Hello, everyone. We are right at the top of the hour, but we have quite a few of you still joining us, so we're going to give it just one minute as everyone gets rolled in, so that no one misses any of the content or the start of today's webinar. Bear with us just a moment, and we will get going. Okay, I know, Shirley, we have a good bit to cover today, so we have many more still coming in. I can see the numbers climbing on our participant box there, but we are going to get started so we can make sure to cram in as much as we possibly can on this call. Thank you for joining us. Of course, you are joining Expeditors webinar, focused on the Supreme Court's IEEPA tariff decision that came across on Friday, and this will be focused on what you all, as importers, need to know. My name is Samantha Hurst, and I'll be serving as our host today, mostly in the background, as our speakers bring all of this. Hey, Samantha. valuable content. Yeah. Real quick, to jump in. People are saying they can't hear your sound. Okay, give me one moment. Let me see. Can people hear my sound? I can hear you just fine. I can hear you both. Everybody's saying they can hear us both. Okay, Samantha, carry on. You keep going. This is not a webinar to lose sound on. That's right. As soon as I stop talking, I will make sure to see what I can do in the background, 'cause that's the next thing I was going to say. I'm going to do my best to see what's going on there. First, let's just try to go through a couple of housekeeping items that we always want to make sure, especially anyone who's new to our webinars, understands before we get into the real content. Stephanie, if we go to the next slide, I will go over those items. Again, today we have a lot of content as usual, we are going to cover all of that with about 55 minutes, probably right up until the end, and then we will be answering your Q&A in the background. As we're doing that, we have a host of team members on who will be helping support that. One of the questions that we do always get is: How do I get the slides? How do I get the recording, you know, if I want to go over this after the webinar ends? We do ask, we request that you complete a short feedback survey. It usually will get to your email box within two hours of today's event wrapping up. Don't fear, if for some reason you are allergic to responding to surveys, we understand the important thing is getting the content to you, and we are going to do that. We will get the materials to you within about 24 hours of today's event wrapping up. We are not going to be stingy on getting that out to you all. finally, you can subscribe to get any of our webinar invites. If perhaps the invite for this event was forwarded to you, we will absolutely get you other events that we have many coming in just the next couple of weeks, including more customs-focused ones. scan that QR code, or you can also follow the link that I'm about to drop in the chat. we'll go on, and I will just briefly introduce our speakers and let them take things away. We have Brenda Smith, who's our Global Director of Government Outreach. We have Stephanie Holloway, who's our Director of Customs Operations for the Americas. of course, we have Ted Henderson, who's our Senior Advisor for Customs. You all are going to be in very good hands with the content today as I hand this over to Stephanie to get started. Thank you, Samantha. Okay, I'm hoping sound is resolved. One participant said that they did close their browser and reopened it, and that seemed to work. Somebody else said they turned on the audio settings in the bottom left corner. If you're still having issues with sound, I hope that resolves it. In worst case scenario, we are recording this, so we will be distributing that as soon as we can after the prezo. With that said, let's kick this off with the best slide of the day, which is our disclaimer. We are coming at this as customs brokers. Obviously, the decision that was made on Friday, is really one that, you know, lawyers will be pulling apart and analyzing on all sorts of forums. They already are. We're really coming at this as a broker, so we will do the best we can to interpret what we know at this exact time. We anticipate that there might even be changes, of course, during the course of this presentation, from CBP, as we are expecting some key pieces from them to come out today. With that said, let's jump in. We are going to break this up. Of course, this is how we usually roll between Ted, Brenda, and myself. I'm gonna start with: How did we actually get here? Because you need to fundamentally understand that foundation, before you can really appreciate everything that happened on Friday and Saturday, actually. Brenda's gonna, of course, look into her magic ball, eight ball, that is, and see what's on the horizon. What can you practically do as an importer right now on Monday, February 23rd? Let's jump in. How did we get here? This slide is one that I often will use in my in-person seminars because I think it's really important and really fascinating, actually. Scott Bessent, who's the Treasury Secretary, last January, testified before Congress as they were starting to transition, of course, administrations. He was very clear in how the Trump administration was going to use tariffs, and he said: "We're gonna use it for three reasons." You can read them there, but this continues. We saw this play out this year, and we're continuing to see this play out. The Trump administration, even with the decision on Friday, they have not shied away and changed their strategy. In fact, they are continuing to double down, and they're also very clear about what they want to do. With that said, back in January, many people were thinking, hey, what is Trump going to use to put tariffs on? Because even though it feels like they kind of come out of thin air, they don't. They have to be tied to a legal basis. This slide shows, actually, our Onyx geopolitical group, put this slide together. Other groups were doing the same thing, which legal basis are on the table for tariffs, and what will the Trump administration choose? Spoiler alert, they chose IEEPA, and we had a number of IEEPA related tariff things happen in 2025. Now that that's no longer an option, this type of thing is kind of back on the table, and we're starting to see the administration go back through their bag of tricks. I don't know if that's the right phrase, but go back through kind of the menu of how can you continue to put your strategy, right, that they're very clear about, that they want to use tariffs for, what's open and what's available. That's what we've seen them play with and make announcements about in this last weekend. This top section I boxed in because these are the ones that give you immediate executive action. This is a really important piece that we've seen to the Trump administration, is they do want durable, longer-term tariffs. We've seen that with Section 232 and 301, but they also like these mechanisms that can be put on very quickly and to be used essentially as a tool right in the moment when they're trying to accomplish whatever it is they're trying to accomplish. With that said, we saw the Trump administration last year use these legal mechanisms, and in fact, three of them, 201, 301, and 232, were ones that the Trump administration used under Trump 1.0. With Trump 2.0, they did introduce IEEPA, and IEEPA was found on Friday as unlawful. You cannot use IEEPA as a basis to give tariffs, okay? This is really important. During this last year, we had a lot of trade remedies, that's kind of what we call these tariffs and these actions, come into force. You can see here, Section 301, China was a one that was actually held over from Trump 1.0, but we have Nicaragua as a new one. There's two on hold, are currently suspended. We added 245 new Section 232s. Steel and aluminum were both introduced during Trump 1.0, and there were 246 IEEPAs. One of the main questions we get when the Supreme Court said that you can't use tariffs, or you can't use IEEPA as your legal basis for tariffs, does that invalidate all of the IEEPA cases that were out there? The answer is yes. A lot of people think that it's just the 10% tariff is often what people will say, which is the reciprocal tariff. It's not just that. It's the fentanyl ones for China, Mexico, Canada, Hong Kong. It's Brazil had a 40% specific IEEPA, there was one on India, but that just got pulled a couple weeks ago, and that was 25%. Okay? With that said, what we're all here for, now that I got everybody up to speed, what has happened since Friday? I'm gonna turn this over to my colleague, Ted. All right. You're probably wondering why we gathered you here today, huh? Not really. You're not. Let's get to it and talk about what we do know from all of the activity from Friday, Sunday, today, and we expect more activity, in fact, today and into tomorrow as things are going. The big darn deal, as I sometimes say, was indeed that on Friday, the 20th of February, the Supreme Court issued their decision on the case of Learning Resources versus Trump, and in a six to three decision, the majority of the justices concurred with lower court rulings that held that the International Emergency Economic Powers Act, IEEPA, does not grant authority to the president to impose tariffs on U.S. imports. The majority opinion, if you haven't read it, was written by Chief Justice John Roberts. He basically stated that the statute does not include language that explicitly allows the president to impose tariffs to regulate imports, given an unusual or extraordinary threat. There were several unusual or extraordinary threats that we've talked about and we'll touch on again. Again, the majority, the group of six justices, found that the language in and of itself does not allow for imposition of tariffs. That majority was also split three-three on whether or not there was a major questions doctrine to be addressed, three saying it didn't come into play. We're not gonna go down a rabbit hole on this, but essentially it's a matter of whether President Trump, the administration's use of IEEPA is actually a transformation of the fundamental constitutional power to administer tariffs. The Constitution states that Congress has the authority to implement tariffs, unless Congress yields that authority to the president, basically. The minority opinion was written by Justice Kavanaugh in dissent, it really was kind of based on the history of IEEPA. If you don't know this, IEEPA was a replacement to the Trading with the Enemy Act, and the Trading with the Enemy Act was actually used by President Nixon to impose tariffs at one point. The Justice Kavanaugh was really kind of arguing based on history and precedent, that same authority should be extended up through IEEPA. Regardless of that, bottom line, the Supreme Court has found that IEEPA does not grant authority to the president to implement tariffs. At least we can be confident that we should not see a return of tariffs based on the IEEPA statute. Unfortunately, we're going to see tariffs based on maybe more clear statutes as they go. The decision impacts all IEEPA-based tariffs. Stephanie was talking about that. There are a number of those. There are the actions taken against imports from China, Hong Kong, Mexico and Canada, based around the fentanyl emergency. There are the broad reciprocal tariffs that were implemented really across the globe. There were specific tariffs spoken to for Brazil around threats to U.S. security. India, if you remember, also received an IEEPA tariff because of the actions taken to purchasers of Russian oil. All of those IEEPA-based tariffs now are invalid. The ruling doesn't impact Section 301 or 232 tariffs, nor any of the future tariffs we're about to see under Section 122, or maybe under 338, or who knows where else that goes in the future. Again, this is just IEEPA tariffs. The President, on Friday, after the Supreme Court decision, did issue an executive order that officially terminated the tariffs, effective midnight tonight, basically, 12:01 A.M. Eastern Standard Time on Tuesday, 24 February. That order has been published. Our team did check the U.S. Customs ACE system, where we file declarations through. Right now, CBP has not mandated those tariffs. We know we're pretty confident that will happen before midnight tonight, but there's a lot of action that CBP has to do in order to make these various orders happen. One of them is to endate tariffs, another is to implement appropriate 99 numbers and whatnot for the new tariffs. Yesterday evening, while we were working on this presentation, we got to see a message that Customs was also working, and they put out a message stating that the tariffs would no longer be effective as of tonight. Again, we're just waiting for the systemic stuff to pass through, and then that would help clear up the termination and help provide a little bit more visibility to us of what we can expect from a purely operational perspective. We know CBP is frantically working in the background here. The key thing that, unfortunately, the Supreme Court decision did not address, and that is refunds for tariffs already paid by importers. The Supreme Court made no requirement, made no statement that the duties be refunded. They didn't establish any mechanism for refunds. Nothing really directly addressed that. There was some conversation in the dissenting opinion about refunds if those were to happen, but nothing directive from the Supreme Court about the key part of refunds. We're going to talk about this a little bit more in the webinar, but understand that the court, unfortunately, didn't give us really any good news about the immediate refunds of duties that we've previously paid. All right. Also, as part of the decision, the White House held a press conference to talk about their plans and both for implementing new tariffs and then some future actions to be taken. We know the White House had been preparing for the possibility of the findings of the Supreme Court. You could tell by some of the social media postings from President Trump, where things were looking in the eyes of the administration. Some comments by other folks, that, you know, basically some of the other officials who said, "We understand, you know what? The Supreme Court may not find in the way that the administration would like, but we have other plans." Now we saw on Friday, those plans start to go into effect. On Friday, President Trump announced that he would immediately impose a 10% global tariff. Think back to what we saw early last year with the global IEEPA actions, a 10% global tariff using Section 122 of the Trade Act of 1974. We're going to talk about Section 122 in just a minute. He did issue an executive order on Friday, the 20th of February, to officially establish the 10% tariff under 122. Although President Trump has later posted, you know, after that announcement, that the social... He posted on social media that the Section 122 tariff would be increased to 15%, there has not been an official executive order published yet with that change. I have whitehouse.gov open right now, and I still don't see anything new on that. We have yet to see an official direction from the administration about the increase to 15%. All we have officially right now is 10%. That, of course, may change. Unfortunately, we don't have any messaging from U.S. Customs and Border Protection yet about the new Section 122 actions, which means we don't have any new Chapter 99 numbers to talk about, and all of that kind of new stuff that gets into filing declarations. Do understand that, you know, again, CBP's been working, I'm sure, 24 hours a day. And we may see a lot of things come in late this evening as it goes. Please, you know, watch for news announcements, watch our news flashes and the other mechanisms that we try to push out information throughout the day. Hopefully we'll maybe get a little more information before end of day on where Customs is going on this, and kudos to them. If we all recall, DHS, their parent agency, isn't funded right now, the majority of CBP personnel are working right now without funding, without getting paid. As we've heard from the president, other administration officials, the tariff strategy that Stephanie spoke to at the beginning remains in place. There's going to be a new series of 301 investigations launched against most major trading partners. That's the choice of words from USTR Grier. It looks like President Trump's going to lean more into the USTR on Section 301. Brenda's going to talk about that in a little bit. Remember, we have Section 301 actions already on China and Brazil, we should anticipate more of that coming at us as things go. All right, let's talk about Section 122 of the Trade Act of 1974 and get a little bit more into the language. This is all uncharted territory for us when it comes to duties being imposed under Section 122. We're all way too familiar with the Trade Act of 1974. That's where Section 301 and Section 201 are found. Most of us, even including me on this call, weren't really of age in 1974 and maybe don't understand or remember or haven't studied. There was a high degree of economic uncertainty in that period in the early seventies in the U.S. The U.S. dollar was moving off the gold standard. Fair amount of economic uncertainty in general, that caused Congress to pass the Trade Act of 1974, and in it, as we see, included a number of areas where they ceded their authority to implement tariffs. They ceded that to the President, because they were concerned that there were potential emergency situations that pop up, and rather than go through the exercise of the House and the Senate and everyone passing laws, they gave the authority to the President to take action in certain conditions. We've already seen President Trump, under Trump one point O and two point O, take actions under Section 301, Section 201. We're going to see something under Section 122. Excuse me. Section 122 is really narrow in the sense that it speaks to, as you can see in the title, and this is language specifically from the Act that's on your screen. It speaks to the balance of payments and the authority of the President to take action if there are large and serious balance of payments deficits. Under that Act, under this Section of the Act, if the President finds there is a large and serious balance of payment deficit, then the President is authorized to impose a tariff, not exceeding 15% and for no longer than 150 days, to deal with the scenarios that are itemized here, items one through three. Really, it's the balance of payment issue is the core one. If you get a chance, read the executive order that's imposing the 10% under Section 122. You can see the arguments that are laid out by the administration, that the necessary conditions do exist for them to act under Section 122. Key point here, again, to remember, maximum tariff, 15%, no longer than 150 days, unless that period is extended by Congress. There's nothing in the Trade Act of 1974 that speaks to how long Congress can extend that. Congress, I believe, would have to pass new legislation to particularly and specifically address this. We don't know. We know 150 days. We don't know if the administration can start over again on the 151st day. Again, we don't, you know, we just don't have any background yet and no case study as things go. A couple of points here, and I should be very clear, this is Ted's opinion. Doesn't reflect the official opinion of my colleagues, Expeditors, Major League Baseball, the U.S. Olympic Committee. There are some challenges with this 122 exercise, and we haven't seen it utilized. It's uncharted territory, but this question of whether a trade deficit lines up with a balance of payment deficit is a huge question, and there's already some conversations that are out there, that's out there, particularly among trade attorneys, about whether or not this qualifies. The government, in their own arguments for the IEEPA tariffs during the court proceedings that just ended, they said that Section 122 really didn't have application if the president declared an emergency around trade deficits. It'll be interesting to see where this goes. I think we can anticipate some legal challenges taken at the CIT on Section 122 tariffs, the administration may be a bit concerned about that as well, that's why we're going to see the Section 301 actions. All right, I'm going to stop opining here, let's, you know, We're not lawyers, we're customs brokers. Let's just talk about what we know. What is subject? Effective 12:01 A.M., Eastern Standard Time, Tuesday, 24th February, all goods that are imported into the US on or after that time are going to be subject to a Section 122 tariff. Right now, that tariff is 10%. We will see if it gets changed to 15%, and the 150-day period runs through 24th July. Again, tomorrow, we believe the 122 tariff should be going into effect, provided CBP is able to update their systems and things that go. It may be retroactive. We're not clear. We're hoping the timing gets done right as it goes. There are numerous exceptions. We're not going to go through all of these. Many are ones that we saw under the IEEPA tariffs. There's some new stuff, exception around, for example, textile apparel goods that are uncovered under the DR-CAFTA agreement. There's also an in-transit exemption. It's a pretty narrow one. The goods have to be loaded onto a vessel. Remember, vessel is defined, prior to 12:01 A.M. Eastern Standard Time, so before midnight tonight, of 24th February, and they have to be entered prior to 12:01 A.M. Eastern Standard Time, 28th February. Basically, they have to get here before midnight Friday. You have a really small window for goods that are on the water to take advantage of this transit exemption. Again, we don't have Chapter 99 numbers or anything else to even know what this will mean as it goes. We're, again, hoping that this gets clarified. I know, you know, Stephanie is going to talk a little bit about tariff stacking and show you some of her fabulous charts on how this will actually go into effect from an operational perspective with the other Section 232 tariffs. Hopefully that helps clarify things. Final note, the Supreme Court decision on IEEPA only speaks to tariffs. The executive order that was originally posted by Trump and reposted, or a new order, if you will, was posted on Friday about no more duty-free de minimis treatment for low-value shipments. That's still in place. De minimis is still gone and not available to folks. Now, instead of IEEPA tariffs, de minimis shipments will be subject to 122 tariffs as that goes. There is a pending case that was stayed about the actions related to de minimis. By the time we talk next on our next market update, we'll see if we actually have some resolution about whether or not the de minimis actions taken by President Trump will remain into effect. With that, let's close out my section and just some key points to remember, please, before Brenda takes over. First off, IEEPA legal foundation for tariffs is done. Other tariffs remain in place, Section 301, Section 232. We know we're going to see new tariffs immediately coming into effect for Section 122. We're going to see some other actions as well and expect that, you know, we're going to see a lot of stuff coming out as fast and furious, particularly in Section 301. Brenda, it's all you. Ted, thank you very much. You did a great job setting up. My role is to give you even more things to think about. We've had a real grab bag of questions. I think we're up to 134 questions already, but hopefully we've been able to address a number of them already. We'll continue to do so. The first thing I wanted to talk about was, what was the international response? You know, we were all, I was on a plane at that time. I think everyone around me was looking at their emails, looking at their news feeds. We think the same thing was happening around the world, given the reaction from our global colleagues. One of the key questions is: What happens to the agreements that have been signed or have been negotiated? The White House was really clear in its fact sheet that they issued on Friday evening, that their expectation is that the agreements that have been negotiated will stand. I went back and did a quick search, a little sample of some of the agreements that have been announced, and I cannot find any reference to IEEPA tariffs in those agreements. I believe that the White House considers those rates as negotiated. They were not dependent on the IEEPA authority for implementation, and so we expect that those will stand. Most of the, our international partners have taken a very low-key response to the Supreme Court decision, considering it a domestic industry, or sorry, a domestic issue, and have not really changed their position. We are watching carefully, as I can tell from the questions many of you are, we are watching what goes on with the European Union. Parliament, the European Parliament, has indicated that they'll be taking another look at the provisions that the Commission, the European Commission, already agreed to with the Trump administration. It is unclear whether that will materially impact the provisions of the agreement going forward, at a minimum, we think there will be a small break. Canada and Mexico have both indicated that they welcome the ruling, though they were being treated relatively well, except for the fentanyl tariffs. They did get the exemption under USMCA, we believe that the unpredictability is going to be a factor in the USMCA review coming this summer. China has been very low-key, with no public response. We believe both the U.S. diplomats who are getting ready for President Trump's visit at the end of March to Beijing, as well as his Chinese hosts, are trying to keep things on the level so that some productive conversations can be had. India welcomed the reduction. They did get a significant reduction, but with those negotiations still in play, this could be a factor in the conversations. Most other countries are watching the new 232 and 301 cases fairly carefully, and we'll wait to see what the overall impact is on them. Kind of a muted response, but a watch and see response. The other group of stakeholders that we were also looking at were the Congress. There were statements from many senators and representatives, being very pleased that the Supreme Court has affirmed Congress's constitutional and traditional role and authority over tariffs and taxes. If you took the time to read the Supreme Court case, you saw that that was a major issue, tariffs being seen as taxes with that authority, really only able to be exercised by the Congress, unless very specifically delegated to the President. Our expectation is that the key committees, Senate Finance, House Ways and Means, will likely rely on very active oversight and hearings rather than new legislation. That said, we know that refunds are going to be a big focus for the congressional delegations. In fact, we saw late on Friday the introduction of a new piece of legislation by two Democrats that would require CBP to complete the refund of duties within 90 days. It is unlikely that that legislation will actually move forward, but I think it does signal the congressional interest in the refund process. We know that there is also likely to be an increase in the oversight as we approach that 150-day expiration of the Section 122 tariff order. That will happen at the end of July. It will also be interesting to see what Congress does as if there are further negative economic impacts that can be directly tied to tariffs, and they will also be looking at the new tariffs during trade negotiations, specifically with China, Canada, and Mexico. Stay tuned on that. There should be some interesting conversations on the Hill over the next couple of months. We also wanted to talk about one other authority that the Trump administration may use, and that is what is known as Section 338. It is a very old tariff authority, was actually part of the Tariff Act of 1930, and as far as we can tell, hasn't been used since the early 1930s. It does talk about the administration's ability to levy new tariffs if a country, a specific country, discriminates against U.S. commerce, either by unreasonable charges, regulations or limitations, or through duties, fees or practices that disadvantage U.S. products. 338 allows the president to levy new duties up to 50%, so that's a significant tool. It can also lead to the exclusion of particular goods. The thing from the Trump administration, the advantage to the Trump administration, is that implementation can be expedited. There are no regulatory requirements, no notice and comment, no formal investigation. There is no built-in expiration mechanism. Since it hasn't been used and there aren't these particular specific regulations around a process, it is likely that if Section 338 is used, there will be litigation. We may be repeating this merry-go-round again if the Trump administration decides to use it. We also wanted to talk a little bit about the ongoing investigations. The Trump administration was very clear that they had a plan in place. Can we move on to the next slide? Plan in place to replace IEEPA tariffs if they were overturned. We quickly saw that the Section 122 executive order was issued late on Friday. In addition, the USTR issued a press release which called for or indicated that a number of new Section 301 cases would be implemented, we've listed those potential cases here. They're italicized because there has not been a formal announcement of those cases yet. You can see the range. Industrial excess capacity, that's probably targeting China. Forced labor practices, could go anywhere. Discrimination against U.S. technology companies and digital goods. The European Union is the most likely target there, but not the only target. Sector-specific practices around specific controversial sectors, rice, seafood, other agricultural and natural resource products. There is a lot of scope for investigation and potential new tariffs. We had already seen a pretty long list of Section 232 investigations that have not been resolved yet. Those may spin up, and we may see more tariff activity out of those. If your industry is mentioned in these lists, this is something you want to keep a fairly close eye on. The next thing that we'd like to introduce for your radar screen, though I'm sure we're not the first ones to talk to you about it, is what happens with refunds. The one thing that I wanted to lay out was a statement made by the Department of Justice at the Court of International Trade in some ongoing litigation, particularly around refunds. Most of you may be aware that there have been a number of refund cases filed from different perspectives, representing different views, representing different types of businesses at the Court of International Trade. We think that this, the reason. Actually, the CIT has said that since the government was committing to a refund of the tariffs, they would not oppose a refund if the Supreme Court found that the IEEPA tariffs were held unlawful. In light of that statement and the commitment to a refund process, the Court of International Trade froze all of the refund cases that have been submitted. At this point, it is likely that we will see an unfreezing of that case. The other significant point that was made in the Supreme Court decision was that all IEEPA tariff-related cases would be handled by the Court of International Trade. They have unique jurisdiction and unique decision-making power, and so that is where the activity will happen on refunds. We also wanted to make you aware of a couple of statements around refunds that we've seen over the last few days. The first statement came from, if we can go to the next slide, came from Justice Kavanaugh, and he made this statement during as part of the decision that was issued. You may have read that he was a dissenter to the majority decision, but he noted that the court did not say anything in the majority opinion about refunds and how the government should go about returning billions of dollars. We believe the count is about $175 billion that have been collected, based on the IEEPA tariffs since January of last year. He noted that it's likely to be a mess. We also heard from President Trump, it's a little unclear how we should interpret his statement during the press conference. He noted that the Supreme Court's decision did not address refunds and that the fight over repayment could take years and would likely be subject to significant litigation. What he didn't say was where that litigation would be coming from. Would it be coming from the private sector, or would it be coming from the government? Finally. We found it interesting that, Senator Cantwell, from Washington State, sent a letter to Treasury Secretary Bessent on Friday, which basically said that she is looking for how the administration will pay back fairly and expeditiously, the money that they collected from, those that paid the IEEPA duties. She is a member, a fairly senior member, of the Senate Finance Committee, and we believe that this indicates the Congress's significant interest in how refunds are going to be managed. We know you want to get into the weeds of this. For that, I'm going to turn this over to Stephanie Holloway. Thank you, Brenda. Let's see here. What can you practically do? Out of the 250 questions I think we've gotten so far, many of them center around this. Please pay attention to this portion, because I think I'm going to answer a lot of your questions. There's two things I'm going to touch on at this exact minute. You can make sure that you're preserving your right to your IEEPA duty refund, and of course, you can start assessing your short and long-term exposure to these duty rates changing. Let's first start preserving your right to an IEEPA duty refund. Let's see here. First of all, if I had $1 for all the emails that I've gotten so far with companies telling me they want to be first in line, I completely understand that, I completely appreciate that. However, we're in a bit of a pickle. Unliquidated entries. Somebody asked: What does liquidation mean? Liquidation, when we say that word, that's a very official legal word. You can Google it or put it into Copilot or whatever you have, but it's essentially when Customs settles up the entry and finalizes it. I often will say, kind of closes the book on that particular entry. If that has not happened yet, and that roughly happens about 314 days from the entry date. I like how I say, roughly, and then give you a number like 314. If you're within that window and your entry is not liquidated yet, CBP has not issued guidance. Okay? We also do not know if Post Summary Corrections, that's what PSC stand for, that's the normal mechanism that you would use to correct an entry, both to pay extra money and to request a refund. Okay? We don't know what the instructions are going to be. We don't know how Customs is going to do that. Are they going to want people to submit Post Summary Corrections? Okay? PSCs, if you, let's say you want your broker to preemptively do this, and they don't have the correct instructions on how to do that, that's pretty much the worst case scenario for you as an importer, right? Customs is not going to process it correctly. The broker, once you submit it, it becomes in what we call, CBP control. We can't get it back. Okay? Once you submit it, it's kind of locked in over there, and if we have submitted it incorrectly, you're not in a good position to get that refund. Okay? That's why you really need to wait. We all need to wait to make sure that whatever they want us to do on unliquidated entries, we do it correct the first time. That's how we're going to secure refunds, is we're going to do the work once, and we're going to do it exactly correct, right? You're not going to double pay your broker to resubmit these for you. We really need to know what we're doing. Guessing right now and shooting in the dark is a terrible idea, okay? I know that seems like a really boring answer, but hopefully, you guys understand why we're saying that. Okay? This is contingent on some other things. CBP might be looking at the Court of International Trade to give them guidance. We're in unprecedented territory here. We don't know exactly who's looking at who, and I'm guessing we'll get more information as the days and weeks go on. More to come. If your entry is liquidated, that means, like, the book, right, has been closed on it. Maybe you've gone past that 314 days, or if you had processed a Post Summary Correction, most of the time when you do that, you ask Customs to accelerate your liquidation. The whole point of accelerating your liquidation is so that you can get that refund sooner, or if you owe money, pay it quicker so that you stop interest from accruing. Okay? If you have done this, then your entry has liquidated, and we're going to start seeing a lot more of these entries liquidating because the earliest IEEPA entries were done in February of 2025, and those were IEEPA fentanyl for China, Hong Kong. Okay? What I will say is, right now, we're giving you the same advice that we have been giving you in previous webinars, which is you need to be watching these entries like a hawk, okay? You have 188 days from when your entry liquidates. It's not like your entry liquidated yesterday, you need to immediately file a protest, okay? Use common sense, kind of let this play out probably just a bit, but if you're getting close to that 180 day window, I would absolutely file a protest, okay. On these liquidated entries, the Court of International Trade, as Brenda was talking about, we really need to keep an eye, and we will, of course, be announcing this in our webinars. We need to be keeping an eye on all of the cases that they're looking at and that are in their docket. Okay. There's three things. I'll say number one and two are the most important ones to understand, and I've already alluded to them. This is just kind of a reference that you can see here. Protect your duty refund rights. Number one, make sure that you are filing timely protests, okay. You have 180 days to do that. Also, you need to be talking to your legal departments, okay? There are opportunities where your company may want to file directly in the Court of International Trade, okay? There's been some more high-profile importers who have chosen to do this. You do have, based on what lawyers say, which is not us, you have up to two years to make this decision from the time the tariffs were enacted. We're about two year in right now, but you absolutely should be having those conversations and figuring out what is the strategy of your company to make sure that you protect your duty refunds, okay? I can't answer that question for you. That is between you and your legal teams. Okay? You need to be talking to them. The last one I'm not going to touch on too much. It's a little bit more of an abstract concept. You can talk to your legal team about it, but really focusing on these first two, the one that you have most control over is making sure your protests are filed timely. Okay? Another question: Can an importer file their own protest? Typically, we would probably say, no, it's not the best idea, but in this case, these are very straightforward protests. They're very repetitive, and you are able to do it. It's just like filing your own taxes. You are allowed to do that. There's nothing stopping you. You would use the ACE, and when we say ACE, that's Customs online system. You need to become a protest filer. That's one of the kind of roles that you would need to have associated to your ACE login. I have some notes over there in terms of what we have heard from the Cs or the centers at Customs in terms of what they want to be seeing. Additionally, in this slide deck, I've included some protest verbiage. This verbiage has been updated to reference the case and the settlement of the case. If you want to use this, be my guest. You don't have to, we just want to provide it to you as a resource. Okay? This is kind of a checklist per se. Just to boil down what you're trying to do with refunds. Make sure that you're looking at all IEEPA-affected entries, and that's all of them, fentanyl, reciprocal, Brazil, the purchasers of Russian oil, which was specifically targeted towards India. If you have multiple brokers, the best place to get that is ACE reporting. That will scoop up everything, and it will help you paint a really good picture of all of your IEEPA paid duties. Okay? If just Expeditors is your broker, we have a really nice report that we can provide to you. I would say you need to, of course, segment by liquidation status. Is it liquidated or is it unliquidated? That puts you in those different buckets. Make sure that you're tracking protest deadlines. You do have 180 days. This is not, you know, tomorrow. If I was an importer, I would definitely take a wait and see approach, at least for the first couple weeks, just to see what starts coming out, so that you're not unnecessarily doing protests that maybe don't need to be done. We will see kind of what happens on that. It's hard to say. It's really hard to say what's gonna happen. Prepare them. If you don't want to do them yourself, make sure whoever you're thinking is going to do them for you has capacity. You're of course not the only importer that is thinking about this. Whoever it is, lots of people can do protests, lawyers, consultants, brokers, yourselves. There's lots of parties. Just make sure that you're having that conversation and what your expectations are and then what the cost could potentially be for those. As I said, make sure you're talking to your legal departments about CIT, the Court of International Trade litigation options, that they're paying attention to that. I mean, this is obviously front page news. I think everybody, whether they want to know about tariffs or not, has heard about them this weekend. Hopefully they are coming to you as well and talking to you about what their thoughts are and getting some information, likely wanting to know, A. how much duty was paid, if they don't know that, and that probably also extends up into your C-suites. Of course, making sure that you're preserving documentation. It's pretty straightforward whether or not you paid IEEPA. It's a Chapter 99 number, so it. I don't know how much more documentation you need, but that really just goes back into your due diligence as an importer, making sure you have all of your record keeping as you work through all this. Okay? Next, what else can you be doing? Assess short and long-term exposure to duty rate changes. Okay, the first thing I want to touch on, because there's a lot of questions, I don't have a slide on this, but let's talk about what practically happens tomorrow. Okay? Tonight, IEEPA duties end. Anything that was an IEEPA-related duty will end. Okay? Some people are asking about specific, you know, things, and Brenda talked about this. Specific kind of those trade deals that we've been working out. You know, maybe with Japan, we have something for civil aircraft or auto parts. We think those very specific ones are gonna hold. I can't say that for sure right now, anything that's a big number one, Vietnam, 20%, that's gonna go away. All of those big numbers are gonna end tonight. Okay? Those Chapter 99 numbers will no longer be used, we're waiting on those Chapter 99 numbers to end, then we'll know exactly what the full scope is of all of the ones that Customs is ending. Okay? Tomorrow, the Section 122 Chapter 99 numbers will start. As Ted highlighted, there is a transit window. Okay? That transit window is very similar in verbiage as what we have lived through numerous times in 2025. It's only ocean freight and needs to be loaded on the mother vessel. It's not just any vessel that needs to be on, the one that's headed to the United States, and needs to be on there by today, I believe, and your entry needs to be made by the 28th. It's a very short window of time. If you meet those requirements, in theory, if you meet them, it's based on entry date, you would be exempt from the IEEPA duties, and you would be temporarily exempt from the 122. Okay? Speak specifically with your broker about that. We're gonna be running reporting to make sure our offices see these entries, and that we make sure that, especially ones that we've pre-cleared, get the right duties on there. Okay? Generally speaking, most-ish, a lot of countries are gonna be going down percentage-wise, it's not by a huge amount. In some countries, like a Japan or Korea, are gonna be slightly going up because if it does go in at 15%, those countries previously had an all-in rate, now we anticipate it to be stacked. It'll be your most favored nation rate, your MFN rate, and then stacked with that 10% or 15%. I really wish they had told us officially if it was 10% or 15%, because I feel like I keep having to play both ways. With that said, let's look at some practical examples of how this might look. Here's China. On the left, this is what today is. You have your base duty, MFN rate, antidumping, Section 301, IEEPA fentanyl, and then that bottom row is stacked like that because in theory, big picture, the administration wants you to pay 232 or IEEPA reciprocal, or they have given you an exemption. Okay? You usually are going to fall into one of those. Please read my disclaimer. This is to paint a high-level picture, okay? Don't take this and send me a note and say, "Does that apply for this one specific scenario?" I know it doesn't meet all of them. It's just to paint a broad picture of what's gonna happen. With that said, as of tomorrow, you see those 2 IEEPA's are gone, okay? They are not gonna be required. We will not add them, but the Section 122 at 15, I have it as 15. It might be 10. We will see, will be there in its place. Okay. Yes, there might be a transit exemption for four days. I don't know, but generally speaking, this is what we're working towards. Okay. Let's look at Vietnam. Okay. Vietnam, a little less complex because there's no extra IEEPAs and no Section 301. You have your base duty with AD/CVD, Section 232 is if applicable, or IEEPA, or if you have an exemption. Your IEEPA reciprocal is getting swapped for Section 122. Okay. That's why I call this tariff swapping. Just one in the other, or one out, the other one in, and that's generally what's happening with all of this. Okay. I threw in one last example for Canada. This should be a fun one because it shows both USMCA and non-USMCA. For non-USMCA, they have fentanyl, but they are exempt from the reciprocal. I don't have reciprocals on here. They just have fentanyl. Fentanyl will be out at 35%. Section 122 will be in at 15%. Okay? USMCA, fentanyl has an exemption, so I didn't remove it from the chart. I just put 0%. Section 122 also has an exemption for USMCA, so I have that in there as 0. Okay? Hopefully, this kind of helps you mentally understand or visually understand the, the swapping effect. Okay? Once again, it should not be interpreted literally. One other thing I wanted to put in this strategy piece. There's the short term, where we're all gonna be transitioning, so keeping an eye on your entries, making sure the entries that need to be updated get updated. Really, you know, just focusing through. Customs made some pretty significant duty calculation edits. That's their checks, the last two weeks. We anticipate this might be a little bumpier as they implement this because they have more tables and things to update. Longer term, essentially, you're going to be playing that whole game again of what is going to be my duty rate. The name of the game, of course, is what can you do to lower your dutiable value, diversify your suppliers, and consider anything like tariff engineering, duty drawback, things like that. Okay? Another thing is we know that the 122 is temporary, what does that potentially look like depending on where you import from? Keeping an eye, as Brenda said, on the Section 301 cases, could you potentially be added to a Section 232 case? This is, I mean, anybody's guess as to what's going to happen, but we know the 122 is temporary, and that it will come with, I'll say, more durable sections, and we know the administration will make good on that. Looking into your own crystal ball, understanding where you sourced from, trying to figure out what that looks like. I'm not gonna go through this, but this is a framework I put together. I've shared in other presentations, and it really just tries to help you say: Hey, are there ways that I can help reduce my costs, and make sure that I'm paying the right amount? Right now, we are in an extremely high enforcement time, managing a lot of complexity. At the same time, with these high duty rates, I know many of you guys are being tasked with making sure that you're paying the correct amount, not a penny more, right? That's a really hard job to do, and I'm sorry that we're all in this position, but here we are. With that, I'm going to wrap up. I think we are out of time. I do want to say that this was not accredited. We did not have time. You have to give your accreditor, like, 72 business hours. This one was not. This was just a freebie bonus session that you guys just got to enjoy us for one hour. We will be back in two weeks with one that is accredited. Look forward to that. Samantha, any other comments? Other than just I know we had lots of people asking about slides. Of course, you just as a reminder, you will be receiving the survey, just requesting feedback about today's event within about two hours. Fear if you don't get that, we know some spam filters do block it. We will absolutely send all the material within 24 hours to everyone who attended. Thanks, Ben. Thank you all so much. Great questions. We will also continue to work to try to get answers back to those. Thank you, everybody. Good luck. Thank you. We will talk to you soon. Bear with us. More to come.