Section 301 China Tariffs on Top of MFN Rates

Findings

The four Section 301 lists were rolled out in stages, at different ad valorem rates

USTR's Section 301 investigation into China's technology-transfer and intellectual-property practices resulted in four tariff-action lists between July 2018 and September 2019, each covering a different bundle of HTS subheadings at a different additional ad valorem rate layered on top of the General (MFN) rate. List 1 (effective July 2018, USTR-published trade volume $34B, 25% additional rate) targeted industrial intermediate goods and capital equipment. List 2 (August 2018, $16B, 25%) added more capital goods and semiconductor-related products. List 3 (September 2018, $200B, originally 10% then raised to 25% in May 2019) expanded to a much broader set of consumer-adjacent intermediate goods. List 4A (September 2019, $112B, originally planned at 15% then reduced to 7.5% under the January 2020 Phase One trade deal) reached further into consumer-facing goods including apparel, footwear, and consumer electronics. A planned List 4B, which would have added roughly $160B in directly consumer-facing products such as phones and laptops at 15%, was suspended under the same Phase One deal and never took effect.

USTR's own list descriptions concentrate coverage in machinery, electronics, vehicles, and apparel

USTR's published product lists describe Section 301 coverage as concentrated in industrial machinery (HTS Chapter 84), electrical and electronic equipment (Chapter 85), vehicles and parts (Chapter 87), and, on List 4A, a much broader range of consumer goods including apparel and footwear (Chapters 61-64). Pharmaceutical and organic-chemical chapters (29-30) were largely excluded from all four lists, consistent with USTR's stated intent not to disrupt medical-supply imports. PlainTariff does not currently track Section 301 list membership at the individual HTS-subheading level in its own database, so this page does not report exact subheading counts or coverage percentages per chapter; exact per-line figures are available only from USTR's official list documents and the Section 301 Exclusion Search tool linked below.

An exclusion process ran alongside the list structure

USTR operated product-specific exclusion processes that let importers petition for temporary relief from Section 301 duties on narrowly defined product descriptions. Exclusions were granted, expired, and in some cases were later reinstated or extended across multiple renewal cycles through 2024. Because exclusion status changes on a rolling basis and is not tracked in PlainTariff's database, this page does not report a specific exclusion count; current status must be checked against USTR's official Exclusion Search.

How the layering works on the rate an importer actually pays

Where Section 301 applies, the additional ad valorem rate stacks on top of, rather than replaces, the General (MFN) rate that PlainTariff's per-line pages show. A product with a 0% MFN rate that is List 1-3-listed pays a 25% effective rate on Chinese-origin shipments; a product with a 2.5% MFN rate on the same lists pays 27.5%. A List 4A product pays MFN plus 7.5%. These are illustrations of the layering mechanism only, not a claim about any specific product's actual status, Section 301 applicability must be confirmed per 8-digit subheading against USTR's list documents.

Implications for sourcing decisions

The layering created strong incentives to shift sourcing for Chapter 84-87 and apparel/footwear imports away from China after 2018. The reshoring shifts widely reported since then, toward Vietnam, Mexico, India, Thailand, Bangladesh, and Eastern Europe, are attributed in part to Section 301 incidence by trade researchers, though other factors (labor cost, capacity constraints, and separate tariff/trade-agreement treatment of those countries) also play a role. For importers of Chinese-origin goods, the layered effective rate matters for landed-cost analysis and pass-through pricing decisions, and can interact with separate antidumping/countervailing duty orders on the same product.

Limitations and caveats

The figures above reflect the list-level structure of Section 301 actions as published by USTR; PlainTariff does not track per-subheading list membership or exclusion status in its own database. The exact effective rate for any specific shipment depends on the current exclusion status, the country-of-origin determination, and any subsequent USTR action. Importers should consult the official USTR Section 301 tariff actions page and the Customs Rulings Online Search System (CROSS) for binding determinations. PlainTariff currently surfaces the General (MFN), Special preferential, and Column 2 rates as published in the USITC HTS 2026 Basic Edition. Section 301 status is not integrated into the per-line detail page; this research page provides a list-level public-record overview while the official USTR data remains the source for per-line determinations.