February 20, 2026 • 16 mins
In the hours after publishing our Friday episode, President Trump’s global tariffs have been struck down by the Supreme Court. The newsroom has been buzzing over here at Bloomberg, so Stacey called up Jonathan Lieberman, President of New York Customs Brokers to understand what this news means for our pocketbooks.
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Speaker 1 (00:06):
This is Everybody's Business from Bloomberg Business Week. I'm Stacey
Mannick Smith. It is Friday, February twentieth, and just a
few hours ago we published our episode for today, and
right after that it was announced that the Supreme Court
had struck down President Trump's global tariffs, and that meant
that we needed to do an emergency episode. So we
(00:29):
started thinking of who to call, and we're so lucky
to have Jonathan Lieberman on the phone with us. He
is the president of New York's Customs Brokers. He is
a customs broker.
Speaker 2 (00:38):
Jonathan, welcome, Thank you so much, Stacey, thank you for
having me on your show.
Speaker 1 (00:42):
Absolutely so, before we go any further and get into
what all of this means, do you mind just describing
what a customs broker is, what you do.
Speaker 3 (00:51):
Yes, absolutely so.
Speaker 2 (00:53):
We as customs brokers are glorified middleman, just as a
lot of people in business are. I like to tell
people that when you file your taxes, you hire a
CPA an accountant, or if you go into court, you
hire a lawyer. Well, if you want to import products
into the US, you hire customs broker to file and
to declare the products and all of the declarations required
(01:17):
for US customs and all the partner government agencies that
are involved.
Speaker 1 (01:22):
And you deal with a special kind of product importing
a special kind of product.
Speaker 2 (01:27):
Yes, So the vast majority of our business it revolves
around fresh and frozen seafood products.
Speaker 1 (01:33):
And seafood gets expensive, right, I mean, like, let's say,
like a really premium seafood item, I don't know, like
a shipping container full of lobster tails. That's how much roughly.
Speaker 2 (01:42):
Oh, absolutely, a shipping container of lobster tails could be
anywhere fod to five hundred thousand dollars. So really premium products,
whether it be lobster tails or chilain. Sea bass is
another very expensive product. But so those premium products can
definitely be in the hundreds of thousand of dollars per container.
The average costs, I would say, though, of other let's say,
(02:05):
cheaper products like salmon or shrimp, et cetera, are more
around between one hundred to two hundred thousand dollars per container.
Speaker 1 (02:14):
And so you've been dealing with a lot of tariffs
since Liberation Day in April. I imagine you've been watching
the news pretty carefully for the Supreme Court decision how
did you learn about it today?
Speaker 2 (02:29):
Well, today was an interesting manner because in the last
few weeks I've chosen.
Speaker 3 (02:34):
To have a little bit of fun with this.
Speaker 2 (02:36):
Okay, in this business, it's kind of stressful, of course,
with everything going on. So I've set up some alerts
both on my computer and on my phone that they
go through and they automnate a process where they read
an RSS feed and so those come directly from the
Supreme Court, they come from the White House, from Trump's Truth,
Social et cetera. And so I early this morning, it
(02:58):
was right after ten am. I remem specifically was that
I had if anyone seen the movie Judge Dread with
Sylvester Stallone, I had a sound bite pop up on
my phone saying, I am the Law.
Speaker 3 (03:14):
As soon as.
Speaker 2 (03:15):
The Supreme Court published the news and their opinion on
the matter.
Speaker 1 (03:20):
What went through your head when you heard Sylvester Stallone say,
as the intergalactic judge Judge Dread, I am the Law, Like,
what went through your head? About your business?
Speaker 2 (03:32):
First and foremost? I just put my head, my hands
above my head. I said, oh my god, what do.
Speaker 3 (03:38):
I do next? And I just had to really go
through everything in my mind.
Speaker 2 (03:42):
You know, I've been thinking about this moment for months already,
and it's one of those things that you wait on anxiously,
but as soon as it happens, you all of a
sudden forget everything that.
Speaker 3 (03:53):
You've thought about for months, and you say, and my
mind just went blank.
Speaker 2 (03:56):
But then immediately, of course, I stepped and I went
straight to the Supreme Court. I downloaded the opinion, I
started reading through it. But so by ten thirteen am,
I already have an email out all of our customers
about the product, about the opinion being published.
Speaker 1 (04:12):
So your customers are grocery stores, restaurants, big seafood importers.
What does this mean for them? Does this mean that
they do not have to pay tariffs anymore?
Speaker 3 (04:24):
No?
Speaker 2 (04:25):
Actually, at the end of the day, meaning today, at
the end of today.
Speaker 3 (04:30):
Yeah, absolutely nothing has changed.
Speaker 1 (04:32):
Wait, what, but there's this big decision. Everyone's losing their minds.
Speaker 3 (04:36):
Sure, So the Supreme Court has overturned it.
Speaker 2 (04:39):
So they've said that what was done charging tariffs through
a book was not legal. However, procedurally speaking, nothing has changed. Operationally,
Customs hasn't changed any of the tariff numbers. Nothing's been
published in the Federal register, which is kind of like
the government's newspaper, let's call.
Speaker 3 (04:59):
It right now.
Speaker 2 (05:01):
Even up until about half an hour ago, as you know,
President Trump had a news conference. President Trump himself has
said nothing has changed. However, I am going to immediately
start charging more tariff. Today. I will sign in order
to impose a ten percent global tariff under Section one
twenty two. Over and above are normal tariffs already being charged.
Speaker 1 (05:26):
So in the immediate future, your customers are paying more
in tariffs.
Speaker 3 (05:33):
Yes.
Speaker 2 (05:33):
So if if what President Trump is intimating with that
SoundBite that you played, as soon as on Monday, they
could use Section one twenty two to charge this additional
ten percent.
Speaker 3 (05:46):
So under the law they're allowed to.
Speaker 2 (05:48):
Charge up to fifteen percent for one hundred and fifty days. Now.
Speaker 3 (05:53):
I don't know why he chose ten percent instead of fifteen,
but that was his choice. So he chose ten percent.
Speaker 2 (05:58):
Now, because there were simple duties technically haven't been removed yet, conceivably,
starting on Monday, we're going to have both the reciprocal
duties as well as this additional ten percent under Section
one twenty two. And for any country that has that
already has Section three oh one, such as China, they're
going to also have this section three oh one. So
we're kind of stacking these tariffs up above and beyond
(06:22):
and waiting to see what happens with the actual reciprocal duties.
Today is February twentieth, and I don't know I tracked
this very closely, but on February second, the President had
said that he's going to change the reciprocal duties on India.
He had published that he's going to reduce it from
twenty five percent to eighteen percent.
Speaker 3 (06:44):
That still hasn't actually happened. And that's three weeks ago.
Speaker 1 (06:48):
Okay, So let's assume that this goes through, that the
Supreme Court's decision goes through. Then what does that mean
for your year customers? Are they paying lesson tariffs? What
are the steps that they need to make? I mean,
they would potentially be owed some money by the government too, right.
Speaker 2 (07:05):
Well, one would think so Logically speaking, I would assume,
or I don't know if I should say assume or
presume at this point, but I would presume that they
should receive refunds because something was done illegally. I know
that if I do something illegally, I go straight to jail.
But in this case, we're being told by the Supreme
(07:28):
Court that what was done was incorrect, it was improper,
tariffs should not have been charged.
Speaker 3 (07:34):
But one point.
Speaker 2 (07:36):
That President Trump made and is true and correct, is
that the opinion published by the Supreme Court made no
mention of refunds themselves. So even though logically you would
believe that there should be refunds in all of these
President Trump has already said that more or less he's
going to be fighting this in court for the next
five years.
Speaker 1 (07:55):
Yeah, but does this mean that going forward they wouldn't
have to pay import tariffs? Some of the companies that
you work with are paying thousands of dollars per shipment.
I mean, this is a huge part of their business now.
Speaker 2 (08:08):
Sure, so, because the Supreme Court has overturned it saying
that AEPA should not be charged, they're now pointing the
finger down to the lower courts. That would be the
CIIT Court of International Trade. So CIIT is actually how
all of this started was that this this court case
(08:28):
started with the CIIT all the way back in November.
Then the CIIT had said that AEPA was illegal. It
moved on to the Federal Circuit of Appeals, the Federal
Circuit of Appeals agreed with the CIIT. Then it got
appealed again and that's when it moved up to the
Supreme Court. So now it's even though it's gone all
the way up the rungs to the Supreme Court, they're
pointing it down for implementation down.
Speaker 3 (08:50):
To Court of International Trade.
Speaker 2 (08:52):
So until the Court of International Trade tells the rest
of the government how to move forward, we're kind of
in a state of limbo, and these reciprocal duties as
of right now are continuing to be charged.
Speaker 3 (09:06):
We don't know.
Speaker 2 (09:06):
It could be on Monday, it could be next week,
it could be another month until the CIIT actually indicates
how Customs.
Speaker 3 (09:14):
And Border Protection has to move forward with this.
Speaker 1 (09:17):
What does this mean for your customers? And what does
this mean for you?
Speaker 2 (09:23):
It means that while I'm on the phone with you,
I've missed two calls from customers, I mean, and they're
all asking the same thing. But I ask you. They're
asking when can I file for refunds number one?
Speaker 3 (09:36):
And what does this mean tomorrow? What are we doing?
Speaker 2 (09:42):
And I don't I unfortunately wish I had all the answers,
but I don't have the answers regarding when refunds will
be allowable, if at all, because if they are allowable,
we're going to have a lot of work to do.
We have to refile all of the entries that we
filed since more or less April last.
Speaker 1 (10:00):
Like every terraform you filled out since Liberation Day. You
would have to take that as a mini case to
the government to get a refund. How many cases is that?
Speaker 2 (10:11):
Is that like hundreds, many, many, many thousands, in the
tens of thousands.
Speaker 1 (10:16):
Wait, so what does that mean for you?
Speaker 2 (10:20):
I unfathomable amounts of work that I don't know how
we're going to complete in a timely manner. I've already
thought about. You know, there are many different avenues that
we can take as well. We can request extensions with Customs.
We just don't know if they'll allow extensions. In the
past few months, there have been instances where Customs specifically
(10:40):
did not allow extensions even though this was playing out
in the courts, because Customs said, let it play out
in the courts. And so we don't know if now that.
Speaker 3 (10:49):
The Supreme Court has issued.
Speaker 2 (10:51):
An opinion on the matter, maybe they will allow extensions,
maybe they won't. That will, it'll be a lifeline that
will will have additional time to file these post member corrections,
but it doesn't resolve the core problem that there's a
year's worth of work that we need to basically redo
while keeping up with our current work.
Speaker 1 (11:13):
I mean, we spoke earlier during Liberation Day about your
business and all the changes that were happening, and you
told me at that time that it was being a
customs broker. It was your father's business, and this was
a good business for work life balance. You were able
to spend time with your family, be home for dinner
most nights. What is your job like now and what
(11:34):
do you expect it to look like going forward.
Speaker 2 (11:40):
It's funny I had a very brief conversation with actually
my accountant earlier today. I'm not a superstitious person, but coincidentally,
this is the thirteenth year that I am in this business,
and so first and so the first twelve years of
my career we're pretty much all the same. We you know,
(12:03):
filed our entries, we kept up on new regulations, on
new policies, et cetera. And then fish came in. Right,
every everything worked, and it just it wasn't always perfect.
But you know, we dealt with the hiccups when they came.
Now in my thirteenth year, you know, unfortunately, I'm now
dealing with what appears to be, you know, an entirely
(12:26):
different career.
Speaker 3 (12:26):
It's not even the same job that I was doing
a year ago. I'm handling all.
Speaker 2 (12:32):
The same work and responsibilities I was before, but I'm
also now playing I'm playing lawyer, I'm playing trade consultant,
and I'm also half the time playing therapist for my customers.
So what is this?
Speaker 1 (12:47):
What do you see as things going forward? President Trump
and his press conference said, you know, this isn't really
going to make a big difference. We're going to levy
tariffs anyway, Like I feel like you've been steeped in,
you know your stuff. What do you expect to see happen?
I guess for the rest of this year, for the
rest of twenty twenty six when it comes to tarifs.
Speaker 2 (13:10):
Sure, so immediately right off the bat, as President Trump
did indicate, is that they're going to start charging an
extra ten percent using Section one twenty two. They are
allowed to do that without any sort of congressional support
or authorization whatsoever. They can do that for one hundred
and fifty days after that, then it does need additional authorization.
(13:31):
I presume that, based off of the Supreme Court ruling
is that the CIIT is going to indicate in some
fashion that the reciprocal duties themselves can no longer be
charged because they were being charged under a EPA.
Speaker 3 (13:45):
It's illegal.
Speaker 2 (13:46):
I mean, even if we're not going to agree to refunds,
you can't keep on doing something that is deemed illegal
by the Supreme Court, the highest court in the nation.
I would hope, for my sake that all of that
gets resolved, you know, within the first couple of days
of next week, but I have no idea. Sometimes these
things take longer than expected. If they're not taken care
of in the next few days, it's just going to
(14:08):
exacerbate the number of problems that we have because we're
going to have to then refile all of these new
entries as well. Regarding refunds. We're going to continue, of
course receiving questions about refunds. Now, the government can automate
this process that they wanted to, but the general consensus
is that there's no way know how you know, President
(14:29):
Trump made it pretty clear. I'm not giving back money. Oh,
because they didn't say it in the Supreme Court opinion.
It's going to go through the courts for the next
several years. That might be the case. And so it
means that importers may need to file lawsuits against the
US government just to request refunds. So that operation that
(14:51):
I mentioned earlier, the post summary correction, we as customs
workers might not legally be allowed to file those unless
less say they each individual importer has gotten a ruling
from a court that's conceivably a possibility, which just postpones.
Speaker 3 (15:08):
All of this process. Everyone who's waiting on this.
Speaker 2 (15:12):
There's different estimates between let's say, one hundred and thirty
to two hundred and fifty billion dollars or so they
might not get their refunds now or for another four
or five years.
Speaker 1 (15:23):
And you'll be right there. Jonathan, thank you so much
for talking with us. Jonathan Lieberman is the president of
New York Customs Brokers. Jonathan, thank you, Thank you so much.
Speaker 3 (15:32):
Stay Staf, thank you again.
Speaker 1 (15:39):
This show is produced by Stacy Wong and Jasmine JT.
Speaker 2 (15:42):
Green.
Speaker 1 (15:43):
Magnus Hendrickson is our supervising producer. Sam Rogan handles engineering
and Dave Purcell factchecks, special thanks to Jeff Muscus, Julia Rubin,
Maria Ling, and Angel Recio. If you have a minute,
please rate and review the show. It means a lot
to us. And if you have a story that should
be our business, send us an email out. Everybody's at
Bloomberg dot net. That's that's everybody's with an s at
(16:04):
Bloomberg dot net. Thank you for listening, and see you guys.
Mm hmm.
This is Everybody's Business from Bloomberg Business Week. I'm Stacey
Mannick Smith. It is Friday, February twentieth, and just a
few hours ago we published our episode for today, and
right after that it was announced that the Supreme Court
had struck down President Trump's global tariffs, and that meant
that we needed to do an emergency episode. So we
(00:29):
started thinking of who to call, and we're so lucky
to have Jonathan Lieberman on the phone with us. He
is the president of New York's Customs Brokers. He is
a customs broker.
Speaker 2 (00:38):
Jonathan, welcome, Thank you so much, Stacey, thank you for
having me on your show.
Speaker 1 (00:42):
Absolutely so, before we go any further and get into
what all of this means, do you mind just describing
what a customs broker is, what you do.
Speaker 3 (00:51):
Yes, absolutely so.
Speaker 2 (00:53):
We as customs brokers are glorified middleman, just as a
lot of people in business are. I like to tell
people that when you file your taxes, you hire a
CPA an accountant, or if you go into court, you
hire a lawyer. Well, if you want to import products
into the US, you hire customs broker to file and
to declare the products and all of the declarations required
(01:17):
for US customs and all the partner government agencies that
are involved.
Speaker 1 (01:22):
And you deal with a special kind of product importing
a special kind of product.
Speaker 2 (01:27):
Yes, So the vast majority of our business it revolves
around fresh and frozen seafood products.
Speaker 1 (01:33):
And seafood gets expensive, right, I mean, like, let's say,
like a really premium seafood item, I don't know, like
a shipping container full of lobster tails. That's how much roughly.
Speaker 2 (01:42):
Oh, absolutely, a shipping container of lobster tails could be
anywhere fod to five hundred thousand dollars. So really premium products,
whether it be lobster tails or chilain. Sea bass is
another very expensive product. But so those premium products can
definitely be in the hundreds of thousand of dollars per container.
The average costs, I would say, though, of other let's say,
(02:05):
cheaper products like salmon or shrimp, et cetera, are more
around between one hundred to two hundred thousand dollars per container.
Speaker 1 (02:14):
And so you've been dealing with a lot of tariffs
since Liberation Day in April. I imagine you've been watching
the news pretty carefully for the Supreme Court decision how
did you learn about it today?
Speaker 2 (02:29):
Well, today was an interesting manner because in the last
few weeks I've chosen.
Speaker 3 (02:34):
To have a little bit of fun with this.
Speaker 2 (02:36):
Okay, in this business, it's kind of stressful, of course,
with everything going on. So I've set up some alerts
both on my computer and on my phone that they
go through and they automnate a process where they read
an RSS feed and so those come directly from the
Supreme Court, they come from the White House, from Trump's Truth,
Social et cetera. And so I early this morning, it
(02:58):
was right after ten am. I remem specifically was that
I had if anyone seen the movie Judge Dread with
Sylvester Stallone, I had a sound bite pop up on
my phone saying, I am the Law.
Speaker 3 (03:14):
As soon as.
Speaker 2 (03:15):
The Supreme Court published the news and their opinion on
the matter.
Speaker 1 (03:20):
What went through your head when you heard Sylvester Stallone say,
as the intergalactic judge Judge Dread, I am the Law, Like,
what went through your head? About your business?
Speaker 2 (03:32):
First and foremost? I just put my head, my hands
above my head. I said, oh my god, what do.
Speaker 3 (03:38):
I do next? And I just had to really go
through everything in my mind.
Speaker 2 (03:42):
You know, I've been thinking about this moment for months already,
and it's one of those things that you wait on anxiously,
but as soon as it happens, you all of a
sudden forget everything that.
Speaker 3 (03:53):
You've thought about for months, and you say, and my
mind just went blank.
Speaker 2 (03:56):
But then immediately, of course, I stepped and I went
straight to the Supreme Court. I downloaded the opinion, I
started reading through it. But so by ten thirteen am,
I already have an email out all of our customers
about the product, about the opinion being published.
Speaker 1 (04:12):
So your customers are grocery stores, restaurants, big seafood importers.
What does this mean for them? Does this mean that
they do not have to pay tariffs anymore?
Speaker 3 (04:24):
No?
Speaker 2 (04:25):
Actually, at the end of the day, meaning today, at
the end of today.
Speaker 3 (04:30):
Yeah, absolutely nothing has changed.
Speaker 1 (04:32):
Wait, what, but there's this big decision. Everyone's losing their minds.
Speaker 3 (04:36):
Sure, So the Supreme Court has overturned it.
Speaker 2 (04:39):
So they've said that what was done charging tariffs through
a book was not legal. However, procedurally speaking, nothing has changed. Operationally,
Customs hasn't changed any of the tariff numbers. Nothing's been
published in the Federal register, which is kind of like
the government's newspaper, let's call.
Speaker 3 (04:59):
It right now.
Speaker 2 (05:01):
Even up until about half an hour ago, as you know,
President Trump had a news conference. President Trump himself has
said nothing has changed. However, I am going to immediately
start charging more tariff. Today. I will sign in order
to impose a ten percent global tariff under Section one
twenty two. Over and above are normal tariffs already being charged.
Speaker 1 (05:26):
So in the immediate future, your customers are paying more
in tariffs.
Speaker 3 (05:33):
Yes.
Speaker 2 (05:33):
So if if what President Trump is intimating with that
SoundBite that you played, as soon as on Monday, they
could use Section one twenty two to charge this additional
ten percent.
Speaker 3 (05:46):
So under the law they're allowed to.
Speaker 2 (05:48):
Charge up to fifteen percent for one hundred and fifty days. Now.
Speaker 3 (05:53):
I don't know why he chose ten percent instead of fifteen,
but that was his choice. So he chose ten percent.
Speaker 2 (05:58):
Now, because there were simple duties technically haven't been removed yet, conceivably,
starting on Monday, we're going to have both the reciprocal
duties as well as this additional ten percent under Section
one twenty two. And for any country that has that
already has Section three oh one, such as China, they're
going to also have this section three oh one. So
we're kind of stacking these tariffs up above and beyond
(06:22):
and waiting to see what happens with the actual reciprocal duties.
Today is February twentieth, and I don't know I tracked
this very closely, but on February second, the President had
said that he's going to change the reciprocal duties on India.
He had published that he's going to reduce it from
twenty five percent to eighteen percent.
Speaker 3 (06:44):
That still hasn't actually happened. And that's three weeks ago.
Speaker 1 (06:48):
Okay, So let's assume that this goes through, that the
Supreme Court's decision goes through. Then what does that mean
for your year customers? Are they paying lesson tariffs? What
are the steps that they need to make? I mean,
they would potentially be owed some money by the government too, right.
Speaker 2 (07:05):
Well, one would think so Logically speaking, I would assume,
or I don't know if I should say assume or
presume at this point, but I would presume that they
should receive refunds because something was done illegally. I know
that if I do something illegally, I go straight to jail.
But in this case, we're being told by the Supreme
(07:28):
Court that what was done was incorrect, it was improper,
tariffs should not have been charged.
Speaker 3 (07:34):
But one point.
Speaker 2 (07:36):
That President Trump made and is true and correct, is
that the opinion published by the Supreme Court made no
mention of refunds themselves. So even though logically you would
believe that there should be refunds in all of these
President Trump has already said that more or less he's
going to be fighting this in court for the next
five years.
Speaker 1 (07:55):
Yeah, but does this mean that going forward they wouldn't
have to pay import tariffs? Some of the companies that
you work with are paying thousands of dollars per shipment.
I mean, this is a huge part of their business now.
Speaker 2 (08:08):
Sure, so, because the Supreme Court has overturned it saying
that AEPA should not be charged, they're now pointing the
finger down to the lower courts. That would be the
CIIT Court of International Trade. So CIIT is actually how
all of this started was that this this court case
(08:28):
started with the CIIT all the way back in November.
Then the CIIT had said that AEPA was illegal. It
moved on to the Federal Circuit of Appeals, the Federal
Circuit of Appeals agreed with the CIIT. Then it got
appealed again and that's when it moved up to the
Supreme Court. So now it's even though it's gone all
the way up the rungs to the Supreme Court, they're
pointing it down for implementation down.
Speaker 3 (08:50):
To Court of International Trade.
Speaker 2 (08:52):
So until the Court of International Trade tells the rest
of the government how to move forward, we're kind of
in a state of limbo, and these reciprocal duties as
of right now are continuing to be charged.
Speaker 3 (09:06):
We don't know.
Speaker 2 (09:06):
It could be on Monday, it could be next week,
it could be another month until the CIIT actually indicates
how Customs.
Speaker 3 (09:14):
And Border Protection has to move forward with this.
Speaker 1 (09:17):
What does this mean for your customers? And what does
this mean for you?
Speaker 2 (09:23):
It means that while I'm on the phone with you,
I've missed two calls from customers, I mean, and they're
all asking the same thing. But I ask you. They're
asking when can I file for refunds number one?
Speaker 3 (09:36):
And what does this mean tomorrow? What are we doing?
Speaker 2 (09:42):
And I don't I unfortunately wish I had all the answers,
but I don't have the answers regarding when refunds will
be allowable, if at all, because if they are allowable,
we're going to have a lot of work to do.
We have to refile all of the entries that we
filed since more or less April last.
Speaker 1 (10:00):
Like every terraform you filled out since Liberation Day. You
would have to take that as a mini case to
the government to get a refund. How many cases is that?
Speaker 2 (10:11):
Is that like hundreds, many, many, many thousands, in the
tens of thousands.
Speaker 1 (10:16):
Wait, so what does that mean for you?
Speaker 2 (10:20):
I unfathomable amounts of work that I don't know how
we're going to complete in a timely manner. I've already
thought about. You know, there are many different avenues that
we can take as well. We can request extensions with Customs.
We just don't know if they'll allow extensions. In the
past few months, there have been instances where Customs specifically
(10:40):
did not allow extensions even though this was playing out
in the courts, because Customs said, let it play out
in the courts. And so we don't know if now that.
Speaker 3 (10:49):
The Supreme Court has issued.
Speaker 2 (10:51):
An opinion on the matter, maybe they will allow extensions,
maybe they won't. That will, it'll be a lifeline that
will will have additional time to file these post member corrections,
but it doesn't resolve the core problem that there's a
year's worth of work that we need to basically redo
while keeping up with our current work.
Speaker 1 (11:13):
I mean, we spoke earlier during Liberation Day about your
business and all the changes that were happening, and you
told me at that time that it was being a
customs broker. It was your father's business, and this was
a good business for work life balance. You were able
to spend time with your family, be home for dinner
most nights. What is your job like now and what
(11:34):
do you expect it to look like going forward.
Speaker 2 (11:40):
It's funny I had a very brief conversation with actually
my accountant earlier today. I'm not a superstitious person, but coincidentally,
this is the thirteenth year that I am in this business,
and so first and so the first twelve years of
my career we're pretty much all the same. We you know,
(12:03):
filed our entries, we kept up on new regulations, on
new policies, et cetera. And then fish came in. Right,
every everything worked, and it just it wasn't always perfect.
But you know, we dealt with the hiccups when they came.
Now in my thirteenth year, you know, unfortunately, I'm now
dealing with what appears to be, you know, an entirely
(12:26):
different career.
Speaker 3 (12:26):
It's not even the same job that I was doing
a year ago. I'm handling all.
Speaker 2 (12:32):
The same work and responsibilities I was before, but I'm
also now playing I'm playing lawyer, I'm playing trade consultant,
and I'm also half the time playing therapist for my customers.
So what is this?
Speaker 1 (12:47):
What do you see as things going forward? President Trump
and his press conference said, you know, this isn't really
going to make a big difference. We're going to levy
tariffs anyway, Like I feel like you've been steeped in,
you know your stuff. What do you expect to see happen?
I guess for the rest of this year, for the
rest of twenty twenty six when it comes to tarifs.
Speaker 2 (13:10):
Sure, so immediately right off the bat, as President Trump
did indicate, is that they're going to start charging an
extra ten percent using Section one twenty two. They are
allowed to do that without any sort of congressional support
or authorization whatsoever. They can do that for one hundred
and fifty days after that, then it does need additional authorization.
(13:31):
I presume that, based off of the Supreme Court ruling
is that the CIIT is going to indicate in some
fashion that the reciprocal duties themselves can no longer be
charged because they were being charged under a EPA.
Speaker 3 (13:45):
It's illegal.
Speaker 2 (13:46):
I mean, even if we're not going to agree to refunds,
you can't keep on doing something that is deemed illegal
by the Supreme Court, the highest court in the nation.
I would hope, for my sake that all of that
gets resolved, you know, within the first couple of days
of next week, but I have no idea. Sometimes these
things take longer than expected. If they're not taken care
of in the next few days, it's just going to
(14:08):
exacerbate the number of problems that we have because we're
going to have to then refile all of these new
entries as well. Regarding refunds. We're going to continue, of
course receiving questions about refunds. Now, the government can automate
this process that they wanted to, but the general consensus
is that there's no way know how you know, President
(14:29):
Trump made it pretty clear. I'm not giving back money. Oh,
because they didn't say it in the Supreme Court opinion.
It's going to go through the courts for the next
several years. That might be the case. And so it
means that importers may need to file lawsuits against the
US government just to request refunds. So that operation that
(14:51):
I mentioned earlier, the post summary correction, we as customs
workers might not legally be allowed to file those unless
less say they each individual importer has gotten a ruling
from a court that's conceivably a possibility, which just postpones.
Speaker 3 (15:08):
All of this process. Everyone who's waiting on this.
Speaker 2 (15:12):
There's different estimates between let's say, one hundred and thirty
to two hundred and fifty billion dollars or so they
might not get their refunds now or for another four
or five years.
Speaker 1 (15:23):
And you'll be right there. Jonathan, thank you so much
for talking with us. Jonathan Lieberman is the president of
New York Customs Brokers. Jonathan, thank you, Thank you so much.
Speaker 3 (15:32):
Stay Staf, thank you again.
Speaker 1 (15:39):
This show is produced by Stacy Wong and Jasmine JT.
Speaker 2 (15:42):
Green.
Speaker 1 (15:43):
Magnus Hendrickson is our supervising producer. Sam Rogan handles engineering
and Dave Purcell factchecks, special thanks to Jeff Muscus, Julia Rubin,
Maria Ling, and Angel Recio. If you have a minute,
please rate and review the show. It means a lot
to us. And if you have a story that should
be our business, send us an email out. Everybody's at
Bloomberg dot net. That's that's everybody's with an s at
(16:04):
Bloomberg dot net. Thank you for listening, and see you guys.
Mm hmm.
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