USTR Extends Portion of Expiring Section 301 Tariffs

Through a Notice posted to the Office of the U.S. Trade Representative's ("USTR") website late today, the Biden Administration has decided to extend a portion of the current 429 product specific exclusions (352 previously reinstated exclusions and 77 COVID-related exclusions) for another year or until May 31, 2025. For the remaining exclusions, USTR is granting a two-week transition period before those exclusions expire as of June 15, 2024.

USTR's earlier Request for Comments on these exclusions had not made reference to any further consideration so the initial understanding within the trade was that those exclusions would expire as of May 31, 2024. With this announcement, however, USTR "has found that extending these exclusions will support efforts to shift sourcing out of China, or provide additional time where, despite efforts to source products from alternative sources, availability of the product outside of China remains limited."

In total, 164 of the exclusions have been extended another year with the remainder securing only the two-week transition extension. For all exclusions, importers are required to continue to declare HTSUS Tariff Item 9903.88.67 for imports through June 14th in order to benefit from the transition time period. For entries made on or after that date, importers should declare HTSUS Tariff Item 9903.88.69 in order to preserve the exclusion where the remaining 164 product descriptions/tariff classifications are concerned. Further details on those specific items extended through May 31, 2025 may be found in Annex C to USTR's Notice.

Please let us know if you have any further questions and/or if there is any additional guidance that we may provide where the continuation of these exclusions is concerned.