Assuming nobody looks at the requirements of the problem to write a single line of code in order to tool up to the task.
Honestly? It doesn't seem unreasonable if it really is 45 days.
Imagine if they started working on software additions for mass refunds, and the decision went the other way? And they didn't have to refund?
Wouldn't they be wasting money for no reason?
The reason that the tariffs were collected while there was doubts as to their legality is that the US Government promised, in court filings (courts literally marked this as estoppel in a ruling: they are unable to change their mind on it, locked in argument) that they could repay this easily, and so courts allowed them to collect it while they figured out the legality. When they promised this, if it did require software changes, they should have done that then, or else they were lying to courts.
This is why the judges are not giving them any slack here. They promised to courts that this could be done easily, in such a way that they can't change their mind now. This is all very basic tenets of law that even non-lawyers can understand.
(In reality it would be more expensive because you would have to source, train, and administer those people plus audit the results afterwards. But the government had said it would be doable before to the courts!)
On the other hand, now that the "we need to undo all this" use case actually needs to be used, they've gotta go back and solve the problem after the fact. Unsurprisingly, it's going to take a while to develop that solution.
I'm not excusing it, but I do think it's interesting to think about the technical and political issues.
No, I disagree. It is actually quite hard to see how this scenario arises without intentional malfeasance. This isn't something that was overlooked, the government was specifically asked in court it they would be able to issue refunds quickly if the tariffs were overturned. The government lied and said they could.
This isn't some surprise thing where we can just forgive these guys in the government for not accounting for the potential need for refunds. They were asked. They lied.
I completely agree that it's malicious, but I'm thinking the people actually responsible for implementing it (the software, procedures, etc.) probably weren't themselves malicious. I think the technical people responsible for implementing it were intentionally put into a position, by their bosses, where they'd basically be the fall guys and provide a reasonable technical excuse for their boss's maliciousness.
I would generally be surprised if the judge just accepted the attorney's answer without instructing them to have that conversation. I can't imagine a judge saying "Yeah, sure, I'm sure you're the right person to ask this technical question".
Another brilliant humanitarian crisis caused entirely by the U.S. for no good reason at all.
As a Kiwi I look at the US, Russia, China, etc as the same. Even the UK (where I now live) is a scarier place than back home.
What people want is stability. Not endless fucking wars.
People in my country don't give a shit about Moses-Jesus. They do care about how much their fuel costs.
this of course true for Tibet and Taiwan, too -- you just don't care because that's not where you live.
...and with that attitude globally, we get endless war.
Even now they are posturing in their "South-Chinese Sea", or as the Filipino's like to call it, the "West-Phillipine Sea". Also, Taiwan, Hong Kong...
And then we haven't even talked about how nice they are to their own citizens.
China is growing in strength and moving towards a new global world order, and the way Trump is fucking up US supremacy at the moment, China might well succeed.
Oh no, I haven't heard about that lately. What are they doing? Building camps to mass-inter their own citizens? Disappearing people from airports and then lying about where they are being kept? Withholding welfare funds to punish political enemies? Murdering civilians in the street and calling them domestic terrorists? Employing legal threats to force companies to sell technology for domestic mass surveillance?
The second silver lining is that, even if CBP does its job, there is another step where the Trump administration will certainly drag its feet again: "If it is determined upon liquidation or reliquidation that excess moneys have been deposited, such that a refund with interest is due to the importer, CBP certifies the refund and interest amounts to the Department of the Treasury, which then employs its own processes to disburse the certified amounts to the importers of record."
https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.cit.193...