Of course it's worth noting that CBP repeatedly argued in its previous court filings that there was no need for an injunction to halt the tariffs while they were being litigated, because if the tariffs were found to be unlawful, it could easily refund them.
For instance:
> In other words, plaintiffs’ asserted irreparable harm is the purported inability to obtain a refund after a final and unappealable decision because of liquidation. But that asserted harm is nonexistent here because defendants have made very clear—both in this case and in related cases—that they will not object to the Court ordering reliquidation of plaintiffs’ entries subject to the challenged IEEPA duties if such duties are found to be unlawful. Because defendants’ representations make clear that liquidation will not interfere with the availability of refunds after a final decision, plaintiffs cannot be irreparably harmed by liquidation.
We need some mechanism in litigation (and imho in public life in general) that requires claims to be secured in some way. That is, if you go into court and make an argument like this, you have to chain it to consequences, such as being stripped of specific legal consequences or losing 10% of your shares or whatever.
It's illegal to commit perjury, but there are no real consequences for making bous legal arguments, and lawyers are structurally incentivized to make tacit misrepresentations on behalf of their clients - that is, to make inflated or handwavey claims in the hope that they're not challenged during the fact-finding stage, or even stipulated, due to an assumption of basic good faith.
"Lies" is a standard operating procedure under this administration.
The court should just call the bluff by passing an order "Every CBP official and their hierarchy up to the President will be fined $1 million/day until the tariffs have been refunded."
SCOTUS has already given the President complete immunity for anything done as part of an "official act", so that's not going to fly (even if it should).
> And it doesn't apply to anyone who isn't the president.
They have a cool loophole for it. President can pardon those who commit crimes he asks them to commit. See what he did for thousands of insurrectionists and a lot of his friends who bribed him.
It isn't strange per se. The Chief executor by definition has discretion. The thing that's gone haywire now is that discretion is being used in a repugnant manner to most actually sane people.
Isn't it only immunity as long as Congress is controlled by the same party so that no impeachment/conviction? Otherwise, Congress technically still has that ability. That's also what Trump was screaming the whole time that Congress is the only way to hold POTUS accountable.
> That's also what Trump was screaming the whole time that Congress is the only way to hold POTUS accountable.
And this is just wrong - anyone can see that every branch must be held accountable by other branches. This supreme court has done more damage to America than most historical supreme courts.
SCOTUS didn't say that Congress couldn't impeach. As I understand it, SCOTUS said that POTUS couldn't be prosecuted as a civilian for things he did as POTUS. This puts an asterisk on the "no man above the law", as they are saying that if POTUS does something impeachable but Congress doesn't impeach/convict, then there's no other recourse for holding POTUS accountable. Trump is taking advantage of that for everything that it's worth.
Somebody really has it out for you killing your comments
I see what you're saying. As much as I dislike it, it makes sense if you agree with the Project 2025 view of the power of POTUS. Clearly the majority of SCOUTS does with that ruling. I don't agree with it as I don't think the founding fathers would have ever wanted POTUS to have that much protection, but I'm of no significance so what I do or don't agree with is just some guy on the internet yelling at clouds.
But the important thing is that Trump has restored gender integrity in girls' high school sports, he has bombed 7 countries instead of 5 like Biden did, and he has been deporting... uh, well, about the same number of undocumented people as Biden.
I guess that's three important things, not just one, but you get the idea.
We spent this whole time up until now exclaiming that it was actually the consumer who pays the tariffs, and now it’s the corporation that gets a “refund”.
It'll be repaid to whoever paid it in the first place (typically an importer, not you unless you're an importer). So any beef to do with not getting a refund should be directed at the domestic supply chain. I note that Costco has stated they will pass on the refund to their customers.
In Costco's case they sell branded goods as loss leaders because they make up the cost via the membership fees, margins engineering thanks to Kirkland Signature, extremely diligent SKU management, and only targeting the upper 50% of households by income [0][1].
As such, they can eat the cost of a "refund" because the actual cost is hidden in the membership fee anyhow.
Costco is a case study in how to run a business - promote operational leadership internally, charge a subscription, segment your ICP based on purchasing ability, and ruthlessly negotiate with vendors (eg. Costco's alcohol purchasing department has LVMH and by extension the government of France over a barrel as they are the single largest purchaser of wine globally, and from personal experience Kirkland's Single Malt Islay - retail of $35 - is a white label of Bunnahabhain's Cruach Mhona - retail of $150-200).
The bottom 50% shop at Walmart. The top 50% at Costco. It's an interesting symbiosis.
A Costco membership, a mid-end Toyota or Honda, maxing out your Roth 401K, putting the 50-60% that remains into a mixed VOO-VTI-VWO-VXUS strategy, upskilling as cheaply as possible (OMSCS@GT or UT Austin) and a 25 year roof is the path to riches.
You forgot selling your soul and integrity to the business sector, destroying the future of the next generation of engineers, rolling up the ladder behind you, merging and consolidating to avoid competition... I can go on.
The CBP seems to be asserting that they lack the technical resources to issue the refunds in a timely fashion. Thus, when they finally comply, they (well, the US taxpayer) will end up paying more interest - probably around $20M/day (assuming 4% and $175B in illegal tariffs collected).
Perhaps this Administration should ask Musk to bring in a team to revamp the systems involved to get these refunds "in the mail" quickly. The DOGE team must be done with the Social Security system rewrite by now so may be available for this task. Maybe Big Balls is free this weekend to take care of this...
This is going to be such a continued mess. Refund it to the companies that paid the tariffs, it's quite the windfall. Consumer refunds ain't gonna happen.
Economically, under usual times, the best thing to do with it would be to pay off some national debt with it, the deficit is out of control. But with $38T of debt, nothing really makes a dent.
Agreed. I'm hesitant to give money back to companies that have already passed the cost of tariffs on to the the consumer.
But I'm 100% against the government keeping money it took illegally.
And the court can only require that the money be refunded to those that paid the tariffs. Therefore I am ok with that.
> U.S. Customs and Border Protection told a Court of International Trade judge on Friday that it is not currently able to comply with his order to begin refunding reciprocal tariffs imposed last year by President Donald Trump, which the Supreme Court recently ruled are illegal.
> ...
> “Customs knows how to do this,” Eaton said during a court hearing on Wednesday. “They do it every day. They liquidate entries and make refunds.”
It seems that CBP doesn't even provide a _reason_ for their inability to comply with the order (or this is some bad reporting and the reason was left out). I find that humorous and disappointing.
CBP's declaration (which the article links to) has more details. They're arguing that they can't currently issue refunds, and they can't even currently stop IEEPA duties from being charged on future liquidations, because of software limitations.
They say they're going to comply with the order, but they want 45 days to develop the required software changes and processes.
And they used their supposed ability to refund tariffs as justification for continuing to charge them during a court case last year, per another comment in this thread. We live in unserious times.
Thankfully we have the actual court filing to refer to get the full picture, in which CBP says they are working on a way to process refunds more efficiently than they are able to today, and they aim to do so within 45 days: https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.cit.193...
I’m not trying to muddy any situation. I don’t have to: Reality has a lot of nuance.
Besides, it is possible to both agree that these tariffs should never have been implemented in the first place and have some sympathy for the agency that has literally never had to do something like this at this scale before and is now under duress to come up with a working, legal, and fair mechanism for implementing one at breakneck speed.
CBP is a sprawling agency charged with a broad variety of responsibilities. You can possess furious anger at the gestapo-like tactics the Border Patrol have engaged in while also feeling sympathy for the customs agent charged with accurately collecting duties on millions of dollars worth of imports every day and filing the mountains of paperwork that go along with that.
> you'll have to dig very deep to strike any sympathy for the CBP
Not me. They’re ordinary people doing administrative tasks. Most of them have dutifully turned up for work and done their jobs as the law required them to. They’re now being asked to work overtime to fix a mistake they didn’t make.
If that is the case, if people are not jailed for contempt of court, it shows what the tariffs were really for. Enriching the politicians and the 1%, which is all the US Gov. is for these days.
You absolutely can, if you're rich. Rich people settle their tax debts with the IRS for pennies on the dollar all the time, with the threat of dragging the government into years of expensive litigation if the offer isn't accepted. You and I, of course, don't have this option.
Of course it's worth noting that CBP repeatedly argued in its previous court filings that there was no need for an injunction to halt the tariffs while they were being litigated, because if the tariffs were found to be unlawful, it could easily refund them.
For instance:
> In other words, plaintiffs’ asserted irreparable harm is the purported inability to obtain a refund after a final and unappealable decision because of liquidation. But that asserted harm is nonexistent here because defendants have made very clear—both in this case and in related cases—that they will not object to the Court ordering reliquidation of plaintiffs’ entries subject to the challenged IEEPA duties if such duties are found to be unlawful. Because defendants’ representations make clear that liquidation will not interfere with the availability of refunds after a final decision, plaintiffs cannot be irreparably harmed by liquidation.
https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.cit.172...
I noted that too.
We need some mechanism in litigation (and imho in public life in general) that requires claims to be secured in some way. That is, if you go into court and make an argument like this, you have to chain it to consequences, such as being stripped of specific legal consequences or losing 10% of your shares or whatever.
It's illegal to commit perjury, but there are no real consequences for making bous legal arguments, and lawyers are structurally incentivized to make tacit misrepresentations on behalf of their clients - that is, to make inflated or handwavey claims in the hope that they're not challenged during the fact-finding stage, or even stipulated, due to an assumption of basic good faith.
CIT Judge Eaton:
"Lies" is a standard operating procedure under this administration.
The court should just call the bluff by passing an order "Every CBP official and their hierarchy up to the President will be fined $1 million/day until the tariffs have been refunded."
SCOTUS has already given the President complete immunity for anything done as part of an "official act", so that's not going to fly (even if it should).
That's only for crimes, isn't it? Ans it doesn't apply to anyone who isn't the president.
> And it doesn't apply to anyone who isn't the president.
They have a cool loophole for it. President can pardon those who commit crimes he asks them to commit. See what he did for thousands of insurrectionists and a lot of his friends who bribed him.
The strangest "The President is not King but we give home this power of a King" section in the Constitution.
It isn't strange per se. The Chief executor by definition has discretion. The thing that's gone haywire now is that discretion is being used in a repugnant manner to most actually sane people.
>The thing that's gone haywire now is that discretion is being used in a repugnant manner to most actually sane people.
This was probably expected. What wasn't expected is that voters would put the people doing this back into office AFTER they had done it.
Isn't it only immunity as long as Congress is controlled by the same party so that no impeachment/conviction? Otherwise, Congress technically still has that ability. That's also what Trump was screaming the whole time that Congress is the only way to hold POTUS accountable.
> That's also what Trump was screaming the whole time that Congress is the only way to hold POTUS accountable.
And this is just wrong - anyone can see that every branch must be held accountable by other branches. This supreme court has done more damage to America than most historical supreme courts.
SCOTUS didn't say that Congress couldn't impeach. As I understand it, SCOTUS said that POTUS couldn't be prosecuted as a civilian for things he did as POTUS. This puts an asterisk on the "no man above the law", as they are saying that if POTUS does something impeachable but Congress doesn't impeach/convict, then there's no other recourse for holding POTUS accountable. Trump is taking advantage of that for everything that it's worth.
Scotus removed the ability of the JUDICIARY to hold criminal convictions against the president.
The JUDICIARY is the branch that lost power, not Congress.
Somebody really has it out for you killing your comments
I see what you're saying. As much as I dislike it, it makes sense if you agree with the Project 2025 view of the power of POTUS. Clearly the majority of SCOUTS does with that ruling. I don't agree with it as I don't think the founding fathers would have ever wanted POTUS to have that much protection, but I'm of no significance so what I do or don't agree with is just some guy on the internet yelling at clouds.
But the important thing is that Trump has restored gender integrity in girls' high school sports, he has bombed 7 countries instead of 5 like Biden did, and he has been deporting... uh, well, about the same number of undocumented people as Biden.
I guess that's three important things, not just one, but you get the idea.
Corporate welfare at its finest.
We spent this whole time up until now exclaiming that it was actually the consumer who pays the tariffs, and now it’s the corporation that gets a “refund”.
That’s my money, assholes, give it back to me.
Thats also why there was such harsh and immediate pushback on listing tariff costs with items purchased.
Everybody but the proletariat class was in on this scam. It's a way to further take money from The People, and give it to companies.
It'll be repaid to whoever paid it in the first place (typically an importer, not you unless you're an importer). So any beef to do with not getting a refund should be directed at the domestic supply chain. I note that Costco has stated they will pass on the refund to their customers.
In Costco's case they sell branded goods as loss leaders because they make up the cost via the membership fees, margins engineering thanks to Kirkland Signature, extremely diligent SKU management, and only targeting the upper 50% of households by income [0][1].
As such, they can eat the cost of a "refund" because the actual cost is hidden in the membership fee anyhow.
Costco is a case study in how to run a business - promote operational leadership internally, charge a subscription, segment your ICP based on purchasing ability, and ruthlessly negotiate with vendors (eg. Costco's alcohol purchasing department has LVMH and by extension the government of France over a barrel as they are the single largest purchaser of wine globally, and from personal experience Kirkland's Single Malt Islay - retail of $35 - is a white label of Bunnahabhain's Cruach Mhona - retail of $150-200).
The bottom 50% shop at Walmart. The top 50% at Costco. It's an interesting symbiosis.
A Costco membership, a mid-end Toyota or Honda, maxing out your Roth 401K, putting the 50-60% that remains into a mixed VOO-VTI-VWO-VXUS strategy, upskilling as cheaply as possible (OMSCS@GT or UT Austin) and a 25 year roof is the path to riches.
[0] - https://www.businessinsider.com/how-costco-sams-club-shopper...
[1] - https://minesafetydisclosures.com/blog/2018/6/18/costco
You forgot selling your soul and integrity to the business sector, destroying the future of the next generation of engineers, rolling up the ladder behind you, merging and consolidating to avoid competition... I can go on.
You can feel free to exit society and never be employed - every business and employer is part of the system no matter what.
The path to becoming a HNWI ($1M) or VHNWI ($5M) is doable for most SWEs over their career.
The CBP seems to be asserting that they lack the technical resources to issue the refunds in a timely fashion. Thus, when they finally comply, they (well, the US taxpayer) will end up paying more interest - probably around $20M/day (assuming 4% and $175B in illegal tariffs collected).
Perhaps this Administration should ask Musk to bring in a team to revamp the systems involved to get these refunds "in the mail" quickly. The DOGE team must be done with the Social Security system rewrite by now so may be available for this task. Maybe Big Balls is free this weekend to take care of this...
This is going to be such a continued mess. Refund it to the companies that paid the tariffs, it's quite the windfall. Consumer refunds ain't gonna happen. Economically, under usual times, the best thing to do with it would be to pay off some national debt with it, the deficit is out of control. But with $38T of debt, nothing really makes a dent.
> Consumer refunds ain't gonna happen
If you actually paid the tariff you’re eligible. I got some surprise bills that I paid and didn’t sell off—I’m looking forward to being refunded.
Put another way, consumers who bought from an American retailer are being punished relative to those who paid an overseas seller.
Just got hit for $60 today from JLCPCB.
I definitely have the receipts…
Agreed. I'm hesitant to give money back to companies that have already passed the cost of tariffs on to the the consumer. But I'm 100% against the government keeping money it took illegally. And the court can only require that the money be refunded to those that paid the tariffs. Therefore I am ok with that.
Not passing another huge tax cut would go a long way towards helping the debt problem.
Or just running the economy into the ground until it doesn't matter how many dollars anyone owes anyone because there's nothing you can buy with them.
> U.S. Customs and Border Protection told a Court of International Trade judge on Friday that it is not currently able to comply with his order to begin refunding reciprocal tariffs imposed last year by President Donald Trump, which the Supreme Court recently ruled are illegal.
> ...
> “Customs knows how to do this,” Eaton said during a court hearing on Wednesday. “They do it every day. They liquidate entries and make refunds.”
It seems that CBP doesn't even provide a _reason_ for their inability to comply with the order (or this is some bad reporting and the reason was left out). I find that humorous and disappointing.
CBP's declaration (which the article links to) has more details. They're arguing that they can't currently issue refunds, and they can't even currently stop IEEPA duties from being charged on future liquidations, because of software limitations.
They say they're going to comply with the order, but they want 45 days to develop the required software changes and processes.
https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.cit.193...
And they used their supposed ability to refund tariffs as justification for continuing to charge them during a court case last year, per another comment in this thread. We live in unserious times.
So much winning.
I'm getting tired of all this winning.
You stole $166 billion from people. And now that you've been caught, you are dragging your feet on giving it back and making excuses.
What cult brought us this mess?
waves hand in general direction of Silicon Valley, Wall Street, and Trump voters I mean... It's really as simple as that. Follow the damn Benjamins.
Thankfully we have the actual court filing to refer to get the full picture, in which CBP says they are working on a way to process refunds more efficiently than they are able to today, and they aim to do so within 45 days: https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.cit.193...
See paragraphs 27-29.
Even the full text of the article says this.
I don’t think the reporter is being lazy. I think you’re trying to muddy the situation.
Who benefits from pushing your view here? Who’s better off now that we’re all quieted down about this little bout of lawlessness?
Why don’t you just write “We didn’t see all the video and we need more context.”?
I’m not trying to muddy any situation. I don’t have to: Reality has a lot of nuance.
Besides, it is possible to both agree that these tariffs should never have been implemented in the first place and have some sympathy for the agency that has literally never had to do something like this at this scale before and is now under duress to come up with a working, legal, and fair mechanism for implementing one at breakneck speed.
I think you'll have to dig very deep to strike any sympathy for the CBP.
CBP is a sprawling agency charged with a broad variety of responsibilities. You can possess furious anger at the gestapo-like tactics the Border Patrol have engaged in while also feeling sympathy for the customs agent charged with accurately collecting duties on millions of dollars worth of imports every day and filing the mountains of paperwork that go along with that.
> you'll have to dig very deep to strike any sympathy for the CBP
Not me. They’re ordinary people doing administrative tasks. Most of them have dutifully turned up for work and done their jobs as the law required them to. They’re now being asked to work overtime to fix a mistake they didn’t make.
Just following literally illegal orders.
They didn’t know they were illegal at the time, and no court had ruled they were until literally just last week.
Besides, we’re taking about imposing tariffs, not depriving people of life or liberty. Have some persective.
The headline is absolutely declarative. CBP can't comply. Period.
That's not what CBP said, and the article itself has the nuance that the headline doesn't
Trump tariffs: Customs and Border Protection tells judge it can't comply with refund order of ~ $166 Billion
If that is the case, if people are not jailed for contempt of court, it shows what the tariffs were really for. Enriching the politicians and the 1%, which is all the US Gov. is for these days.
lol at “the 1%”. My man, it’s like the 0.0001%.
Tough. They gotta pay it. Send an email to the treasury and pull from the billions stolen from importers and pay it back.
Can I use this same argument to avoid paying my taxes because I spent all my income and didn’t set anything aside? No. Then?
>Can I use this same argument to avoid paying my taxes because I spent all my income and didn’t set anything aside?
Yes, you can. It's called Offer in Compromise (OIC).
You absolutely can, if you're rich. Rich people settle their tax debts with the IRS for pennies on the dollar all the time, with the threat of dragging the government into years of expensive litigation if the offer isn't accepted. You and I, of course, don't have this option.
Poor people do this much more often than rich people.
I would love to see your source for this claim.
Sure: https://www.irs.gov/businesses/small-businesses-self-employe...
"more"... in number of cases, or in total amount of tax revenue lost?
Translation: "We already stole all the money to spend on Margaritavilles"
Margaritaville Frozen Drink makers, specifically. A sound investment if I've ever seen one!
That would be too sound an investment