Transcript
A (0:00)
I'm Scott.
B (0:01)
I'm Bill and we're the Trade Guys.
C (0:07)
You're listening to the Trade Guys, a podcast produced by CSIS where we talk about trade in terms that everyone can understand. I'm Alex Kisling and I'm here with Scott Miller and Bill Reinsch, the CSIS Trade Guys. Thanks for listening to the Trade Guys. On today's episode, we check in on the status of the tariff refund process and examine the Trump administration's trade over aid initiative. Then we discuss key takeaways from the US Trade Representative's recent testimony before the House Ways and Means Committee on the president's trade agenda. All that and more on today's Trade Guys. All right, Bill and Scott, we started our last episode previewing the IEEPA refunds process that began on April 20th, and we're going to start there again today. It has now been nearly a week since that process began and I have a few questions I want to get to here, but let's start with the basics. Bill, how is the process going so far?
B (1:01)
Well, less rocky than it could be, but not seamless, I guess would be the best way to put it. Day one, there were a number of quite a number of reports of people who couldn't properly access the portal. They couldn't get in their data. They got an error message.
C (1:16)
Day one, tech issues.
B (1:17)
Yes, that's a much more succinct way of putting it. I suspect that will get resolved as the techies figure out how to make it work. The second problem is a little bit more serious, but I think also one that can be solved, and that is the people that issue bonds. The surety industry has pointed out that they seem to have been left behind on this and that could be important. I mean, the way all the systems works is if you're the importer of record, you're supposed to pay the tariffs. What importers often do is they take out a bond to cover them while they find the money. And while the amount in question is being adjudicated, not often, but sometimes the importer ends up defaulting. And default means that the issuer of the bond or the surety has to pay the tariff in lieu of the importer who defaulted. What this does now if you don't have a tech system that acknowledges that and accepts applications from the bondsmen, you open the door to fraud, basically to importers who defaulted claiming that they paid the tariff. And because the importers the record, the CBP will give them the money back even though they never paid it in the first place, somebody else paid it. So the bondsmen are unhappy. And I think there's probably a technical tweak to fix that. But it's clear, you know, the regulations that Customs has had for a long time are clear that the people who pay are the ones that get the money back. And this is just a case of making sure that you can't have somebody else coming in and saying, I paid when they didn't.
