As we previously reported, on March 22, 2018, President Trump directed the Office of the United States Trade Representative (“USTR”) to take action against China’s “unfair and harmful acquisition of U.S. technology” under section 301 of the Trade Act of 1974. As a result, USTR has now taken action on three occasions to impose significant additional tariffs on Chinese imports under section 301, with the most recent action covering approximately $200 billion in imports from China.

After notice and comment proceedings, in June and August USTR announced that two lists of Chinese imports would be subject to the additional tariffs, with a combined annual trade value of approximately $50 billion. As of July 6, 2018, tariffs of 25 percent became effective for imports of products on the first list. USTR also announced that it intended to impose the same tariffs on an additional $16 billion of imports from China. These tariffs became effective on August 23, 2018.

On July 10, 2018, USTR announced that it intended to impose additional duties on a third list of products, covering approximately $200 billion in imports from China. USTR held hearings on this third list during the third week of August. On September 24, 2018, these tariffs became effective, with tariffs of 10 percent being imposed initially on these imports. The tariffs on this list will increase to 25 percent on January 1, 2019. In a statement from the President announcing the imposition of the tariffs of the third list, President Trump stated that “{i}f China takes retaliatory action against our farmers or other industries, we will immediately pursue phase three, which is tariffs on approximately $267 billion of additional imports.”

USTR has also announced that parties may request that specific products be excluded from these tariffs for the first and second list. For the products on the first list, the deadline for filing exclusion requests is October 9, 2018. For the products on the second list, the deadline for filing exclusion requests is December 18, 2018. USTR has not yet announced whether there will be an exclusion request process for products on the third list.