If you import anything into the United States, the past two years have felt less like a policy environment and more like a moving target. Tariffs have become the administration’s primary instrument of trade policy, and the result is a steady stream of new duties, country-by-country deals, legal challenges, and reversals. Rates that hold for a quarter get renegotiated the next.

Treat this as a map, not a forecast. Here’s where things actually stand, the dates that got us here, and what the pattern means for how you source, price, and plan.

The big picture: deals, not stability

There is no single tariff schedule anymore. The landscape is a patchwork of bilateral arrangements, each with its own rate, carve-outs, and conditions. A few of the larger ones:

• China: the “fentanyl” tariff was trimmed from 20% to 10%, leaving a combined effective duty on Chinese goods around 45%. In exchange, China agreed to suspend rare-earth export controls for a year and committed to large U.S. soybean purchases.
• India: the reciprocal tariff dropped from 25% to 18%, and a separate 25% “oil” tariff was eliminated—taking the effective rate from 50% down to 18%, paired with major Indian commitments to buy U.S. energy and agriculture.
• Taiwan: the reciprocal tariff was capped at 15%, with auto parts, timber, and lumber held to a 15% Section 232 rate, alongside a $250 billion investment commitment in U.S. semiconductor, energy, and AI capacity.
• Bangladesh, Korea, the EU, and others each negotiated their own adjustments, quotas, and sunset clauses.

The headline is that the rates are negotiable and frequently retroactive. A Federal Register notice can make a change effective weeks before it’s published.

The timeline that matters

The deals get the coverage. The dates are what actually reprice your goods. Here’s the sequence that built today’s landscape, and the entries scheduled to land next.

The foundation laid in 2025:

• April 2, 2025 — “Liberation Day.” A universal 10% baseline duty on nearly all imports (effective April 5), plus reciprocal rates of 11% to 50% on 57 trading partners (effective April 9).
• May 2, 2025 — the de minimis exemption ended for goods from China and Hong Kong. Low-value parcels that used to clear duty-free started owing duty.
• August 18, 2025 — Section 232 coverage widened to a long list of steel and aluminum derivative products.
• August 29, 2025 — de minimis suspended for every country, not just China—pulling hundreds of millions of small parcels a year into formal entry.
• October 14, 2025 — Section 232 duties on timber, lumber, and their derivatives took effect.
• November 1, 2025 — Section 232 duties on medium- and heavy-duty vehicles, buses, and parts took effect; a White House fact sheet reset China rates (effective November 10).

The year it kept moving, 2026:

• January 1, 2026 — new duty rates on upholstered furniture, kitchen cabinets, and vanities.
• January 15, 2026 — Section 232 duties on semiconductors, semiconductor manufacturing equipment, and their derivatives took effect.
• February 24, 2026 — after the Supreme Court struck down the IEEPA tariffs, the administration switched them off and stood up a 10% Section 122 temporary surcharge in their place.
• April 6, 2026 — updated Section 232 rates on steel, aluminum, and copper (from a proclamation published April 2).
• May 1, 2026 — tariff changes from the U.S.–Taiwan Trade and Security Agreement took effect, applied retroactively.
• May 2026 — the Court of International Trade struck down the 10% Section 122 surcharge; an appeals court stayed the ruling within days, leaving it in force pending appeal.
• June 8, 2026 — a June 1 proclamation modified the Section 232 steel, aluminum, and copper measures, cutting rates for USMCA-qualifying goods and for certain agricultural and industrial equipment from countries that reached deals.
• July 22, 2026 — a 25% Section 301 tariff on certain Brazilian goods took effect (announced July 15, proposed June 1), tied to Brazil’s digital-trade practices. Goods already subject to Section 232 are excluded.

Scheduled, and worth planning around now:

• July 31, 2026 — Section 232 duties on pharmaceuticals and active pharmaceutical ingredients (from the same April 2 proclamation).
• August 19, 2026 — a 50% Section 338 duty on certain Canadian goods. Motor vehicles, alcohol, and dairy make the headline; wine, plywood, cement, furniture, and fishing rods sit in the annexes. Section 338 carries no expiration date, and USMCA preference doesn’t exempt covered goods.

Still on the board but not yet in force: a proposed Section 301 forced-labor action (proposed June 2, 2026) covering dozens of trading partners and the EU, at 10% for some and 12.5% for others. Proposed today; potentially real tomorrow.

The legal turbulence underneath

Layered on top of the deals is a running argument about whether the president can impose these tariffs at all.

• In February 2026, the Supreme Court struck down the IEEPA tariffs, ruling that emergency economic powers don’t authorize duties. That opened the door to refunds on tens of billions in collected duties.
• The administration replaced them with a 10% Section 122 global tariff—which the Court of International Trade then ruled against in May, only for an appeals court to stay that decision days later.
• Meanwhile, Section 232 and Section 301 duties (steel, aluminum, copper, semiconductors, and more) remain firmly in place, because they rest on different statutory ground. The new Section 338 duty on Canadian goods rests on its own footing again—and unlike Section 122, it has no built-in sunset.

For planning purposes, treat the IEEPA- and Section 122-based duties as legally contestable and potentially refundable, and the Section 232, 301, and 338 duties as durable.

Sectoral and structural shifts

Beyond country deals, several changes hit specific goods and the mechanics of importing itself:

• Semiconductors: a 25% Section 232 duty on advanced computing chips and manufacturing equipment, with a long list of exemptions (U.S. data-center use, R&D, repair, certain consumer electronics).
• Pharmaceuticals: a Section 232 duty on pharmaceuticals and active ingredients scheduled for the end of July 2026, with the potential to stack on top of existing rates.
• Metals: steel, aluminum, and copper have been repriced more than once, most recently in June 2026, with reductions carved out for USMCA-qualifying goods and for equipment from deal-making partners.
• Critical minerals: groundwork for securing U.S. supply, including possible minimum import prices—relevant because the U.S. is fully net-import-reliant on a dozen critical minerals and China supplies the bulk of rare earths.
• De minimis: the low-value import exemption was eliminated in 2025—first for China and Hong Kong in May, then for all countries in August—pulling a huge volume of small parcels into formal entry and duty.
• Low-value parcel reforms abroad: the EU is adding a €3 customs duty and handling fees, and the U.K. is phasing out its sub-£135 duty-free threshold by 2029.
• Valuation rules: proposed legislation would curtail the “First Sale” rule, which many importers use to lower dutiable value—potentially raising duties and adding compliance work.

What it means for importers

The specifics will keep changing. The strategic response shouldn’t:

• Know your landed cost by SKU and origin, in real time. When rates move retroactively, you can’t reprice on a quarterly lag.
• Diversify sourcing where the math supports it. A 45% effective rate on one origin versus 18% on another is a sourcing decision, not just a finance line item.
• Track refund eligibility actively. Between IEEPA refunds and a possible Section 122 reversal, there may be real money to reclaim—but only if your entry data and deadlines are in order.
• Build tariff scenarios into pricing and demand plans. Model the upside and downside cases rather than assuming today’s rate holds.
• Watch valuation and de minimis changes, which can raise costs even when headline tariff rates don’t move.

The bottom line

The through-line of the past two years is volatility, enforced by both negotiation and litigation. Importers who treat tariffs as a fixed cost get whipsawed; importers who treat them as a variable to monitor, model, and—where possible—recover are the ones who keep their margins intact. The landscape will keep shifting. The discipline of watching it closely is what doesn’t change.