Trump DOJ Collapses in Court as SCOTUS Ruling Screws Them

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2:19Michael Popok:Well, you may not have known about a guy named Brandon Lord before, but you will now understand who he is and how it impacts your pocketbook and your purse as the executive director of the Trade Programs Directorate of the Office of Trade of the U.S. Customs and Border Protection. That's a mouthful. He's the guy that's responsible for the refunds to American importers now that the U.S. Supreme Court has torn down Donald Trump's tariffs. And we're not talking about a little project. We're talking about a lot. In fact, based on the representations that Mr. Lord made, that it's going to take over 4 million man hours to do the refunds to 53 million or more total refunds.

3:04Michael Popok:the 330 ,000 importers for over$166 billion. Judge Eaton, the judge responsible at the Court of International Trade in New York for actually supervising the refunds, put a hold on his order that the refunds happen immediately. Because they've also said they're not suited or capable to throw all of the resources. They don't have enough resources. They don't have 4 million man hours laying around to do the refunds. And again, they're suggesting that this could take several years to do the refunds. Will Judge Eaton allow that? Will the American people allow that? I'm Michael Popok and you're on Midas Touch and Legal AF.

3:45Michael Popok:While you're here, head over to Legal AF YouTube channel and hit the free subscribe button. Let's talk about the ruling and then process. It's one thing for the United States Supreme Court several weeks ago to declare that Donald Trump's imposing on over 200 countries and therefore on you and me, a tariff, that means tax on our goods, was illegal and unconstitutional and a violation of the International Economic Emergency Powers Act. It's one thing to say that. But of course, the Supreme Court, filled with nerdy jurists, are not economists or business people. They don't run the Customs and Bureau protection.

4:22Michael Popok:So they didn't know how messy it would be to do the refunds. They just declared it illegal and then left it to us to clean up behind the elephant. So it went down to the Court of International Trade. The chief judge of the Court of International Trade assigned the issue to one judge, Senior Judge Eaton, sitting in New York. Last week, I reported that Judge Eaton issued an order that going forward, no more IEPA tariffs be imposed on American goods through importers and that all those previous tariffs that have been charged start to be reversed. Brandon Lord stepped forward with a declaration and effectively pleaded for mercy, but also supports Donald Trump's efforts to delay repayment until he's well out of office.

5:12Michael Popok:Now, the Treasury Department has said, despite the war in Iran costing us hundreds of billions of dollars, The one in Venezuela costing us tens of billions of dollars that they have about six or seven hundred billion dollars sitting around the treasury so they can repay the 160 billion that's owed to the American people. But now you got to talk about process. Now, most of the customs process is automated through an electronic system that Mr. Lord identified as being called the ACE system, the automated commercial environment, ACE system at the Border Patrol. But in order to recalculate and to refund, it's going to have to be a manual process.

6:03Michael Popok:Here's what he says in paragraph 11. He says out loud that CBP, Border Patrol, is not able to comply with the court's order of March 4th, nor the order on March 5th, to stop imposing and start refunding money. Why? Because if you go to paragraph 17, they give the volume of refunds. They say in paragraph 17 of his affidavit that they are now facing an unprecedented volume of refunds. Its existing administrative procedures and technology are not well suited to the task of this scale and will require manual work that will prevent personnel from fully carrying out the agency's trade enforcement mission.

6:54Michael Popok:Particularly in paragraph 26, they say the following, that it's going to be, get these numbers, they've already said it's going to be over 53 million refunds to 330 ,000 importers, American importers, totaling about $166 billion. Here's what they say in paragraph 27 or 24. Once the review of an entry is complete, It takes someone approximately five minutes to process an individual refund. And the refund process, therefore, for 53 ,173 ,939 entries with IEPA duties, the tariffs will require 4 ,431 ,161 man hours to complete. It's not feasible to divert all personnel to processing these duties on a full-time basis with no time off.

7:53And if they were, its other functions would be compromised.

7:57Michael Popok:And then they cite to a case back in 1998 called United States Shoe Corporation versus U.S. And they say, well, when the Supreme Court declared tariffs on exports in the United States Shoe Corporation case, which was much less, that process took several years to complete. And we think we're going to need more than that. So here we go. they stole our money. They're trying to steal it again with a new set of tariffs, but it's going to take six, seven, eight years to get the money back when Donald Trump is long gone and maybe not even on planet Earth.

8:34Ben Meiselas:Hey, everybody. Ben Micellis here from the Midas Touch Network. I wanted to let you know about my podcast partner, Michael Popok's new law firm. It's called the Popok Firm. Michael Popak's pursuing his dream of starting his own law firm, really based on the popular demand by all the Midas, Mighty, and Legal AF-ers who were approaching Michael Popak with their cases and saying, can you help us? And at that time, Popak was not able to. So he went out on his own. He started the Popak firm, where he is now handling catastrophic injury cases like car accident cases, trucking cases, malpractice cases, big negligence cases, wrongful death cases.

9:17Ben Meiselas:So if you or someone you know have a case like this, the consultation with Popak's firm is free. Give them a call. See if you have a case. It's thepopakfirm.com, thepopokfirm.com, or you can call 877-POPOKAF, P-O-P-O-K-A-F. So 1-877-P-O-P-O-K-A-F. Give Michael Popok a call. And I'm really proud of you, Popok. Thanks for all the hard work you're putting in.

9:48Michael Popok:Now, it's going to be up to Judge Eaton and the Democrats in Congress to come up with an alternate procedure, because you can see the first instinct of the administration is delay, obfuscate, lie, foot drag, keep the money in the bank. I haven't even talked about the interest that is owed on the money. It's not just the$160 billion that's owed, that was collected illegally and unconstitutionally. There's interest that has to be repaid to each of the importers. That could be another$10 to$15 billion of just interest. Now you're talking about$180 billion. To put it in perspective, the Iranian war that Donald Trump started, that's going to lead to tripling of gas prices.

10:34Michael Popok:It's costing the American people just in the next couple of months, upwards of$100 billion. $100 billion. Could be half a trillion after the year is over. Add Venezuela onto that and maybe Cuba. You're talking about a trillion dollars. So the$160 billion collected in tariffs by Donald Trump pales in comparison to how much he's blown, like$100 bills coming out of a fire hose and these war efforts to distract attention from his failing domestic policy and his failing economy.

11:12Michael Popok:it also pales in comparison to the tax cuts totaling a couple of trillion dollars that Donald Trump has proposed for the wealthiest in America so here's what's going to have to happen Judge Eaton is going to have to put the administration on a leash and it's going to have to come up with a different computerized way to reprogram so it's not done manually to cut the time for the refund processing by a lot. And if Congress wants to devote more resources, they can bring in people to come up with 4 million man hours. I mean, let's just do the math, right? That's the, because that sounds like a very big number.

11:55Michael Popok:Let's just assume that everybody can do 2 ,000 hours of work. If you're talking about 4 million at 200 ,000, sorry, at 2 ,000, you're talking about they need 2 ,000 people to work full-time to do the refunds. Okay, go hire 2 ,000 Americans. This is an administration that doesn't create jobs. They lost 90 ,000 jobs in February. Go give 2 ,000 people who are unemployed jobs for the next year to process their refunds and get them done. I think that's the obvious solution to this problem. And we'll continue to train our attention and platform these issues here on the Midas Touch Network and on Legal AF.

12:42Michael Popok:I'm Michael Popok. See you at the intersection on Tuesday nights. My new podcast right here on the Midas Touch Network. And of course, over on Legal AF YouTube channel. So my next report, this is Michael.

13:22Michael Popok:and hot takes where legal AF on Substack. Come over now to free subscribe.

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