The claim is precise enough to check, which is the only reason it is worth checking.
Jamieson Greer, the US Trade Representative, told Fox News's Special Report on Monday: 'The new Section 301 duties are imposed on a smaller group of countries than a 10 per cent temporary tariff, which were universal' [1].
Start with what is true. Section 122's surcharge was universal - a flat 10 percent on everything. The Section 301 action names 60 economies, so it is not literally universal. Greer is describing a real difference.
Now the size of it. Those 60 economies account, by USTR's own figure, for 99.4 percent of US imports by value [2]. The narrowing is six-tenths of one percentage point.
While coverage fell by 0.6 points, the rate went the other way. Of the 60 economies, 19 are at 10 percent and 41 are at 12.5 percent [2] - a 25 percent relative increase for more than two-thirds of them.
A smaller group paying a higher rate on 99.4 percent of what the country imports is not a narrowing an importer will notice as one.
What an importer notices is the invoice. Collective Horology, a Ventura, California distributor for about twenty independent watchmakers, expects three inbound shipments worth $69,000 to carry $8,280 in duty [3]. That is exactly 12.0 percent, and it is a number the company put in a court filing rather than a press release.
One thing this piece does not do: a widely circulated paraphrase has Greer saying the tariffs 'won't have an economic impact.' That phrase is not inside quotation marks in the reporting [1], and we are not attributing it to him without a transcript.
