Section 301 Tariffs: How to Check Whether Your Product Is Covered

Section 301 Tariffs: How to Check Whether Your Product Is Covered

Section 301 duty is not visible in the HTSUS chapter for your product. It is reported through a separate Chapter 99 subheading, which is why importers discover it on the entry summary rather than in the quote.

Checking whether your product is covered takes about ten minutes if you know which two numbers to look at.

What Section 301 is

Section 301 of the Trade Act of 1974 gives the U.S. Trade Representative authority to respond to foreign trade practices. The China measures that began in 2018 imposed additional duties on a large share of Chinese-origin goods.

The additional duty is applied by HTS classification, published in lists. Each list names the eight-digit subheadings covered and the rate that applies.

The rate is reported on the entry through a Chapter 99 subheading that corresponds to the list, in addition to the normal Chapter 1 to 97 classification.

The lists and the rates

The rates above are the published figures for the lists as originally set. Exclusions and modifications have changed coverage over time, so the working rule is to check the current USTR annex rather than a rate table copied from an article.

List 4B was announced and then suspended, which is why some product categories that appear in older coverage lists carry no additional duty today.

The check, step by step

Start with your eight-digit HTS subheading. You cannot check at six digits, because coverage is defined at eight.

Search the USTR annex for that subheading. If it appears, note the list number. Then confirm the corresponding Chapter 99 reporting subheading, because that is what the entry needs.

If it does not appear, check whether the product falls under a related measure: a product-specific exclusion, a modification, or a different action entirely. Absence from a list is a finding, but it should be a documented one.

Where importers lose money

Two directions. Paying Section 301 duty on a product that is not covered, because a forwarder applied it by default to anything from China.

And not paying it on a covered product, because the entry used only the primary classification and omitted the Chapter 99 line. The second is more expensive, because it surfaces later as unpaid duty plus interest.

A third, quieter error: assuming country of origin is the same as country of shipment. Transshipment through a third country does not change origin if the goods were produced in China.

What to keep in the file

For each SKU: the eight-digit subheading, the list number or the documented finding that none applies, the Chapter 99 subheading if applicable, and the date checked.

That file is what allows you to answer a CBP inquiry without re-doing the analysis, and it is what supports a refund claim if a subheading is later removed from a list.

How the charge appears on the entry

The additional duty is reported as a separate line on the entry summary, using the Chapter 99 subheading that corresponds to the list covering the product.

This is why the entry total can exceed what the HTSUS chapter rate suggests. The primary classification produces the normal duty; the Chapter 99 line produces the additional duty.

If the Chapter 99 line is missing, the entry is underpaid even though the classification is correct. CBP identifies these through reconciliation and post-entry review, often a year or more later.

Exclusions and what to do with them

Product-specific exclusions were granted and, in most cases, expired. A product that was excluded in 2019 is not necessarily excluded today.

Where an exclusion applies, the entry must reference it correctly at the time of filing. Retroactive recovery is possible through the protest process, but it depends on documentation that most importers no longer hold by the time they notice.

The working rule: check the exclusion status at the time of each shipment, not once when the product was first imported.

Planning for the next change

Tariff measures change, and the change is usually announced before it takes effect. That window is the only period in which planning is cheap.

Three actions belong in that window: identify which SKUs are affected, quantify the duty change per unit, and decide whether to accelerate shipments before the effective date.

Acceleration is legitimate and time-limited. Shipping forward to beat an announced increase is a commercial decision; misdeclaring origin to avoid it is not.

For buyers, the useful output is a single table: SKU, current landed cost, new landed cost, and the date the change applies. That table is what allows a price conversation to happen before the goods arrive rather than after.

Section 301 is a data problem before it is a cost problem. The duty is calculable in advance and verifiable after the fact, provided someone checks two numbers instead of one.