Washington is renewing the China truce one instrument at a time, and the tariff exclusions are not yet among them

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.

The instruments

The White House fact sheet of November 1, 2025 listed the American side of the bargain. It cut the fentanyl-related tariff on Chinese goods by 10 percentage points. It suspended for one year, from November 10, 2025, the Commerce Department rule “Expansion of End-User Controls to Cover Affiliates of Certain Listed Entities,” and the actions taken in the Section 301 shipbuilding investigation. It promised to extend “the expiration of certain Section 301 tariff exclusions” from November 29, 2025 to November 10, 2026⁴. China, for its part, undertook to suspend its expanded rare-earth export controls, remove its countermeasures against the shipbuilding investigation, and extend its own tariff-exclusion process to December 31, 2026⁴.

Each American promise rests on a different authority. The Affiliates Rule is an interim final rule issued under the Export Control Reform Act of 2018 (ECRA). It automatically extended Entity List restrictions to any foreign company owned 50 percent or more, directly or indirectly, by listed parties, a standard designed, BIS said, “to be consistent with longstanding Department of the Treasury practice”⁵. The new stay cites ECRA sections 1753 and 1754 (50 U.S.C. 4812 and 4813). It also invokes section 1762, which lets BIS act by final rule without prior notice and comment¹. The port fees and the exclusions both arise under Section 301 of the Trade Act of 1974. Section 307 of that Act lets the Trade Representative modify or terminate an action, subject to any specific direction from the President^3,11. Section 307 also requires notice and an opportunity to comment before a modification^2,11. This is why USTR’s port-fee proposal went out for comment, with submissions due by 5 p.m. on October 30 under docket USTR-2026-0694².

The procedural difference explains the sequence. BIS can stay its own rule in a single filing, and has done so. USTR must propose, take comments and then publish a final modification. The Treasury Secretary announced on September 23 that the arrangement he called the “Busan Agreement” would run “until Jan. 10”⁷. That announcement had no legal effect of its own. It becomes law only as each agency carries it out.

The mechanism

The BIS rule is precise. It stays the amendments to 15 CFR parts 732, 734, 736, 744 and 748 made by the Affiliates Rule. Those amendments were first stayed on November 10, 2025, and are now “further stayed until January 10, 2027,” with effect from November 9, 2026¹. Exporters therefore keep, for two more months, the pre-September 2025 position. Entity List restrictions apply to the listed party itself, not automatically to its majority-owned affiliates^1,5. BIS says it has not yet considered the public comments filed on the original rule and will take them up in “future, subsequent rulemakings”¹. The rule has been deferred, not withdrawn.

The maritime proposal would suspend, from 12:00 a.m. eastern time on November 10, 2026 through 11:59 p.m. on January 9, 2027, both the fees on maritime transport services under Annexes I, II and III of the April 2025 action and the duties in Annex V.A of the October 2025 modification². The underlying schedule is large. As first set, it charged vessels owned or operated by Chinese entities $50 per net ton from October 14, 2025, rising to $140 by April 2028. It charged Chinese-built vessels the higher of $18 per net ton or $120 per container discharged, and car carriers $150 per car-equivalent unit of capacity⁶. USTR proposed duties of up to 100 percent on ship-to-shore cranes⁶. The fees were collected for less than four weeks before the 2025 suspension took hold⁸. USTR gives as its purpose “to allow for further negotiation with China”².

The exclusions are the exposed flank. The December 2025 notice extended 178 exclusions. These are listed in Annex A under HTSUS heading 9903.88.69 and in Annex B under heading 9903.88.70, and they include fourteen exclusions for solar manufacturing equipment³. The extension covers goods entered for consumption, or withdrawn from warehouse, from November 30, 2025 through 11:59 p.m. EDT on November 9, 2026^3,9. The White House text said “until November 10” and the regulatory text says 11:59 p.m. on November 9; the notice does not reconcile the two³. USTR said only that it “may continue to consider further extensions and/or additional modifications as appropriate,” and it opened no new comment period^3,9. As of November 2, counsel to importers reported that no extension had been announced. Absent one, goods now entered under the exclusions become subject to the applicable Section 301 duties⁹.

The effect

The exposure is uneven. Exporters of controlled items gain two months of certainty on the Affiliates Rule. The original rule would have required them to resolve the ownership of a counterparty, obtain a license, or find an exception before shipping whenever they could not establish whether listed parties held a 50 percent stake⁵. Carriers on both sides gain relief, because the suspensions are paired. In the brief window when both countries’ fees applied, Matson reported about $6.4 million in Chinese reciprocal port fees, and COSCO faced an estimated $1.5 billion in annual U.S. charges⁸. China suspended its retaliatory fees alongside the American suspension in 2025. USTR’s notice does not say whether Beijing will extend its own pause⁸. The relief is not unanimous. Senators Mark Kelly and Elizabeth Warren have argued that “Section 301 port fees are critical to revitalizing U.S. shipbuilding”⁸.

Importers of excluded goods carry the sharpest timing risk, because their relief has no proposal pending. USTR’s own record shows how concentrated the dependence is. In the 2025 review, 147 of the exclusions drew comments supporting extension, most citing limited sources of supply outside China, and only ten of those also drew opposition³. Counsel have advised importers to quantify their duty exposure on entries after November 9 and to review goods in transit and in bonded warehouses⁹.

The longer view

The exclusions have been shrinking for years. In December 2023 USTR sought comment on 352 previously reinstated exclusions. It kept 164 in May 2024, added fourteen solar-equipment exclusions that September, and then renewed the resulting 178 in short increments in May, September and December 2025³. Meanwhile the tariffs themselves have become more durable. In October 2026 USTR announced that the 2018 actions did not terminate at their second four-year anniversary and would undergo a further review under Section 307(c)¹⁰. That notice said nothing about exclusions¹⁰.

Other instruments on the horizon point the same way. USTR has said recommendations in its Section 301 investigation into structural overcapacity will come by the end of 2026, ahead of a March 2027 statutory deadline. In parallel Section 232 cases on robotics and wind turbines, the President chose negotiation over tariffs for now, with reports due in 180 days¹². The Busan arrangement is thus one negotiating track among several. Its parts have now been put on slightly different clocks: January 10 for the BIS stay, 11:59 p.m. on January 9 for the proposed port-fee suspension, and November 9 for the exclusions unless USTR acts within four days^1,2,3. The questions to watch are whether USTR publishes a final port-fee notice before November 10, and whether it publishes any exclusion notice at all.