Lydia Wheeler

And the government was like, wait, wait, wait, this is actually going to be more complicated than you think.

And we have to create a system and we can't just push a button and give everybody refunds.

Judge Eaton kind of held firm in saying, you owe these companies their money back.

The Supreme Court was very clear that these were collected illegally, and you have to work out a process and a system for this.

Yeah, he wasn't hearing it.

Judge Eaton is moving at a speed not typically seen at the trade court.

He issued a ruling requiring the government to kick off the refund process during that March hearing.

I had lawyers, trade lawyers, tell me that it was the order that they were really hoping for but never thought that they would see.

They're saying that their system just isn't set up to recalculate payments for this many entries all at once.

And so they said that, you know, we're going to have to update the system that we have in place.

And we're going to have to make quite a few changes.

And that takes time.

And so we need time.

And Judge Eaton, so far at the Court of International Trade, has been pretty understanding of that.

He's like, OK, you need some more time.

I'll give you some more time.

But you still have to show me that you're making progress in this because you owe this money back.

Right.

So the government said that importers are going to have to basically keep a spreadsheet, create a spreadsheet of all of their imports and all of the tariffs that they paid and make their own calculations, basically do their own accounting.

And they're going to have to take that spreadsheet and upload it to this new system.