အပိုင်း ၃၀၁၊ IEEPA၊ အပိုင်း ၁၂၂: တရုတ်အပေါ် အမေရိကန်၏ အခွန်ကောက်ခံမှုများအတွက် ရိုးရှင်းသော အင်္ဂလိပ်လမ်းညွှန်

 

 

If you are importing from China in 2026, you have likely already seen that the duty charge on a single container can be traced to three separate legal agencies at once. A shipment of consumer electronics could be subject to a Section 301 duty from a 2018 probe, a residual Section 122 surcharge from earlier in the year and a forced-labor duty that just began to apply at the end of July. None of these three programmes have the same name, a legal foundation, or even a government office of origin. But they all end up on the same customs entry and are put together. This article runs over what each is, how they came to be side by side and what has actually changed on the ground for shippers transporting goods out of China.

The short version: Section 301 is the lengthy, product-specific tariff regime that has been taxing Chinese goods since 2018. IEEPA was the President’s quick, broad, deficit-driven weapon for countrywide tariffs. The Supreme Court shut it down in February 2026. Section 122, a 150-day patch to maintain a flat surcharge in place while the administration regrouped, expired on time in July. Here’s a breakdown of each item, then how they stack up in a real submission.

Three Laws, One Invoice

It helps start by asking the question of why the United States has three overlapping tariff programmes rather than one. Section 301 of the Trade Act of 1974 was created for a particular purpose: to punish a single trading partner for specific unfair acts uncovered by a formal enquiry. It is slow to start, hard to change, but once it is put there it tends to stay, because to get rid of it takes the same sort of administrative effort that got it there.

IEEPA was never meant to be a tariff law. “It’s a national emergency powers statute to freeze assets and sanctions in real national emergencies.” Its quickness appealed to the administration: A president could declare an emergency and apply tariffs nationwide in a matter of days, then alter the rate by proclamation when negotiations bogged down. And that flexibility is just what the Supreme Court found problematic — Congress never wrote IEEPA to hand away open-ended taxation authority.

Section 122 is in the middle. It was written into the Trade Act of 1974 as a genuine emergency valve for balance-of-payments crises. It was restricted to a maximum rate of 15 percent and a maximum period of 150 days unless Congress votes to extend it. Section 122 was the easiest legal refuge when the IEEPA tariffs fell apart—even if its legislative purpose doesn’t seem to fit a chronic trade deficit.

Section 301: The Tariffs That Never Left

The Section 301 tariffs on China are from 2018, when the first Trump administration found in a probe of technology transfer and intellectual property practices that Chinese trade conduct was unfair and hindered US commerce. The tariffs were put out in tranches called List 1 through List 4A. The first two lists took effect July 6, 2018 and Aug. 23, 2018, and other lists were added in September 2018 and August 2019.

The Biden administration conducted a statutory four-year assessment under the Trade Act, and raised tariffs again in 2024 on a list of strategic products, with subsequent hikes phased in through 2025 and into 2026. The largest increases were for electric vehicles, EV batteries, solar cells, ship-to-shore cranes, syringes and needles, and a variety of key minerals. The tariff on Chinese EVs was effectively set high enough to block out that section of the U.S. market entirely.

A second mandatory four-year review was initiated on May 6, 2026, offering domestic industries the possibility to ask for the original 2018 steps to be extended. Tariff actions are meant to expire automatically on their four-year anniversaries in the absence of opposition, but historically the review process has extended rather than abolished them, and few experts expect this round to conclude differently.

Current Section 301 Rate Bands by List

ပုဒ်မ ၃၀၁ စာရင်း	ထိရောက်သောနေ့ရက်	ပုံမှန်နှုန်းထား အတိုင်းအတာ	Example Coverage
စာရင်း 1	ဇူလိုင်လ 6, 2018	25%	Industrial machinery, aerospace parts
စာရင်း 2	သြဂုတ်လ 23, 2018	25%	Plastics, chemicals, semiconductors
စာရင်း 3	စက်တင်ဘာလ 21, 2018	25%	Broad consumer and industrial goods
စာရင်း ၄က	August 20, 2019 (later reduced, then adjusted)	7.5%	Apparel, footwear, consumer electronics
Strategic-sector increases	Phased, September 2024 to January 2026	25% မှ 100%	EVs, EV batteries, solar cells, cranes, syringes, critical minerals
Forced-labor duty	ဇူလိုင်လ 24, 2026	12.5%	All China-origin goods, no product exemptions

Since 2022, a separate and more restrictive set of exclusions has gone through numerous rounds of extension and now encompasses 178 product lines, comprising 164 general exclusions and 14 exclusions for solar production equipment. Under the trade deal hammered up in the November 2025 Trump-Xi summit, such exclusions are valid through Nov. 10, 2026, and no fresh window for exclusion requests opens in the meanwhile.

IEEPA: Rise, Reach, and Reversal

IEEPA duties were the widest and most apparent element of the 2025 trade agenda, and were imposed not just on China, but on practically all US trading partners in the name of resolving large and persistent trade deficits. Rates varied in each nation and were changed constantly in bilateral agreements . This is one of the reasons why so many importers found the period to be a moving target rather than a fixed cost .

That edifice went up in smoke on February 20, 2026, when the Supreme Court decided Learning Resources, Inc. v. Trump and the consolidated case Trump v. V.O.S. Selections, Inc. Chief Justice Roberts, writing for the Court, found the President does not have the authority to apply tariffs under IEEPA, affirming a previous ruling from the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit. The verdict did not immediately end collection; US Customs and Border Protection needed an executive directive to unravel the levies, which the administration quickly provided within hours as an order rescinding the IEEPA tariff proclamations.

Next on the agenda were the refunds, which are still only half sorted. The executive order that cancelled the IEEPA tariffs did not lay out how refunds would work, leaving importers of record, downstream buyers and end customers to figure out among themselves who gets money back on duties that were often passed through the supply chain rather than absorbed at the point of import. That allocation question was still being litigated in class actions months after the verdict.

Section 122: A 150-Day Bridge

Only hours after the Supreme Court’s decision, the government issued Proclamation 11012, claiming Section 122 of the Trade Act of 1974 to impose a temporary 10 percent tariff on imports from most countries, including China. The statute allows for a surcharge of up to 15 percent for up to 150 days without an extension by Congress, and the administration applied the maximum allowable surcharge. The day after the initial declaration, the President declared that the tariff will go up to the full 15 percent for all countries.

Section 122’s exemption list largely mirrored the former IEEPA exclusion annexe, carrying over virtually the same carve-outs for commodities such as pharmaceuticals, some electronics, vital minerals, and USMCA-qualifying goods from Canada and Mexico. Section 232 and Section 301 tariffs were specifically retained and continued to operate in parallel with the new surcharge, rather than being superseded by it.

The legal underpinning under Section 122 was shakier than the administration had intended. On May 7, 2026, a divided three-judge panel of the Court of International Trade held in Oregon v. United States and Burlap and Barrel, Inc. v. United States that the 10 percent Section 122 tariff was invalid on its terms alone, but declined to issue a universal injunction and restricted relief to the specific plaintiffs before it. The government appealed and, in effect, most importers continued to pay the extra while the appeal was ongoing.

The point was somewhat academic, because the statutory clock ran out no matter how the litigation went out. Section 122 surcharges are limited by statute to 150 days, and that term ended on the final day of July 2026, closing the 10 percent China rate on time, whether or not the courts had the last word on its validity.

What Replaced Section 122 on July 24

The administration didn’t let the Section 122 surcharge vanish. On March 12, 2026, USTR had already launched new Section 301 investigations against 60 economies, including China, for failing to institute and effectively enforce a ban on imports created with forced labour. A proposed 12.5 percent tariff was issued on June 2, with a comment period until early July and a hearing scheduled on July 7.

USTR finalised the new duty July 23, and it took effect at 12:01 a.m. Eastern time on July 24, 2026, the same time the former Section 122 surcharge ended. Under the new measure, nations that have pledged to stop forced-labor imports pay a 10 percent penalty, while those that have not, including China, pay a flat 12.5 percent. It’s based on nation of origin, period, regardless of what port or country a shipment is leaving from, and it has no sunset date or rate maximum, unlike the transitory Section 122 fee it replaced.

A narrow in-transit exemption lessened the blow for items already in the water, merchandise loaded on its last vessel before to the July 24 cutoff and admitted for consumption before July 28 avoided the higher tariff, but only for ocean shipments. Air, train and truck goods also didn’t have that grace period, catching a number of expedited and cross-border transportation shipments off surprise.

Stacking the Duties on a Real Shipment

So for a business that is importing, say, kitchen appliances from Guangdong today, the landed-cost math usually stacks up three things: the base Most Favoured Nation duty rate from the general tariff schedule, whatever Section 301 rate applies to that product’s HTS classification under Lists 1 through 4A or the later strategic-sector increases, and now the 12.5 percent Section 301 forced-labor duty on top. Separate Section 232 levies on steel, aluminium and copper content apply as appropriate. The now-expired Section 122 surcharge and reciprocal IEEPA rates are simply dropped from the computation for entries lodged after the respective end-dates.

This is exactly where the importance of categorisation accuracy starts to outweigh the importance of most importers. Coverage and exemption under the new forced-labor duty are defined at the 10-digit HTS level, and a chapter-level guess is not good enough to identify whether a given product line qualifies for an exemption unique to its place of origin. A misclassification in either way results in overpaying duties on entries that should have qualified for relief, or it understates duty payable and prompts a post-entry audit.

What This Means for Sellers Sourcing from China

The practical impact of this year’s reforms is less dramatic than the headlines might suggest, but real nonetheless for e-commerce firms and small importers. The elimination of the IEEPA and Section 122 elements cut a large piece of the cost from numerous product categories, notably textiles and apparel where tariff-related increases in costs are now down to or even below 2024 levels. Categories that continued to be covered under the Section 232 and Section 301 umbrellas, including as computers, electronics, electrical equipment and fabricated metal products, retained much of their increased cost long after the IEEPA-era levies faded away.

Research from the Federal Reserve Bank of New York found that most of the tariff costs, for most of 2025, were paid domestically, by more than 90 percent. It’s a helpful reminder that a lower headline rate on paper doesn’t automatically translate into cheaper goods at checkout; it mostly determines who inside the US supply chain absorbs the difference. Many companies that expected the July 24 switchover to substantially reduce their landing costs have frequently seen the forced-labor duty cancelling out much or all of the benefit from the disappearance of the Section 122 surcharge.

The second lesson of this year is that tariff planning now has to assume greater, not less, change. In a single twelve-month period, China tariffs have been governed by three different legal regimes, and a fourth review process – the second statutory four-year assessment of the original 2018 Section 301 proceedings – is already underway, with a conclusion likely later in 2026. Contracts, pricing and sourcing decisions that presume today’s rate will hold for a year are a dangerous bet on the current track record.

Managing the Logistics Side While the Rules Keep Moving

None of this alters the core mechanics of getting items out of a Chinese plant and into a US warehouse, but it does raise the cost of getting the paperwork incorrect. A shipment misclassified at the HTS level, lodged a day late for an exemption window, or routed through the wrong mode for an in-transit exception might change a reasonable duty rate into a considerably greater one. This is where the value of an experienced logistics partner comes in – especially one where customs clearance and documentation are part of the core business, not an afterthought.

Shenzhen-based Topway Shipping, which has been in business since 2010, has built its business on just this sort of China-to-US transportation chain. The founding team has over 15 years of cumulative experience in international freight and customs clearance with a special focus on the China-US corridor that has been the epicentre of every tariff shift mentioned above. The company provides first-leg transportation from Chinese factories, US-side foreign သိုလှောင်ရုံ, customs clearance, and last-mile delivery to the final consumer. Flexible full-container-load and less-than-container-load ocean freight options are available to key ports around the world.

For sellers trying to keep up with a tariff schedule that’s changed three times in one year, that kind of end-to-end coverage decreases the number of independent vendors that need to coordinate correctly to avoid a costly mistake. As is increasingly the norm rather than the exception in 2026, with just weeks’ notice, having one point of ထိတှေ့ monitoring the shipment from origin to clearance to final delivery makes it easier to react rapidly when a new rate, exemption window or filing deadline emerges.

လုပ်ဆောင်ပြီးသော ဥပမာတစ်ခု

Consider shipping a consignment of small kitchen appliances that are classed under a List 3 HTS code, with a base Most Favoured Nation rate of 3.5 percent. That consignment would have been subject to a 3.5 percent base rate, a 25 percent Section 301 List 3 tax, and whatever IEEPA reciprocal rate applied to China at the time, typically stacking much above 50 percent total, before February 2026. After July 24, 2026, the identical shipment will be subject to the 3.5 percent base rate, the 25 percent Section 301 rate and the new 12.5 percent forced-labor duty, resulting in a total rate in the low-to-mid 40s, with no IEEPA or Section 122 component to add.

The net change looks like a tiny paper cut, but two nuances matter to anyone budgeting around it. First, unlike the Section 122 surcharge, the forced-labor duty does not contain the same built-in expiration date in the Act, and so, importers should not expect it to go the way of the 150-day surcharge. Second, because the rate is defined at the 10-digit HTS level, not the chapter level, two products that look similar on a packing list can have very different total rates, depending on classification details that a customs broker, not a general search of tariff news, is best positioned to confirm.

ဘာကို စောင့်ကြည့်ရမလဲ

There are still several loose threads to be tied up going into the rest of 2026. The second statutory four-year review of the original 2018 Section 301 proceedings, began May 6, is accepting industry comments on the July 2018 action through July 5 and on the August 2018 action through August 22, with a decision on whether those tariffs continue likely thereafter. Most trade counsel are urging clients to plan for continuance, rather than expiration, as the first review cycle ended with an expansion, rather than a removal.

Separately, in early June USTR sought opinions on a proposed Board of Trade to oversee the larger US-China trade relationship, a notion suggested following the Trump-Xi meeting in May 2026. How much authority that body will wind up with, and if it affects the rate of future tariff moves, remains to be seen. The administration has also used Section 301 outside of China this year, including a proposed 25 percent tax on Brazil’s trade practices, indicating the administration plans to rely on Section 301 as its main lasting tool now that IEEPA is unavailable.

The Section 122 surcharge is currently on appeal from the Court of International Trade verdict against it, and the ruling could still matter for the refund issues working their way through the courts, considering that the surcharge has already expired on its statutory clock. Separately, the Supreme Court declined to review a challenge to the original 2018 China Section 301 tariffs, leaving in place the Federal Circuit’s earlier ruling that USTR had the authority to modify those tariffs once they were initially imposed – removing one more avenue of attack to challenge the legal basis of that programme going forward.

ကောက်ချက်

IEEPA, Section 301, and Section 122 provide three independent legal concerns. But on one customs entry they function as layers of the same tax. Section 301 has been the most resilient of the three, surviving judicial challenges and review cycles that began in 2018 and now enlarged further by the forced-labor requirement that went into effect in July 2026. IEEPA was the most vulnerable, falling to the Supreme Court after being the administration’s fastest and broadest instrument for about a year. Section 122 was always designed to be temporary, and it acted like it, terminating on its statutory expiration date no matter how its own legal challenge was decided.

The practical lesson for anyone importing from China is simply that the legal foundation for tariffs has changed this year, not that they have gotten simpler. The best approach to avoid being caught out by the next adjustment, whenever it happens, is to keep landed-cost estimates current, follow HTS-level exemption lists rather than chapter-level summaries and count on logistics partners that track these changes as part of their daily jobs.

အမေးအဖြေများ

Q: Are IEEPA tariffs on China still in effect in 2026?

A: Not in the least. The Supreme Court invalidated IEEPA as a legal basis for tariffs on February 20, 2026, and the administration rescinded the corresponding proclamations the same day.

Q: What replaced the Section 122 surcharge when it expired?

A: A new Section 301 forced labour duty takes effect July 24, 2026, at the same time the 150-day Section 122 surcharge ended, charging China a fixed 12.5 percent rate.

Q: Do Section 232 tariffs still apply on top of everything else?

A: Yes. Section 232 charges on steel, aluminium, copper and their derivatives continue in effect and are computed separately from section 301 duties.

Q: Is there any relief for goods already shipped when the rules changed?

A: There was a limited in-transit exception for maritime cargo loaded before to July 24, 2026 and entered prior to July 28, 2026 but not for air, rail or truck shipments.

Q: How can importers reduce the risk of tariff-related shipment delays?

A: Working with a logistics partner like Topway Shipping that is able to manage classification, customs clearance and delivery all in one shot allows you to avoid costly mistakes by catching exemption dates and HTS level requirements early.