President Trump has gone ahead and ordered the imposition of 25% duties on various products that are made in China.
List #1
President Trump originally made his announcement of his intent to impose duties back on May 29, 2018. The original list of products to be subject to the duties was published by the USTR on April 6, 2018 and included 1333 tariff lines (listed at the 8 digit U.S. HTS level). After a public comment period, the list has now been reduced to 818 tariff lines at the 8 digit U.S. HTS level. Customs and Border Protection will begin assessing these duties on July 6, 2018. The list of 818 tariff lines can be found on the following USTR site. The value of these 818 lines is estimated to be roughly $34 billion in value.
We highly recommend that our importers take a close look at this list of 818 tariff lines to confirm whether their products will or will not be subject to the 25% tariff.
List #2
President Trump has issued a second list of products with 284 tariff lines that he is also proposing to impose tariffs on. This is a new list that includes tariff numbers that were not on the original list published back in April. As with the first list, the USTR has opened up the second list to a commentary period before actually imposing the tariffs. We also recommend that importers review this second list carefully. Some categories I notice from this second list include the following:
– raw plastic products
– simple plastic products (tubes, pipes, hoses, etc.)
– plastic sheeting (both adhesive and non-adhesive)
– various DC and AC motors / generators
– integrated circuits (CPUs and Memory)
– various motorcycles
If you are importing a product that is on this second list, you can consider submitting a comment to the USTR during this current public comment period.
Exemptions
The USTR has indicated that they will provide a mechanism for requesting exclusion of products from the 25% duty. We’ll post instructions once we see that the USTR has published them on the Federal Register.
