think that legally, you can't do a protest, but the way that customs has built it is really intended to make sure all post-summary corrections are done and then Cape happens, okay? So please be working with your brokers and making sure that everyone is communicating as to who is doing what. Okay. I think I have covered Cape extensively. Ted, take us into our latest 232 changes.

All right. Thank you so much. Yes, millions of questions still piling in about IEEPA tariff refunds, Cape refunds and all that, but we will take a brief break, I promise you we will come back and folks are trying to answer your questions as we go, as always, and we will talk a little bit more about Cape at the back end of this discussion. But let's talk about our good old fashioned tariffs that are not being refunded, I guess, for a little bit. So let's start with the latest proclamation related to Section 232 tariffs on metal imports and -- those of us who've been in the import business for a bit, you can remember back all the way to 2018 and Trump 1.0 and suddenly, companies who imported aluminum and steel articles started to struggle, I guess, with 232 tariffs on those -- on that. We originally saw a 25% tariff on steel, 10% tariffs on aluminum. And then we got -- we got to know this idea of derivative articles, articles that contain dealer aluminum. And then we had that whole wonderful challenging exclusion path where everyone was filing for exclusions and hoping to get their articles removed from the tariffs. Under Trump 2.0, we saw probably a new and maybe even more challenging approach with higher tariffs coming in for steel, aluminum articles, process to continuously add derivative articles and add more things that should be tariffed under these 232s. And really incredibly complex calculations to identify the value of the steel or aluminum on derivatives and how do we calculate that and the CBP didn't give us the best of guidance really on how we should be doing it. And then we saw copper get added to the mix of metals that are subject to Section 232 tariffs. So metal imports, for those of you who are involved in this, I'm not telling you anything you don't know, became incredibly challenging to deal with and manage with multiple tariffs being stacked on a single HS line. So at the beginning of April, right, around the second of April, we saw the Trump administration issue a new proclamation that really honestly seem to recognize that the whole Section 232 tariff structure on metals have gotten way too complex, too costly to manage, and they really significantly modified how Section 232 tariffs on imports and metals are going to be managed. And as we say on this slide, think of the modification proclamation really as kind of a new fresh framework on how we manage duties on metal imports. This -- you really have to throw out a lot of the past assumptions and the methodologies from the former actions, either Trump 1.0 or 2.0. But unfortunately, you keep in mind, the key thing that did remain in place are indeed the tariffs. So really, the first thing to think about is that the administration and CBP are now applying the Section 232 metal tariffs in a unified manner on steel, aluminum and copper and looking at them singularly as metal, if you will, as imports. So that makes things a little bit easier. We don't have to pile up that imported. You had a good that included some metals and steel and got to bid maybe copper, too. And the duty was accessed back on top of each other. Now we look at it as an aggregate as metal in total. The second thing is, and this is important, we no longer have the opportunity, the option, however you want to look at it, to calculate duty on the partial value of the metal in articles depending on that content. We only consider the full value of article. So the full internal value of the article regardless of metal content and how duties are set on that. So these changes are good in some ways. Some of you, as we've seen over the last couple of weeks, you've been favorably impacted by the changes in the tariff structure, and some of you are unfortunately negatively impact because of this idea of the full entered value. So let's look at some of the specific takeaways of the modification and see what happens. So first, key point -- the effective date for the new Section 232 tariffs for metals in total, while went into effect for imports coming in on the sixth of April. And second, there's something of a tiered structure, and there is some complexity to this in all honesty. And we're not going to have time because they're literally subdivisions into proclamation if you look at the annexes and the things that have laid out. And the duty rates are going to vary depending on where your article fits in those different subdivisions. So there's a 50% tariff rate for -- there's a list of goods that was subject to that. There's a list of goods that would be subject to a 25% tariff rate. There's also a list of goods that would be subject to a 15% all-in duty rate depending on the HTS and that would last through 2027. Some of that's based on trade frameworks agreements that have been negotiated with certain countries. Again, we don't have time to go through all of that today. If you do have questions, as Samantha pointed out at the beginning of this webinar, if you've got specific questions about articles that you're importing or planning to import under this metal structure, then please make sure and reach out to your Expeditors contact, how to be honest, I'm sure they'll be happy to talk about something other than IEEPA refunds in Cape. So check with them to see where that 232 action may impact you as we've done. Another interesting point is there was a whole list of HTS numbers that were removed from the Section 232 duties. So there's a good thing about that to some other odds and ends on this is that the column on the right talks about. The U.S. U.K. framework agreement does impact goods that are wholly entirely of U.K. some odd things. There hasn't been a breakout for U.S. goods. So U.S. goods, wholly melt board, smeltcast, whatever, in the U.S. would be subject to a duty rate. We're waiting to see if there's a modification about that. Russia aluminum still is under 200%. And then there is an allowance for a de minimis content, so less than 15% that can get you excluded from the duty rates. So again, lots going on with this area. Please reach out to us if you have specific questions as it goes. So let's go to pharmaceuticals now, please, and we'll take a view towards how the Trump administration is managing the tariff actions specific to pharmaceuticals. And as we know, the Trump administration utilizes tariffs for several reasons, to certainly bring in revenue, to try to guide behavior either directly related to imports or completely unrelated to imports. And in this case, this is really one of the notable objectives of the Trump administration as they've stated and that's to convince companies to reshore here in the United States. And here with the pharmaceutical tariffs and the actions that are going into effect, we actually see a good strategic approach, if you will, to accomplish that goal of reshoring for pharmaceutical companies. As we call out on this slide, there are some interesting facets to the approach on this. There's some interesting things about pricing leverage and what have been called most favorite nation pricing agreements. For those of us who are actively involved in imports, we think most favored nation in terms of duty rates, column 1, duty rates don't think that way. It's we would appreciate probably if the administration use a different term, but at any rate, they talk about pricing commitments that certain companies have made with respect to their pharmaceutical imports. So that's something. There are several tiered incentives. We'll go through a latter of that in just a moment that speak to agreements that the companies have made, the country of origin, things along that line. As we know, they're under the IEEPA tariffs, a number of agreements were made with certain countries, EU, U.K., Switzerland, et cetera, to offer lower duty rates for goods from those countries. And so that prevails in the Section 232 agreements. And then the other thing is there's a long time line for this to go into effect ultimately up to 2030. So there's an allowance of 4-plus years for actions to go into effect by certain companies before the 100% tariff might actually come on to them. So we'll take a look at the latter that I mentioned earlier on how these incentives might work for companies. First, the important thing to note is that the tariff actions for pharmaceutical imports for now, they only apply to patented pharmaceuticals and the associated ingredients and not generics. So that's really one of the first questions that we asked when we look at imports, are we talking about generics. For now, they're excluded from any action. There's a 1-year period where there'll be a reassessment and the administration will figure out what to do with generics. But for now, again, we're focused on whether it's a patented pharmaceutical or ingredient. From there, we want to see if the manufacturer is one of the companies that have negotiated an agreement or in the process of that negotiating agreement with the U.S. administration and maybe have agreed to an MSN pricing protocol. At the time of the announcement on 2nd of April, there were 17 companies, and they're listed on an analyst to the proclamation from the White House that -- the 17 companies had already engaged with the administration. They've made commitments to reshore and potentially, we'll receive reduced duties on their imports. So if you look at the question 3, there are 3 scenarios. Did a company agree to MFN pricing and onshoring then it's a 0%. If they only for now have agreed to onshoring, then it's a 20%, which will bump up to 100 as we note in 2030. And if there's no commitment for now, it's the 100% baseline tariff. And then again, as we talked about, there were countries that also came to the framework agreements with the U.S. about imports in total and pharmaceuticals were covered in that. And so some of those products from those countries may be subject to that 15% pathway that things will go or U.K. is 10%. So really, this is -- I'll just close with the idea that this is an interesting approach, if you will, to tariff action, certainly different than the -- I say use this the blunt force trauma approach of just hammering people with tariffs. There's clearly been some thought about how to engage with private sector players and work together towards the goal of reshoring in this case. And maybe this is the framework for future actions that we'll see. So speaking of future actions, I see my friend Brenda is on screen and ready to go. And so I will turn the discussion over to her and talk about things that are -- we're looking at in our windshield as we move forward. So Brenda, all yours, please.

Great. Thanks very much, Ted, and hello, everyone. So lots of things to keep an eye on. I know we have all been heads down focusing on refunds and the new metal structure and the new pharma structure, but a couple more things for your rear screen. After the Supreme Court decision on IEEPA was issued, the Trump administration came back quickly and said, "We have a strategy." And the conventional wisdom as well as statements from the Trump administration was that the IEEPA tariffs would be replaced with a combination of Section 301 investigations and Section 232 investigations. As you probably recall, those two types of investigations do require a process, in some cases, public notice and comment, conversation with the public taking an input. But Section 122 does not. That was something that could be affected very quickly and was. But it is only good for up to 15% duty rate and only good until July 24, unless the Congress intends to extend it. And so what we have seen over the last couple of months is a variety of announcements on new 301 cases as well as new 232 cases. And the two that I really wanted to call out now were the new 301 cases. So we have two new investigations that were announced within the last month. The first one is focusing on the issue of excess capacity. And for those of you that have gotten into kind of the policy or economic side of the Trump administration's trade strategy, you know that this issue of overcapacity. In other words, when a country produces more than it can use domestically, that is a real concern for the Trump administration. And what they are saying with this new investigation is that they believe there are a number of countries, 15 have been called out specifically plus the European Union, which is 27 more countries are actually producing more than they can use domestically and the sectors that, that overcapacity or overproduction is being targeted in, are things ranging from steel and aluminum to machinery and robotics. The call for comments in that investigation was issued fairly quickly and actually is already closed. It was on a fast track, closed on the 15th of April, and USTR's public hearing will be held on May 5. There will be an opportunity for rebuttal comments. So if you are very interested or you have a stake in one of these issues or one of these countries, your company may want to issue comments after the public hearing has been told. The other case that was announced the day after the overcapacity case, is actually focused on forced labor. This is a very broad case. 59 countries plus the 27 in the European Union were called out for investigation. And the principle that the Trump administration is investigating here is whether these countries have a mechanism to prohibit the importation of goods made with forced labor. Now if this sounds familiar to you, it means that you are actually familiar with the U.S. framework, which under Section 1307 requires the prohibition of any goods made with forced labor from coming into the United States. And essentially, what the administration is looking for are similar framework, similar legal framework in other countries. That is an interesting use of forced labor, legal and statutory frameworks. Comments on that were also due by April 15, and the USTR hearing will be held on April 28. So that's coming up pretty quickly. A couple of interesting observations, if we can go to the next slide. The scope of these two investigations is very broad. We've indicated on this map those countries that are involved in one of those two investigations or possibly both. And as you can see from the red on the map, it is very extensive. In fact, calculations are that imports from these countries cover 99% of U.S. trade, making it the most extensive geographic expansion of Section 301 authority ever. What the United States trade representative has described these cases as doing at a system-wide distortion so in the past, we've seen the use of 301 on China or on a particular industry. In this case, the scope of these two orders is very broad, and seeks to address a system-wide distortion, meaning that we believe the remedies that will be coming out of the USTR's investigation will be system-wide as opposed to country specific. It also changes sort of the burden of proof for the government from a country-specific set of evidence to an overarching system. And we believe that the remedy will be a system-wide or more global measure, which for you all who are involved in sourcing decisions for your companies where you may have been able to manage the duty rates in one country versus another country, these duty rates are going to be much more similar to those levied under IEEPA, where it really is difficult to source your way out of an increased duty rate. So stay tuned on that, lots of activity. This is really a new way of applying the 301 authority. There was no new legislation, no new court case giving new authority to the administration, and it will be interesting to see how this plays out. Let's go on and also talk about other active 301 investigations, just so you don't forget that we have several ongoing investigations related to China. Several of those have been suspended until the November 2026 time frame, as many of you know, the President is planning to visit Beijing in May, and there have been ongoing kind of behind-the-scenes negotiations going on between the U.S. and China to achieve what seems to me to be essentially a -- between our two countries and hopefully, some additional predictability in the trade between China and the United States. There is also an ongoing investigation on Brazil on a number of issues. The actions due on that investigation will be sometime this summer. There are a couple of others, digital services taxes as well as currency practices and timber issues in Vietnam, we believe that those are essentially in the monitoring phase, we don't expect major new activity on those cases. It's always though in the administration's back pocket, so never say never. We also wanted to remind you of cases that the Commerce Department is investigating under their Section 232 authority. There's a number of those cases, if we can go on to the next slide, that really focus on a range of different sectors. We have already talked about copper and pharmaceuticals. We know that action has been taken on things like trucks and auto parts. But there are a couple out there that are still active, still in the investigation phase. Even those cases where actions have been taken, such as copper, the investigations have not formally been closed. And from my perspective, that means that the Trump administration is keeping their options open and allowing themselves sort of maximum flexibility that if they don't get the response either in negotiated agreements or in a change in the trade in these particular sectors, they can always take more action under these particular investigations. We have seen things like semiconductors and autos are actually not just having action taken to increase the duty rates, but we are seeing other new agreements and other new mechanisms that are looking to change and how trade is done in these particular sectors. We do expect that as a couple of these cases are coming up on their 270-day plus the presidential activity requirement deadlines that we will get new announcements in these areas. So keep an eye out if your company does business in these particular areas. Well, the statutory trade remedies, the 301 and the 232 are not the only thing that we are watching. There has actually been a pretty significant level of activity in the legal arena. And we've already talked about, both Ted and Stephanie have already talked about the IEEPA appeal which is due by June 6, if the administration does intend to bring a case on the scope of the IEEPA remedy. So just in plain language, what that really means is, does the Court of International trade have the authority to order refunds nationwide for all importers without those importers having to file separate cases. It is not clear whether the government will question the CIT as authority or not, we should know by early June, whether that's going to happen. There have been a couple of questions in the chat about, well, what does that mean for the refund process. It is likely, though, don't hold me to this, that, that is going to mean a pause in refunds. And of course, if the government appeals at the CIT, as many of you know, there are further appeal levels at the Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit as well as the Supreme Court on that. So we're hoping that things in the refund process move along as expeditiously as they have done this week, but there is still an opportunity for more -- in the refund space. That's a technical term. The other thing that we wanted to remind you of is that there are currently ongoing cases related to the action taken by the President related to de minimis. But the expected change in that arena is not major because there already has been executive order on de minimis changes as well as a change in the statute that will end up as a full scale repeal of de minimis by July of 2027. The final case that we are watching is related to a challenge to the administration's use of their Section 122 authority, and that is underway as we speak. The last area I wanted to focus on was congressional action. There have been two major pieces of legislation proposed by Senator One related to the use of first sale, which would switch valuation only to the last sale before export as well as changes proposed for the use of the importer of record privilege by foreign entities. I've laid out some detail there. Our expectation is that there will not be activity on this in the very near future, but stay tuned on that either after the midterm elections or in Congress. We do not anticipate that we will be an extension of the Section 122 authority, but we will know that before July 24. So Madeleine, I know you've got a lot to talk about, and we'll let you dive back into the refund process.

Okay. Thanks so much, Brenda. Only a couple FAQs, everybody, and we're circling back to Cape on this. These are just some questions we've been seeing and wanted to hopefully help clarify at least our understanding and our feedback on these questions. So one of the questions that we have seen that's been raised is, hey, should I file Cape if I filed a lawsuit in the Court of International Trade? And it is our understanding that these two Capes and a lawsuit are really completely separate. CBP's Cape system is really the operational system through which you're able to get your refund. And Cape will not waive or undermine your lawsuit. So really, those are separate. And even if you have filed a lawsuit, you should be able to go indicate and request a refund for all of those entries that are subject to Cape Phase 1. So you should not have to worry, "Hey, should I hold off in filing Cape because I file a lawsuit." You should just be able to still file Cape regardless of the lawsuit. If you still are worried about that, of course, talk to your internal counsel, I'm obviously not a lawyer or you're trade, but you should just be able to file Cape even if you have a lawsuit file. So on to the next question, which has to do with protests. So -- and I even saw some questions in the Q&A. Some of you asking about, hey, should I still file protest. And we do believe you should still file a protest if your entry is reaching that 180-day mark. So again, remember, entries that are plus the 80 days, kind of the in between the 80 days and 180 days are not part of Phase 1 for Cape. So if you have entries in that bucket, and you are approaching, I would wait until you approach the 180-day mark, then we recommend still filing a protest to preserve your right to a refund. However, if you file the protest to reserve your right for a refund. And it's between that 314-day and 80-day mark. So technically, you can file Cape then customs have said you can withdraw that protest and then put that entry on your cake filing. So again, only file a protest, if you're reaching that or getting very close to that 180-day mark. So anyway. And then on our third, rejects. Third question is just on rejects in Cape. So especially for those of you that are filing directly in Cape, you're doing this on your own. Obviously, you have to go in there on a continuous basis and look to see if there are any reject messages. And there are some reject messages that are listed on CBP's website. Some of the messages, and Stephanie talked about this earlier, are fairly easy to understand. And some of them, it may not mean that you -- that entry is just flat out, you're not going to get a refund for that entry. It depends on the message. So for example, there's the statement processing not complete message. So obviously, that means you haven't paid duties yet on statements. So it's too early to put that entry in on a cape file. But as soon as you've paid your duties, you can take that entry and put it on a cape file. So that's one that if you get that reject, you can wait until you pay the duties and then put it on a cape file. There are, however, messages, like the one that Stephanie highlighted earlier where the message is unable to calculate duty, those, we are still investigating. We're still trying to figure out what that means exactly. That message is not clear. And so we're still trying to do more investigation. But as I said, most of the messages are fairly straightforward. And based on the message, you potentially could still rectify and make the amended changes or do -- and add that file to a take file -- subsequent cake file. So anyway, important thing, track those messages and really look at those, and you can see them in the -- on the Cape tab. All right. And then lastly, I think this whole process of filing in case, you have to really treat it more as a program versus just a onetime filing. You have to be somewhat, we think, somewhat strategic basically looking at the list of entries that are eligible for you under Cape Phase 1, you probably want to prioritize those entries that are getting closest to liquidation deadlines, closest to that 80-day deadline and make sure those get submitted. You also want to make sure you've got really clean data. As Stephanie mentioned before, it's really important to file if there are issues to file a PSC, you should do that before filing cape. So make sure that you're filing clean data. And last week, I was just the seminar. And I still believe, even though we're only in day 3 of Cape, I still believe this now you may not want to upload 9,999 or all your entries in one Cape file, you may want to batch and sequence them. So in other words, taking a handful, starting with a smaller number, making sure those are maybe the closest to liquidation date, and you've got clean data, start with those first. And then you can do subsequent cape filings. Just to see how everything works and making sure you're getting it uploaded. And then like anything, when you're treating this as a program, make sure you've got good ownership assigned to the different groups within your organization. compliance, finance, your customs brokers, making sure they're -- you're pulling in all the right parties and you have clear ownership. But in general, I would say filing too fast may slow down your refund. So it's fine to take a little bit of time, get organized and make sure you have kind of a plan of action on how you're going to approach the filings in Cape. So anyway, those are some of the biggest questions we've gotten lately. If we can go to the next slide, Stephanie. And I actually, I think I'm handing it off right now to -- yes, our key point was just to -- with the last thing I mentioned, the stay organized, and you don't have to rush to file Cape, you can take a little bit of time and be strategic. So anyway, Ted, I'm going to hand it off to you for our key takeaways.

All right. Thank you so much. Yes, I think I have one bullet here, just to again talk about Cape. We've obviously spent quite a bit of time. There are many, many, many questions about Cape and actions you've tried to take things didn't happen the way you thought. You can't figure this out. We're all in this boat together, bottom line. We're trying to sort through how this works. Relatively speaking, it's working well. But there are certainly questions we all have. So this is not one of a file and forget it kind of thing. Please stay involved, stay involved with us where your broker and managing this. Pay attention to what CBP is talking about. We know we have to be ready to adjust and maybe pivot a little bit as we learn from each step that Stephanie talked about, the phases. So again, stay engaged and make sure and pay attention to what's going on. Customs and Border Protection, CBP, host Cape calls. There's a link on this slide when you get a slide or you can also go to cbp.gov to check their website about this. They have a whole page on what's going on with Cape. So -- and they also have question points and ways that you can send in, understand that they are being inundated as this is happening. So it may take some time to get answers from them as well. As Brenda pointed out, there are legal actions on Section 122 tariffs right now. It is very possible that courts may find the Section 122 tariffs are not appropriate under the statute, and we may see a similar exercise as we're seeing with IEEPA tariffs a refund possibility on Section 122 tariffs. So -- just as you've been trying to manage your IEEPA tariff collection of entries, make sure you're doing the same thing now for your Section 122 entries. I know we're all overwhelmed in as we're trying to deal with IEEPA refund processing, but also keep in mind the Section 122 decor and hang on to them and make sure you're kind of keeping track and starting to take a look at those and be prepared for a possible refund. I'm not saying it will happen. I'm just saying let's be aware of this. The other thing that you need to be cognizant of is many of you under the IEEPA process, you were facing issues with your custom bond, custom bond saturation, we're trying to ascertain, and I know the surety providers are trying to understand clear guidance from customs as you start to get refunds on IEEPA that's going to impact that 12-month view of the tariffs that you pay for your imported goods. So keep an eye, it's not a negative. It's actually going to be a positive about your bond, but it's -- certainly, our management team here who takes care of customs bonds, we'll be watching this as well. And hopefully, we'll see some positive things here. Brenda talked about the Section 301 actions that current investigations. We know that the administration is looking for more durable tariffs, things that would stand up in court. So watch for those 301. Those two key ones are, as Brenda pointed out, basically covering potentially 99% of U.S. imports. We talked about the other 232 actions that are still out there. It's clear, and the administration has stated this that they are looking for alternatives to the IEEPA tariffs, and they're counting on the Section 301 actions to pick up the slack, if you will, for the IEEPA tariffs that went by the wayside. So be aware of those. We will see more actions coming. As we pointed out, there are ways to engage on both the 301 actions, the 232 auto. And again, bottom line, we always say this, hang on as well as you can, get relax and recover when you can and just be ready to pivot and get ready for the next action as it comes with that. We will wind down all of my colleagues, and I will come back any I know we had million questions, 158. We're trying to get through 20-some-odd now. Any key point we want to leave before we turn over to Samantha say goodbye. -- anything someone is seeing.

No, just I mean Cape question. So I think we all just need to remember, we're on day 3, and we will figure it out. CBP seems very committed getting money back. But if you've ever worked and programmed any system, what they've pulled off is absolutely incredible, but there will be bumps in the road. So I know some people are saying, "Hey, I loaded it, and it got accepted, but now it's not showing on ACE reporting." There's going to be a lot of things like that. So let's just kind of let some of it fall out. Nobody is getting refunds for 60 to 90 days anyways. So I think that this will sort itself out and we will see it all kind of get shored up. But I absolutely believe there will be some bumps here, especially because -- I mean, imagine how many spreadsheets CBP loaded on Monday, it is mind boggling. So just everyone hang in there, we got a long ways to go. Was that the pep talk you were looking for, Ted?

Yes, that's up for me -- Samantha.

I cannot add too much to what you all have provided other than lessen because you all answered 160 questions in the chat. So be around a pause for our team who did that. Thank you all for sticking with us and asking these good questions. We will be working feverishly to get those of you who had remaining questions connected with the right people. And again, please look out for the survey that will come to you within about 2 hours that do not be here. If you do not get it, we're going to get these materials to you just as fast as we can. So they will be in your hands within the next 24 hours. We can assure you on that. And if not, you can reach out to me and I'll make sure you get them. Thank you all for joining. We appreciate all of your support and your business, and we will be back in a couple of weeks.

Thank you, everyone. Talk to you soon.

Yes. Bye-bye.

Goodbye.