CIT Judge Eaton:
“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.”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.
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.
Misleading headline.
"... told Court of International Trade Judge Richard Eaton it cannot currently comply ..."
Note the word "currently."
"CBP suggested it could begin issuing refunds by late April after revamping its technology."
> 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.
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?
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?
So much winning.
Trump tariffs: Customs and Border Protection tells judge it can't comply with refund order of ~ $166 Billion
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.
Translation: "We already stole all the money to spend on Margaritavilles"
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...