Duty rates, explained
Ask three people what the duty rate is on your product and you'll get three answers — the base rate, a number from the news, and whatever the last entry was charged. All three can be right at once, because US duty is charged in layers. This guide walks through each layer of the 2025–2026 stack, so you can read a customs invoice and know what you're looking at.
Layer 1: The base HTS rate
Every product has a code in the Harmonized Tariff Schedule (HTS), and every code has a base duty rate — often 0–6% for industrial goods, higher for textiles, footwear, and food. This is the "normal" rate that existed before 2025, and it's the only layer most costing spreadsheets include. It's also the smallest part of the bill for many origins today.
Layer 2: Section 301 tariffs
Section 301 duties on Chinese goods — 7.5% to 25% on most covered lists, with higher rates on strategic categories — were imposed under a separate trade law and remain fully in force. A proposed new round covering product categories across 60 economies would extend this layer well beyond China. If your origin is China, this layer is usually the biggest single number on the bill.
Layer 3: Section 232 metals
Steel, aluminum, and derivative products carry Section 232 duties regardless of origin country. If your product contains covered metal content — machinery, parts, appliances — this layer can apply on top of everything else, and the coverage list has been expanded repeatedly.
Layer 4: The post-IEEPA regime
Through 2025, broad "reciprocal" and country-specific tariffs were imposed under IEEPA, a 1977 emergency-powers law. In February 2026 the Supreme Court ruled in Learning Resources v. Trump that IEEPA does not authorize tariffs, striking those rounds down. What replaced them is a patchwork: a 10% stopgap under Section 122 — a balance-of-payments authority with a statutory time limit — covered part of the gap, and that stopgap expired in July 2026. Further rounds under other authorities are being proposed. The practical effect: the rate that applied to your last entry may not be the rate on your next one, and costing built on any single 2025 rate is stale.
De minimis is gone
Until August 2025, shipments under $800 entered the US duty-free under the de minimis exemption. That exemption has ended. Every parcel now pays formal entry — duty plus brokerage on shipments that used to clear free. Companies that built costing on de minimis are carrying a hidden per-parcel cost line that never appears on the supplier invoice.
The schedule itself keeps moving
The HTS is revised roughly three times a year. Codes get split, merged, and re-described — a code that was right in Q1 can be wrong by Q3, and the rate attached to your product can change without anything about your product changing. This "classification drift" is now a leading cause of duty overpayment in both directions.
What this means for your costing
Two habits separate companies that know their real costs from companies that find out at clearance: costing off the full stack rather than the base rate, and re-costing when rates change rather than once a year. Both take minutes with current data — and both are expensive to skip.