This newsroom reported on Saturday that the new tariffs cover 99.4 percent of US imports, and that oil, natural gas and fertilizer are exempt. The development since is that the people paying them have gone to court.
Small businesses including Learning Resources, Burlap and Barrel and Collective Horology filed suit at the US Court of International Trade, challenging the Section 301 forced-labor tariffs [1].
The tariffs took effect at 12:01 in the morning on Friday, July 24. The structure is two-tier: 10 percent on 19 trading partners, among them Canada, Mexico, the European Union, the United Kingdom, India and Taiwan; 12.5 percent on 41 others, including China, Japan, South Korea, Australia, Brazil and Russia [2].
Together they cover 99.4 percent of US imports, and they replaced the expiring Section 122 levies [2].
The choice of plaintiff is worth noticing. These are not multinationals with trade counsel on retainer - a company that sells spices, a company that sells classroom materials, a company that sells watches. They are the importers of record on their own shipments, which means the duty lands on them directly and immediately, on goods ordered months before the rate existed.
What the court is being asked is narrow and consequential: whether Section 301, an authority built for responding to unfair foreign trade practices, reaches a near-universal tariff justified on forced-labor grounds.
That question has not been answered, and the tariffs are being collected while it is pending. We are not predicting how it comes out.
