[00:00:01] Speaker 00: is 20-1734 National Association versus Treasury. [00:00:08] Speaker 00: Could you tell me how to pronounce your name, sir? [00:00:11] Speaker 02: Yes, Flingy. [00:00:13] Speaker 00: Flingy. [00:00:13] Speaker 00: Okay. [00:00:14] Speaker 00: Mr. Flingy, whenever you're ready. [00:00:17] Speaker 02: May it please the Court, I am August Flingy with the Department of Justice here on behalf of the United States. [00:00:23] Speaker 02: We think the core concept underlying this dispute is straightforward. [00:00:28] Speaker 02: In the substitution drawback provision, [00:00:30] Speaker 02: Congress wanted to allow a drawback of duties, taxes, and fees to promote export and allow fair competition between overseas and domestic producers. [00:00:43] Speaker 02: Thus, an import could be substituted for a comparable export and get the same tax treatment as if the domestically produced product was sold in the United States. [00:00:53] Speaker 02: But Congress was quite clear in guarding against abuse of this privilege by prohibiting an importer exporter from counting a drawback twice. [00:01:02] Speaker 02: Thus, Congress said that merchandise that is exported to satisfy any claim for drawback [00:01:09] Speaker 02: shall now not be the basis for any other claim for drawback. [00:01:13] Speaker 00: This is Judge Crouse, I'm sorry, but historically Congress has had an opportunity to legislate the changes included in your rule and it's resisted that temptation, correct? [00:01:31] Speaker 02: Congress has not passed anything since 2004 directly relevant to the issue before the court. [00:01:38] Speaker 02: And there have been proposals, and there was a prior rulemaking that didn't get concluded. [00:01:43] Speaker 02: But we don't think that tells us anything about what Congress meant in the 2004 amendment and in 1313-V. [00:01:50] Speaker 01: Instead... Okay, Counsel, this is Judge Raina. [00:01:54] Speaker 01: Specifically address the Trade Facilitation Act and what it did or did not do with respect to the rule. [00:02:03] Speaker 02: The TFTEA simplified some of the drawback provisions, but did not address this issue at all. [00:02:10] Speaker 02: And we would submit that plaintiff's reliance on this and some of the discussion by the Court of International Trade was not a reliable source of legislative history. [00:02:24] Speaker 02: And that when the House report on TIFTA talked about preserving treatment for wine, it was referencing the substitution standards. [00:02:33] Speaker 02: It was not referring to how double drawback of excise taxes would be treated. [00:02:40] Speaker 01: Does it say that? [00:02:42] Speaker 01: Does the act actually say what you just argued? [00:02:46] Speaker 02: Well, the act doesn't address J2 at all. [00:02:50] Speaker 02: It addresses a bunch of other provisions [00:02:53] Speaker 02: And it does not address the language added in subsection J2 in 2004 that we think gives rise to the current dispute. [00:03:02] Speaker 02: We think it's the far more relevant history of enactment is to look what happened in 2004. [00:03:10] Speaker 02: And I think that really tells us why plaintiffs are incorrect on their theory that the 2004 legislation resulted in a dramatic change in the legal landscape with respect to how excise taxes are handled under the substitution drawback system. [00:03:26] Speaker 01: But going back to the TIFTA, it seems to me that Congress was clear there that the amount of drawback was to be paid was to be equal to the amount of the duties or taxes [00:03:40] Speaker 01: that would apply to an exported article, if the exported article were imported. [00:03:45] Speaker 01: That seems to be clear, plain language, clear, and that runs contrary to your rule. [00:03:57] Speaker 02: Sure, Your Honor. [00:03:57] Speaker 02: I think you're referring to 1313L1, and the lower court talked about this, and the L1 provision [00:04:11] Speaker 02: excuse me, the L provision was, you're right, simplified. [00:04:16] Speaker 02: But we submit that the reason for that was to make clear that you took the lesser value of the possible drawback. [00:04:28] Speaker 02: So you couldn't substitute. [00:04:30] Speaker 01: But that's contrary to the language of the statute. [00:04:35] Speaker 01: You're applying a lesser [00:04:37] Speaker 01: a value concept to something that says it equals the amount of duties that would apply if the exporter's article were exported. [00:04:50] Speaker 02: Well, subsection L speaks to how to determine the calculation of amounts refunded as drawback. [00:04:58] Speaker 02: So subsection L tells you what the drawback amount will be. [00:05:03] Speaker 02: It does not tell you how to apply the drawback anti-abuse provision in subsection V. And just like subsection J2, subsection L says, here's what counts as the drawback. [00:05:13] Speaker 01: It tells you what the amount should be. [00:05:15] Speaker 01: It should be equal to something else. [00:05:18] Speaker 01: Your rule says that the amount should be less than something else. [00:05:23] Speaker 01: Isn't that contrary to the language, the plain language of the statute? [00:05:28] Speaker 02: No, Your Honor. [00:05:29] Speaker 02: It's not contrary to subsection L or subsection J2. [00:05:34] Speaker 02: Again, subsection L tells you how to calculate the amount of the drawback. [00:05:37] Speaker 02: If you have a low value good and you exchange it for a value with a high duty, you're going to draw back the amount of the low value good. [00:05:45] Speaker 02: But that is only the beginning of the process. [00:05:48] Speaker 02: This is a complicated statutory scheme. [00:05:51] Speaker 02: Go ahead. [00:05:52] Speaker 04: Counsel, I haven't... This is Judge Lorry. [00:05:54] Speaker 04: I haven't heard the word notwithstanding mentioned yet. [00:05:58] Speaker 04: And your argument appears to be notwithstanding, notwithstanding, you should win. [00:06:04] Speaker 04: But doesn't that provision work against you? [00:06:10] Speaker 02: Your Honor, I think now we're moving to the right enactment to really focus on, which is the 2004 law, which added that notwithstanding term. [00:06:21] Speaker 02: It also changed the relevant provision of J2 to say, [00:06:26] Speaker 02: to refer to taxes imposed upon entry from taxes imposed because of entry. [00:06:33] Speaker 02: Let me talk about the notwithstanding term. [00:06:37] Speaker 02: The notwithstanding term was added to explain that irrespective of the type of tax or duty, those sorts of transactions resulted in that being a drawback notwithstanding other law. [00:06:52] Speaker 02: In other words, notwithstanding how the Internal Revenue Code might define it. [00:06:56] Speaker 02: That only gets you, again, to the next question is, what do you do with the drawback? [00:07:01] Speaker 02: Well, subsection V tells you there's an anti-abuse provision that applies and several other anti-abuse provisions that also limit when that drawback can actually be collected. [00:07:12] Speaker 02: So, we think the notwithstanding provision does not carry the weight that the district court placed on it. [00:07:18] Speaker 02: The notwithstanding provision ensures [00:07:21] Speaker 02: insurers that an excise tax is counted as something that could be drawn back, but then you have to look at the anti-abuse provision. [00:07:30] Speaker 04: Does the anti-abuse provision... Actually, it's the Court of International Trade, not the District Court. [00:07:37] Speaker 02: I'm very sorry, Your Honor. [00:07:38] Speaker 02: Yes, the Court of International Trade, we think, placed too much weight on that notwithstanding provision, which was designed to define when a tax [00:07:50] Speaker 02: fee or duty could be subject to drawback, but not to override or override the anti-abuse provision for double drawbacks. [00:08:01] Speaker 02: And I want to take us back to the history of that 2004 law that we're all discussing here. [00:08:07] Speaker 00: Well, before you do that, can I add this in notwithstanding the notwithstanding word? [00:08:13] Speaker 00: The provisions that govern drawbacks refer to drawbacks where a tax is paid or determined, right? [00:08:21] Speaker 00: And you would have us expand that. [00:08:24] Speaker 00: You tell us that the situation of exportation from a bondage facility without the payment of tax is still a drawback. [00:08:33] Speaker 00: And I'm not appreciating and understanding what I think is your redefinition of a drawback. [00:08:39] Speaker 00: So can you help me out with that too? [00:08:40] Speaker 02: Sure. [00:08:43] Speaker 02: Sure, Your Honor. [00:08:43] Speaker 02: And I want to, the Court of International Trade [00:08:47] Speaker 02: found that the plain language of the statute only counted certain drawbacks, and we think that was incorrect, and there are a couple reasons. [00:09:01] Speaker 02: First, as the coordinate of international trade said, the statute doesn't define drawback. [00:09:09] Speaker 02: It leaves that for the agency to do, and that's what the agency has endeavored to do here. [00:09:16] Speaker 02: Statutes have used the term drawback to refer to exactly what we're talking about here since 1789. [00:09:21] Speaker 02: The first trade law in 1789 used drawback to refer to an excise tax that doesn't need to be paid because of export. [00:09:35] Speaker 02: That is the meaning that the agency adopted here, which is straightforward and runs through the trade laws since the beginning of the republic. [00:09:42] Speaker 02: Third, the Supreme Court talked about this concept in the Pasevant case over 100 years ago. [00:09:48] Speaker 02: And it talked about the substance of the transaction rather than the specific label given to it. [00:09:55] Speaker 02: And the substance is, and this is a quote, a device resorted to for enabling a commodity affected by taxes to be exported and sold in the foreign market on the same terms as if it had not been taxed at all, end quote. [00:10:09] Speaker 02: And the words that used for that were bonification, refund, rebate, remission, bonus, and drawback. [00:10:18] Speaker 02: This is a well-understood concept that Congress has called a drawback since the beginning of the Republic, that Congress in 1313D also calls it a drawback, an export where the determined tax is not paid. [00:10:37] Speaker 02: So we submit that [00:10:38] Speaker 02: In order to have a consistent meaning of the term drawback, these transactions when a product is exported and therefore excise taxes are not paid, that counts as a drawback. [00:10:54] Speaker 02: And it's certainly reasonable for the agency to interpret that way. [00:10:57] Speaker 00: What about claim for drawback? [00:11:00] Speaker 00: It's an odd way you're talking about categorizing from a bonded facility without the payment of tax is a claim for a drawback. [00:11:11] Speaker 00: That's your argument, right? [00:11:12] Speaker 00: Isn't that an odd way to use the word claim? [00:11:15] Speaker 00: What's the claim? [00:11:18] Speaker 02: Well, Congress spoke broadly of any claim for drawback, which to us suggests that Congress wanted that term [00:11:26] Speaker 02: interpreted broadly to assure there wasn't abuse. [00:11:29] Speaker 00: And I want to stress that- What's being drawn back if something is exported free of tax? [00:11:36] Speaker 02: It is the tax liability that would have been paid if it had been sold in the United States. [00:11:42] Speaker 02: And again, that is what Passivant talks about. [00:11:45] Speaker 02: That's what Congress talked about in 1789. [00:11:47] Speaker 01: There's nothing uncontrover- Council, so what's being drawn back if there has been nothing paid at all? [00:11:57] Speaker 02: As I said, it is the liability that would be paid if the product was sold in the United States. [00:12:05] Speaker 02: It is the drawback of that potential liability or the cancellation of that liability. [00:12:10] Speaker 01: And again, the IRC says... That sounds like the calculation of liability of the tax that would accrue or would apply if the product was sold in the U.S. [00:12:22] Speaker 01: Customs Territory, but drawback [00:12:26] Speaker 01: It's simply what the name infers. [00:12:29] Speaker 01: You're taking something back. [00:12:31] Speaker 01: You're refunding something that's been paid. [00:12:33] Speaker 01: Under your definition, you can have a drawback and nothing never having been paid. [00:12:41] Speaker 02: Yes. [00:12:41] Speaker 02: We think that's what Congress meant when it said any claim of drawback. [00:12:45] Speaker 02: It was speaking broadly. [00:12:46] Speaker 02: It was incorporating 200 years of jurisprudence saying that this type of transaction is treated as a drawback. [00:12:56] Speaker 02: And we certainly think it was reasonable for the agency to interpret that way. [00:13:00] Speaker 02: When the statute uses drawback in 1313B, when the Judiciary Act of 1789 uses it that way, when the Supreme Court says it uses that way, when the CBP regs in 1999 use it that way, and when it's- Council, are you familiar with a VAT tax? [00:13:20] Speaker 02: I'm sorry, I'm not. [00:13:22] Speaker 01: You're not, okay. [00:13:23] Speaker 01: It's a value added tax. [00:13:25] Speaker 01: Okay. [00:13:25] Speaker 02: I'm not going to be able to comment on that, but we can address it in supplemental briefing if that would be helpful. [00:13:31] Speaker 02: I see my time has expired. [00:13:33] Speaker 02: I would like to save like a minute or so for rebuttal if that's possible. [00:13:37] Speaker 00: Yes, we will do that. [00:13:38] Speaker 02: If the question has no further questions. [00:13:40] Speaker 00: Thanks. [00:13:40] Speaker 00: Sure. [00:13:40] Speaker 00: Absolutely. [00:13:41] Speaker 00: Mr. Keisler? [00:13:43] Speaker 03: Thank you, Your Honor, and may it please the Court, Peter Keisler, on behalf of the Appalachians. [00:13:48] Speaker 03: I'd like to begin, if I might, with the questions raised by Chief Judge Prost and Judge Raina as to what Congress did in Teftia, and also what Judge Laurie asked about concerning the notwithstanding clause, because I think what those questions highlight is that the rule at issue here can't be reconciled either. [00:14:06] Speaker 03: with the text of the governing statutes or with congress' repeated rejection over the last sixteen years of the policy that the rule seeks to impose. [00:14:16] Speaker 03: So to begin with TIFTIA, TIFTIA did three things of relevance here. [00:14:20] Speaker 03: First, as Judge Reyna said, it established a mandatory calculation methodology in 1313L2. [00:14:27] Speaker 03: And what L2 says is that the methodology must be 99% of the lesser of [00:14:33] Speaker 03: either what was paid on the import or what would have been paid on the export if it had been imported, meaning the excise taxes that would have applied to the export were imported. [00:14:45] Speaker 03: Customs has flouted that principle because what it says instead is it will refuse to refund what was actually paid [00:14:55] Speaker 03: on the export, but the calculation methodology says that what was actually paid on the export is not the measure. [00:15:01] Speaker 03: It's what would have been paid had it been imported when there would have been an excise tax applied. [00:15:06] Speaker 03: But Tiftia did two other things of relevance here as well. [00:15:10] Speaker 03: At the time Tiftia was enacted, customs had been paying substitution drawback on wine for over a decade. [00:15:17] Speaker 03: No one else among the alcoholic beverage community was able to claim substitution drawback because the standard for substitutability was much different and harder to meet for other beverages. [00:15:27] Speaker 03: But wine had an easier substitution standard, so it was getting substitution drawback paid. [00:15:33] Speaker 03: So TIFTIA did two other things. [00:15:35] Speaker 03: First, it said in the conference report that the existing treatment of wine would be preserved. [00:15:40] Speaker 03: And second, it expanded the substitution standard so that for the first time, spirits and beer would also be eligible for substitution drawback. [00:15:49] Speaker 03: Now, as to the notwithstanding clause that Judge Laurie mentioned, that was passed in 2004 precisely as customs admitted below to overrule customs headquarters decisions which had denied excise tax drawback on alcoholic beverages. [00:16:07] Speaker 03: And the notwithstanding clause at a minimum has to be construed to effectuate the precise purpose for which Customs admits it was added to the statute, which was to overrule Customs' previous denial of excise tax drawback. [00:16:23] Speaker 03: But the statutory problems here run even further, and that goes to the question Chief Judge Probst asked later on, which is the definition of drawback in the statute. [00:16:35] Speaker 03: Because the basic essential legal premise of customs theory here is that every untaxed export [00:16:44] Speaker 03: of alcoholic beverages itself constitutes a claim for drawback. [00:16:49] Speaker 03: And that's why they say relying on that export to claim substitution drawback on an import is an impermissible second drawback prohibited by 1313b. [00:17:00] Speaker 03: But the text doesn't permit that theory because when there's merely an export without payment of tax, there's no drawback and there's no claim. [00:17:10] Speaker 03: So the two necessary elements of a claim for drawback are both missing. [00:17:15] Speaker 03: So first of all, as to the meaning of drawback, the term appears in many, many statutes in the U.S. [00:17:20] Speaker 03: Code, and none of them. [00:17:22] Speaker 00: Could you include a response to your friend's argument, which I think he noted a couple times, that this goes back to the 1700s? [00:17:30] Speaker 03: Well, substitution drawback does not go back to the 1700s. [00:17:34] Speaker 03: The earliest stages of drawback [00:17:37] Speaker 03: did begin in seventeen eighty nine but what we're dealing with here is something that was added in the modern europe in nineteen eighty four specifically for the purpose of encouraging exports [00:17:49] Speaker 03: And that was supposed to provide and does provide a tax benefit to those companies which increase their exporting activity because that, Congress believed, encourages manufacturing and encourages jobs. [00:18:03] Speaker 03: So the ancient history of drawback isn't really relevant here. [00:18:07] Speaker 03: What is relevant is how, in the modern era, Congress has used that word. [00:18:13] Speaker 03: And the tax code on this is really very clear because [00:18:17] Speaker 03: The word appears in lots and lots of provisions, and not once does any provision use it the way customs uses it in this rule, as customs in fact admits. [00:18:28] Speaker 03: The only provisions in the code that classify exports as drawback are those that apply to the very small minority of instances in which the excise tax has already been paid or determined prior to exporting. [00:18:42] Speaker 03: By contrast, the provisions that apply in the normal course [00:18:46] Speaker 03: To the vast majority of alcoholic beverage exports, where they are just removed from the bonded facility directly for export and no tax is ever paid or determined, those provisions never classify the export as drawback at all. [00:19:00] Speaker 03: And that's because, as Judge Raina said, for those exports, there is no payment or determination to be drawn back. [00:19:08] Speaker 03: and the cases from the supreme court and this court and other court are legion that say that when congress includes a term in some provisions and excluded from others in the supplies in particular when you're talking about a specialized legal term of art like drawback when congress included in some places and omitted in others then an agency have to respect what congress has done and here customs has done the opposite indiscriminately applied the the word drawback every export [00:19:38] Speaker 00: and the cases are clear. [00:19:40] Speaker 00: Mr. Kaiser, can I take you back to the point you were making about notwithstanding? [00:19:44] Speaker 00: Because government says you can't just interpret notwithstanding to mean the statute overrides literally every other provision of law. [00:19:53] Speaker 00: And in your brief, I think wisely, you kind of agree with that. [00:19:57] Speaker 00: And you say everyone agrees that notwithstanding may not be taken to its logical extreme and that both subsection V and other provisions in section 13.13 can appropriately limit substitution drawback. [00:20:10] Speaker 00: So my question to you is, how do we know then when to draw the line? [00:20:15] Speaker 03: yet well i think i think your honor has stated it correctly which is that the cases say that you don't interpreted notwithstanding cause literally to that extreme if it obliterate every other provision that might apply [00:20:27] Speaker 03: So, for example, the government says that our reading would mean that 1313N doesn't apply to drawback, but 1313N says it applies for purposes of J2. [00:20:38] Speaker 03: So, of course, it applies despite the notwithstanding clause. [00:20:42] Speaker 03: But the two principles that I would urge on the court are, first, it has to be given some meaning. [00:20:48] Speaker 03: And customs gives it no meaning at all. [00:20:50] Speaker 03: The government hasn't identified a single respect in which it says that the notwithstanding clause limits what the government can do under drawback. [00:20:58] Speaker 03: So first, it has to have some meaning. [00:21:00] Speaker 03: And second, at a minimum, it should have a meaning that is in keeping with the specific purpose that Congress enacted it to accomplish. [00:21:08] Speaker 03: And as customs acknowledged below, [00:21:10] Speaker 03: Here, the notwithstanding clause was enacted specifically to overrule the customs decisions denying excise tax drawback. [00:21:19] Speaker 03: So the court doesn't need in this case to figure out what the outer limits are because this lies within the core of the reason it was enacted. [00:21:28] Speaker 03: But I would also add, Your Honor, that even if the notwithstanding clause didn't exist, it's obviously a very strong argument for us, but even if it didn't exist, [00:21:37] Speaker 03: the result would be the same, because it would still be customs burden to justify its definition of drawback to include every export, regardless of whether Congress called it drawback or not. [00:21:51] Speaker 03: And in addition, customs would have to separately demonstrate that an export without payment of tax somehow constitutes a claim for drawback. [00:22:01] Speaker 03: And as Your Honor pointed out, that is a separate legal issue here, because when there's merely an export without payment of tax, no one is making any claim against the government for anything. [00:22:14] Speaker 03: And in arguing to the contrary, the only thing the government points to in its brief is its own form. [00:22:21] Speaker 03: But they're in the appendix and they prove our point. [00:22:23] Speaker 03: They track the statutory distinctions between drawback and non-drawback and claimed and no claims exactly. [00:22:32] Speaker 03: The forms that apply to the minority of instances in which tax was already paid or determined, they talk about claims. [00:22:39] Speaker 03: There's a claim number on that form. [00:22:41] Speaker 03: They talk about drawback and they require the person filing the form to certify that it is entitled to drawback in the amount claimed. [00:22:49] Speaker 03: The other forms, the ones that apply to the vast majority of exports and that operate under the statutory provisions that say where tax hasn't been paid or determined, the good can simply be exported from the bonded facility and those statutes never use drawback. [00:23:05] Speaker 03: The forms, likewise, never use the word drawback, never use the word claim, don't assign a claim number, don't require the filer to certify that it is entitled to the amount claimed. [00:23:16] Speaker 03: So, neither is there a claim nor is there a drawback, not only under the statutes, but under the forms that customs itself has prepared, because it's only in this rule that customs, for the first time, Chief Judge Proffitt, you said, redefined the meaning of drawback and added to the regulation for the first time the proposition that drawback includes simply the remission of excise taxes that are not paid on the exports. [00:23:43] Speaker 03: And in addition to being irreconcilable with the particular textual provisions that govern here, that's just a broader reflection of the fact that customs policy is irreconcilable with Congress's repeated rejection over the last 16 years. [00:24:00] Speaker 03: In 2004, when they added the notwithstanding clause, [00:24:03] Speaker 03: in 2016 when they enacted TIFTIA with its precise calculation methodology preserving the treatment of wine and expanding the substitution standard so as to enable other alcoholic beverages to enjoy the treatment that wine had enjoyed for over a decade. [00:24:21] Speaker 03: And we've noted in our brief, and I won't repeat it here, but all the touch points in between 2004 and 2016 where Congress rejected legislation that would have adopted customs rule, where customs proposed a rule to accomplish in 2009 what it seeks to accomplish here, and withdrew it in the face of congressional opposition. [00:24:42] Speaker 03: In all of these instances, I don't know of a case [00:24:45] Speaker 03: in which there has been a more consistent history with as many touch points over the course of this number of years. [00:24:53] Speaker 03: in which an agency has repeatedly tried to implement a policy and congress has repeatedly rebuffed it and mr flenji talked about legislative history this is not mere legislative history this is a legislative chronology which includes affirmative enactment into law in two thousand four when the notwithstanding clause with added and in two thousand sixteen when tiff kia was enacted which embody that policy [00:25:22] Speaker 03: And if the court has no further questions? [00:25:27] Speaker 00: Hearing none. [00:25:28] Speaker 03: Thank you, Your Honor. [00:25:30] Speaker 00: Thank you very much. [00:25:32] Speaker 00: Mr. Flungy, I don't know how much time you had left, but two or three minutes ought to do it, I hope. [00:25:39] Speaker 02: Sure. [00:25:40] Speaker 02: I just want to make two quick points on rebuttal. [00:25:43] Speaker 02: The first has to do with the purpose of the substitution drawback scheme. [00:25:49] Speaker 02: Council on the other side says, well, it's to encourage exports, but it's also to have level the playing field, to have these compete fairly. [00:25:57] Speaker 02: And what they're asking this court to do, and Congress hasn't clearly done it, what they're asking this court to do is to create an excise tax-free zone for imports into the United States of alcohol, of cigarettes, of gasoline. [00:26:11] Speaker 02: That is not possibly what Congress intended. [00:26:14] Speaker 02: And that brings me to my second point, which is the 2004 enactment. [00:26:18] Speaker 02: The other side said repeatedly that was designed to expressly designed to allow excise tax drawbacks, but it wasn't designed to allow double excise tax drawbacks. [00:26:31] Speaker 02: And in fact, the legislative history of that enactment, which changed two minor things in J2 said very specifically, the point of that was to address this court's decision on the Harbor maintenance tax. [00:26:45] Speaker 02: Congress was focused on the Harbor maintenance tax. [00:26:47] Speaker 02: The excise tax is 50 times the size of the harbor maintenance tax. [00:26:51] Speaker 02: And it's shocking that the legislative history would focus on the harbor maintenance tax, but make no mention of the excise tax. [00:26:59] Speaker 02: What actually happened was Congress broadened with that notwithstanding clause, what could be counted as drawback. [00:27:06] Speaker 02: Excise taxes are now potentially countable, but it didn't change this anti-abuse provision. [00:27:13] Speaker 02: It didn't alter the ability of commerce [00:27:17] Speaker 02: and under 1313 V to ensure that drawbacks were counted only once per substitution. [00:27:24] Speaker 02: That's all that the Commerce Department did here. [00:27:28] Speaker 02: And a ruling the other way will lead a significant imbalance by allowing excise tax-free imports into the United States, which Congress certainly never addressed specifically, and it should not be addressed now that we have reasonable regulations preventing that. [00:27:47] Speaker 02: Thanks very much. [00:27:48] Speaker 00: Thank you. [00:27:49] Speaker 00: We thank both sides. [00:27:51] Speaker 00: The case is submitted and that concludes our proceedings for this morning. [00:27:54] Speaker 00: Thank you. [00:28:00] Speaker 02: The Honorable Court is adjourned until tomorrow morning at 10 a.m.