The leading essayVolume I, No. XXXI
Washington is renewing the China truce one instrument at a time, and the tariff exclusions are not yet among them
Commerce has stayed its export-control Affiliates Rule to January 10, 2027, and USTR has proposed the same for its port fees. The 178 Section 301 product exclusions, which lapse on November 9, have had no notice at all.
The Journal
The détente that Washington and Beijing reached in the autumn of 2025 was announced as a single bargain, but it was never a single legal act. It was a bundle of separate instruments, each issued under its own statute, by its own agency, with its own expiry date. That structure is now visible. On November 5, 2026 the Bureau of Industry and Security (BIS) filed a final rule extending, to January 10, 2027, the stay of its rule extending export controls to the affiliates of listed entities1. Two weeks earlier, the Office of the United States Trade Representative (USTR) proposed suspending its maritime Section 301 port fees for the same two months2. A third element of the bargain, the 178 product exclusions from the China Section 301 tariffs, has received no notice at all. Under the governing text it expires at 11:59 p.m. eastern daylight time on November 9, 20263. A truce that is renewed by announcement must still be carried out instrument by instrument, and for importers the instruments are what count.
ContentsVolume I 2026
31 essays published in this volume
Washington is renewing the China truce one instrument at a time, and the tariff exclusions are not yet among them
Commerce has stayed its export-control Affiliates Rule to January 10, 2027, and USTR has proposed the same for its port fees. The 178 Section 301 product exclusions, which lapse on November 9, have had no notice at all.
The forced-labor import list reaches gene sequencers, and the presumption now follows a company rather than a product
The Forced Labor Enforcement Task Force has added BGI Group, BGI Genomics and MGI Tech to the UFLPA Entity List on the strength of genetic testing in Xinjiang. Every good the three companies make is now presumed barred from U.S. entry, including sequencers and reagents, whatever their own supply chains.
The wind turbine finding ends in a negotiating mandate, and Section 232's 180-day clause becomes the instrument
Proclamation 11074 accepts Commerce's finding that imported wind turbines and their parts threaten to impair national security, then imposes no new duty. It is the third Section 232 case this year to end in talks, which puts the weight on what the statute says happens after 180 days.
The USMCA labor mechanism works through a customs hold, and at Amphenol the hold outlasted the remediation
In one week USTR lifted liquidation holds on two Mexican plants and agreed a remediation plan for a third. The cases show the Rapid Response Labor Mechanism's working tool is an open customs account, which stays open until Washington says it may close.
The Graham Act's Russia tariffs arrive already waived, and the statute's review clause does not reach the waiver
Executive Order 14436 sets a 500 percent duty on Russian goods and 100 percent duties on the largest buyers of Russian oil and gas, then waives them in the same document. The Act lets Congress block a termination of its measures, but gives it no comparable vote on a waiver.
Canadian softwood lumber duties fall by a third in the 2024 review, while the Section 232 tariff stays on top
Final results published October 19 cut the combined antidumping and countervailing duty deposit for most Canadian lumber exporters from 35.16 to 24.75 percent. The annual review leaves the 2018 orders in place, and the 10 percent national security tariff of October 2025 still applies on top.
USTR opens a record on Europe's carbon border charge as the EU moves it down the supply chain to machines and trucks
A USTR notice published October 8 asks U.S. producers how the EU's Carbon Border Adjustment Mechanism affects their exports, and whether enforcement action may be appropriate. Comments are due November 9, while EU institutions negotiate adding hundreds of downstream steel and aluminum goods.
Customs proposes to close the paper era for low-value parcels, and the cost of ending de minimis moves to the broker's desk
A CBP proposal published October 8 would require every shipment worth $2,500 or less, mail included, to be entered electronically by the time it arrives, under a bond. The agency's own analysis puts the net cost near $1.1 billion a year, against about $59 million in recovered duty.
Commerce's graphite electrode findings reach back 90 days, and put Chinese and Indian producers on opposite tracks
Preliminary antidumping determinations published September 30 set a 98.79 percent China-wide margin drawn from the petition and single-digit to low-double-digit margins for India's two producers. In both countries, a critical circumstances finding pushes the deposit requirement back to goods already entered.
The Canada procurement memorandum asks for removal by any lawful means, and leaves the reciprocity statute unnamed
A September 16 presidential memorandum directs OMB and USTR to find Canadian-origin items in the federal civil procurement system that can be removed or made non-available. It cites no statute, names no products and exempts, by its wording, the defense purchasing where most U.S. spending on Canadian goods occurs.
The pharmaceutical tariff's zero rate turns out to be a trade-agreement benefit, not a product exemption
Six days before the 100 percent Section 232 duty on patented drugs reaches most companies, Commerce has defined the orphan, nuclear, plasma, cell and gene therapy categories that can enter duty-free and named the 19 jurisdictions whose products qualify. Everything else must ask, one product at a time.
Commerce's rebar orders complete a four-country wall, and Algeria's part of it needed no injury finding
Antidumping orders on rebar from Bulgaria, Egypt and Vietnam and countervailing orders on Egypt and Vietnam took effect September 18. They finish a case that began in June 2025, in which Algerian rebar met a subsidy duty under a rule that skipped the injury test.
The trade barrier inventory now tracks the tariff map: USTR's 2027 call for comments adds eight markets and a transshipment category
USTR wants comments by October 29 for the 2027 National Trade Estimate Report. Its list of markets now covers all 60 economies under this summer's forced-labor Section 301 tariffs, and duty evasion gets a category of its own.
Commerce renews its Aeroflot, Azur Air and UTair denial orders, a tool now aimed at the foreign firms that service them
The Bureau of Industry and Security has renewed for another year the temporary denial orders first imposed on three Russian airlines in April 2022. The new evidence tables show Boeing jets still flying to Turkey, Egypt, Thailand, Uzbekistan and the Maldives this summer.
Most of the final solar duty rates on India, Indonesia and Laos come from adverse inferences, not calculated margins
Commerce has made final dumping and subsidy findings on crystalline silicon solar cells and modules from India, Indonesia and Laos. Only three of the company rates were calculated from a cooperating firm's own records, and the trade commission now has the last word on injury.
As Section 338 moves to import bans, the trade commission asks how to do the monitoring job the 1930 statute gave it
The U.S. International Trade Commission wants comments by November 9 on how to carry out section 338(g), its duty to track foreign discrimination against U.S. commerce and advise the President. The request arrives a day after the first exclusion orders against Canadian goods.
A decade after WTO rulings ended it, mandatory beef origin labeling is back under federal review
Executive Order 14425 gives USDA and USTR 90 days to find out whether mandatory country-of-origin labels for beef can return. The statute Congress amended in 2015 and the retaliation levels the WTO set that year define how far the review can go.
A dumping case cut to the calendar: Commerce's preliminary margins on Mexican winter strawberries
Commerce found preliminary dumping margins of 3.37 to 5.28 percent on Mexican strawberries entered from November through March, far below the 18.32 percent the Florida petitioners alleged. The case rests on a product defined by season and an industry defined by region.
Customs will void importer numbers over bad Form 5106 data, and the importer registry becomes an enforcement tool
From September 18, CBP says it will cancel any importer of record number whose address, phone, email or tax identifier is inaccurate or not the importer's own. The notice is the first step under Executive Order 14411, and it reaches brokers as well as importers.
Commerce redraws the drone export line at three hours of flight, and splits military drones from the Munitions List
A final rule effective August 13 drops national security licensing for civil drones that fly less than three hours, keeps military end-use checks on them, and for the first time places some military drones in the Commerce Control List's 600 series.
A 1950 allocation power becomes an export control, and its first targets are battery scrap and tungsten
From August 27, U.S. sellers of black mass and tungsten waste and scrap must sell every ton to U.S. persons unless Commerce grants relief. The order rests on the Defense Production Act rather than the export control statute, and it borrows its border machinery from the 2020 PPE order.
Tubas, trailers and propane cylinders: the Section 232 metals tariff now grows by notice
Commerce proposes adding 14 product groups to the steel, aluminum and copper duties, mostly at 25 percent of full value. It is the first published use of the rolling inclusion power that replaced the request windows in April, and comments are due August 27.
The quartz safeguard keeps the ITC's quota and sets the over-quota tariff at the statute's ceiling
Proclamation 11051 puts a four-year tariff-rate quota on quartz countertops and slabs from August 15. The volumes are the Commission's; the 50 percent over-quota rate, the steeper in-quota phase-down and the refusal to de-stack duties are the President's.
The engine offset turns a Section 232 tariff rebate into a domestic content test, counted in castings and turbochargers
Commerce opened the auto and truck parts-tariff offset to U.S. engine plants on July 29, but only to those using at least two American-made core components, rising to four in the third year. The list of parts comes from the USMCA; the origin standard does not.
The suppressor transfer finishes the 2020 firearms reform, and the State Department reverses its own 2020 reasoning
Paired rules published July 23 move suppressors for non-automatic and semi-automatic firearms from the Munitions List to the Commerce Control List on November 20. State now reads the facts it weighed in 2020 the other way, and the oversight that followed firearms to Commerce has since been pared back.
A tariff clause written in 1930 for trade discrimination is now the Canada tariff, and USMCA status does not shield the goods
Three proclamations signed July 20 invoke section 338 of the Tariff Act of 1930 for the first time, putting a 50 percent duty on listed Canadian goods from August 19. The statute asks only for a presidential finding, and its next step is an import ban.
The plywood determinations are the third attempt to fence one product, and each fence follows the trade
Commerce has made final dumping and subsidy findings on hardwood and decorative plywood from China, Indonesia and Vietnam. The new case is built around the gaps in the 2018 China orders, and the Vietnam dumping rate fell by more than half between the preliminary and final stages.
The lamb safeguard case returns to the question that sank the last one: who counts as the industry
At USTR's request the International Trade Commission has opened a Section 201 investigation of lamb meat imports, 27 years to the day after the 1999 lamb quota took effect. The WTO struck that measure down partly over how the industry was defined.
The Brazil tariff returns on a Section 301 footing, and its exemption list is where the policy now lives
A 25 percent duty on goods of Brazil takes effect July 22 under the Trade Act of 1974, a year after a 40 percent emergency tariff that the Supreme Court's IEEPA ruling ended. The new instrument is narrower in practice than in name.
Customs is putting the IEEPA refund on a permanent paperwork footing, and the finally liquidated entries still sit outside it
A July 8 notice asks for comment on the CAPE declaration that importers use to reclaim an estimated $166 billion in invalidated IEEPA duties. It also shows how much of the refund now depends on an appeal and a lawsuit.
The chassis orders show how antidumping law prices the same product three different ways
Commerce issued antidumping and countervailing duty orders on container chassis from Mexico, Thailand and Vietnam on June 18. The biggest supplier, Mexico, draws the largest subsidy rate and a zero antidumping deposit.