Not a customs broker and not a lawyer — ParcelClear is a one-person project that tracks these rules in the primary sources, so please double-check anything below before you act on it.
One thing that hasn’t been said in this thread: most of the numbers being compared here were correct under a tariff regime that no longer exists. The 100% and 132% figures upthread trace back to the IEEPA tariffs — those were struck down by the Supreme Court on February 20, 2026 (Learning Resources, Inc. v. Trump, No. 24-1287) and ended with EO 14389 (91 FR 9437); the replacement surcharge took effect on February 24, 2026. Their replacement, a flat 10% Section 122 import surcharge, then expired by operation of law at 12:01 a.m. ET on July 24, 2026 — it carried a hard 150-day limit that only an Act of Congress could extend, and none did.
What actually applies now took effect the same minute: a Section 301 action in force from 12:01 a.m. ET on July 24, 2026 (91 FR 47318; CBP guidance CSMS #69326983). It has three shapes, and which one you’re in depends only on country of origin: an additive 10% on top of your normal MFN rate for 17 economies (Canada, UK, India, Mexico among them); an additive 12.5% for 38 more (Australia, China, Vietnam, Türkiye, Brazil…); and for the EU, Taiwan, Japan, South Korea and Switzerland a top-up instead of a stack — if your MFN rate already meets the band (10% for the EU and Taiwan, 12.5% for the other three), no additional duty is due at all.
So for the specific cases above: an Australian-origin 3304.99 is now MFN + 12.5% (heading 9903.05.23) — the “10% is the correct rate” figure from last autumn no longer describes anything. A Canadian-origin item is MFN + 10% (9903.05.29), unless it’s entered free of duty under USMCA, for which there’s a carve-out (9903.05.93). The carve-out is written around goods “entered free of duty under the United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement” rather than around origin, and U.S. note 52(g) settles the obvious follow-up question in its own words: it applies “regardless of whether a product is entered under a provision for which the rate of duty ‘S or S+’ appears in the ‘Special’ sub-column”.
There’s also a concrete reason automated lookups keep returning nonsense for Canada, and it isn’t your product data: the current tariff schedule (2026 HTSUS Revision 14, published 31 July) still prints the dead Canadian IEEPA line 9903.01.10 at +35% unshaded and with no expiry note, while the expired Section 122 lines (9903.03.01–.11) in the same document are shaded and carry a compiler’s note that they expired at the close of July 23, 2026. Anything that walks chapter 99 mechanically will hand you +35% on Canada in good faith — and the USITC JSON export doesn’t carry the shading at all, so a lookup built on the API can’t see the difference. The operative authority is EO 14389, not what chapter 99 still prints. Carriers are repeating it too: Canada Post’s “shipping to the US” page was still telling customers in late July that “all postal shipments pay IEEPA rates regardless of CUSMA qualification”. If a quote looks impossible, that’s a likelier culprit than your HS code.
One more, if your goods are of Canadian origin — this one is a diary entry, not a bug: a separate Section 338 action adds +50% on top of everything else for goods entered for consumption, or withdrawn from warehouse for consumption, on or after 12:01 a.m. ET on August 19, 2026. It’s much wider than the “dairy, alcohol and vehicles” headline: the annexes to proclamations 11046 / 11047 / 11048 (91 FR 46639–46688) run to 554 eight-digit lines across 56 chapters, and the third proclamation — the one titled “motor vehicles” — carries 439 of them on its own, including candles (3406.00.00), several jewellery lines (7113.11.50, 7113.19.29, 7113.19.50, 7117.19.90), cotton T-shirts (6109.10.00), sweaters (6110.20.20 / 6110.30.30), wooden frames (4414.90.00), toys (9503.00.00), printed pictures and photographs (4911.91.40) and 11 of the 19 lines in chapter 97 — original paintings, drawings, sculptures and antiques of 100–250 years are in; mosaics, engravings over 100 years old and antiques over 250 years are not. Ceramics are untouched — not one line of chapter 69 appears anywhere in the three annexes — but glass (7010, 7013) is in. Two things to know about it: there’s no in-transit grace of any kind — the only test is the date of entry or withdrawal — and USMCA does not remove it: the new headings 9903.03.12/.13/.14 print “+50%” in the Special column as well as General, and note 51(a) says goods eligible under general note 3(c)(i), which is where USMCA’s “S or S+” lives, are still subject to it. It’s decided by the 8-digit line, not by the product category, so it’s worth checking your actual codes rather than reasoning from the headline.
Practical takeaway: what gets charged is decided by the 8-digit classification + country of origin + which chapter 99 headings apply on the day of entry. When support quotes you a rate, asking them which chapter 99 heading they applied usually settles in one message whether their answer is current — and it gives you something in writing if you later have to dispute a carrier invoice.
