What’s Actually Happening With US Tariffs

TRADE NEWS

America is now on its third tariff regime in five months. The Section 122 surcharge—the flat 10% duty that has covered nearly every US import since February—expired last Thursday. Within the same minute, a new Section 301 tariff took its place.

Section 122 was always a bridge, not a destination. It was rushed into place in February after the Supreme Court struck down Trump's original IEEPA tariffs, but it came with hard limits: a 15% ceiling, a 150-day maximum duration, and no way to extend without Congress. Congress didn't act. The 150-day clock simply ran out.

What replaced it is Section 301: a new tariff layer of 10–12.5% covering products from roughly 60 countries, administered by the US Trade Representative. Section 301 exists to punish "unfair trade practices"—intellectual property theft, forced technology transfer, market-access barriers—and it's the most legally durable tariff authority Washington has. Where Section 122 was a blunt, uniform surcharge on a ticking clock, Section 301 is targeted, country-by-country, and open-ended.

For most importers, the total duty burden barely moved. A Chinese-origin product that once faced 145% under the original IEEPA regime is now closer to 34% when you stack the new Section 301 layer with existing surcharges. The average trade-weighted US tariff rate is expected to hold around 11–13%—still the highest since the 1940s.

The bigger picture is legal, not economic. In five months, the administration has moved from emergency authority (IEEPA, struck down) to balance-of-payments authority (Section 122, expired) to unfair-practices authority (Section 301, hard to challenge). Each step has narrowed the legal exposure while keeping the tariff wall standing.

For importers, three actions matter now: reclassify affected entries under the new Section 301 codes, review country-of-origin documentation for the 80 covered nations, and check whether any pending refund claims from the IEEPA period are still recoverable.