The administration of U.S. President Donald Trump has continued to file oppositions to tariff refunds in court.
The Trump administration has moved to prevent the testimony of Rodney S. Scott, a top customs official, from being required to testify at a court hearing related to the tariff refund process. A federal court ruled on 4 June that the administration’s motion for a stay on Scott’s testimony was warranted.
The refund process was kicked off by a U.S. Supreme Court decision that found Trump’s tariffs under the International Emergency Economic Powers Act (IEEPA) were illegal. In April, U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) revealed a start date for the refund process, but filings by the government in court cases related to the tariff refunds indicate that process may be complicated and lengthy.
Brandon Lord, the executive director of the Trade Programs Directorate at CBP, testified that the majority of trade entries are filed electronically using CBP’s Automated Commercial Environment (ACE), and as of March 6, it wasn’t possible for CBP to prevent roughly 20.1 million entries from being liquidated and that the volume of refunds being asked for is unprecedented.
“CBP has never been ordered to, nor has it attempted to, process a volume of refunds anywhere near the volume of total entries and Entry Summary lines on which IEEPA duties have been deposited,” Lord wrote in his sworn testimony.
The administration started to attempt to delay the refund process almost immediately after the Supreme Court decision, pushing for the maximum amount of time on mandates.
Judge Richard K. Eaton of the U.S. Court of International Trade wrote a letter on 3 June rebuking some of the government’s attempts to delay the process, including its push to exempt Scott from testifying in the case.
“All of the substantive law in this case has either been decided by the Supreme Court, or is the subject of settled law. All that remains are, what might be termed, settlement negotiations,” Eaton said. “Commissioner Scott’s presence will be analogous with that of a person with settlement authority. While he will not be asked to settle anything, Commissioner Scott will be made aware of all that has transpired and what is likely to transpire in the negotiations.”
Eaton said Scott’s presence would be useful for the refund process and that the court intended to question him on the CBP’s current process for refunding the IEEPA tariffs.
“Commissioner Scott will be asked to answer questions about any steps Customs has taken to comply with the order,” Eaton wrote. “There is USD 166 billion [EUR 191 billion] at stake.”
Despite Eaton’s rebuke, a judge granted the motion to stay on Scott’s testimony, and now a person may attend the 9 June hearing in his stead.
The plaintiffs in the case continue to maintain the government has not shown any opposition to the fact the tariffs must be refunded but has continued to delay its methods for doing so.
“The government suggests (wrongly) that it has no ‘authority’ to reliquidate entries that are more than 90 days past liquidation without individualized court orders,” the plaintiffs wrote.
The plaintiffs argue that the administration has every authority to refund the tariffs and pushed for the CBP to open up use of the “Consolidated Administration and Processing of Entries (CAPE)” tool across all companies seeking refunds.
“Given that the government has never offered any reason why it would be entitled to keep the approximately USD 166 billion in IEEPA tariffs it unlawfully collected, and given that it has repeatedly touted the advantage of processing and paying refunds through CAPE, one would think that the government would have no objections to such an order,” plaintiffs said.
