The scope is close to total. As of 12:01 a.m. Eastern on July 24, new tariffs apply to 60 economies covering roughly 99.4 percent of US imports [2].
The instrument is Section 301 of the Trade Act of 1974 and the stated justification is forced labor. Seventeen economies that committed to forced-labor import bans - among them Canada, India, Mexico and the United Kingdom - pay 10 percent; the other 43 pay 12.5 [1].
The US Trade Representative, Jamieson Greer, framed it as closing an enforcement gap: 'The United States has had a forced labor import ban for nearly a century, and rigorously enforces it; it's well past time for our trading partners to do the same' [1].
What is carved out is the more revealing document. Oil, natural gas and fertilizer are exempt [2] - three commodities whose prices are the most politically visible in the country right now, with gasoline above $4 a gallon, and the ones the schedule leaves alone.
The exemption annex rewards a close read too. It lists 2,120 tariff codes across all 60 economies, but only 863 are exempt as entered; 541 codes are exempt only for civil-aircraft goods and 700 only for pharmaceutical goods [3]. The headline number of exemptions is more than double the number of things actually exempt.
The Yale Budget Lab puts the effective US tariff rate at 11.8 percent before this action, and expects one to two points more [2]. Goods already in transit had until July 28 [3].
