#tariffs
Import duty rates, Section 301 and Section 232 tariffs, IEEPA actions, antidumping/countervailing duties, and tariff exclusions for U.S. importers
Only the Importer of Record can claim a share of the $166 billion in IEEPA tariff refunds through CBP's CAPE portal, which locks out most small importers who buy through suppliers, freight forwarders, or 3PLs — here is how to find your IOR, negotiate refund sharing, and book the proceeds correctly under ASC 450.
Small importers lose margin points when tariffs hide in inventory costs. Here are 5 accounting strategies to recalculate landed cost, plan inventory properly, separate tariff line items, capitalize duties correctly, and claim refunds—so you can see tariff impact in real time.
The EU's Carbon Border Adjustment Mechanism entered its definitive phase on January 1, 2026, requiring EU importers of steel, aluminum, cement, fertilizer, hydrogen, and electricity to buy CBAM certificates priced to the roughly €60-€95 per tonne EU ETS carbon rate, with costs and paperwork increasingly passed back to small US exporters who can't supply verified emissions data.
Executive Order 14411, signed June 3, 2026, requires customs bonds or domestic assets for every importer of record, bars foreign IORs from informal entries and continuous bonds, mandates beneficial-ownership disclosures, and sets a 50% minimum penalty floor — with deadlines at 45, 90, and 180 days. Here's what small importers should do before the rules take effect.
Only 3% of small importers still lack a tariff mitigation strategy in 2026, down from 57% waiting it out in 2025. Five bookkeeping moves protect margins — capitalize duties into landed cost instead of expensing them, scenario-model your top 20% of SKUs, track the carrying cost of buffer stock, price product-by-product, and record country of origin per batch.
The Federal Reserve's 2025 Small Business Credit Survey finds 80% of tariff-paying small firms raised prices, 60% absorbed costs into margins, and 44-47% plan further increases — a "trickle up" pattern that means input costs haven't finished rising. Here's how to read the data and prepare your pricing and books.
In June 2026, USTR concluded 60 simultaneous Section 301 investigations and proposed additional tariffs of 10% (economies with an unenforced forced-labor import ban, including Canada, Mexico, and the EU) or 12.5% (the 54 economies with no ban, including China, India, and Vietnam) — duties that stack on top of existing Section 232, IEEPA, and China 301 rates. Here is who is on each list, how the surcharge compounds landed cost, and five steps small importers should take before the final rate publishes.
As of July 9, 2026, Etsy requires non-US sellers shipping to US buyers to use Delivered Duty Paid (DDP) — prepaying US tariffs and building them into the listing price — or lose Purchase Protection. This guide covers re-pricing by tariff category and why prepaid duties belong in inventory cost and COGS, not overhead.
A presidential proclamation effective April 6, 2026 (updated June 8, 2026) now applies Section 232 tariffs on steel, aluminum, and copper derivatives to a product's full customs value instead of just its metal content, pushing rates as high as 50% on the entire declared value.
U.S. duty drawback refunds up to 99% of import duties when goods are re-exported or destroyed, and claims can reach back five years. Here's which tariffs qualify (Section 301, the 2026 Section 122 surcharge), which don't (Section 232), and the import records CBP requires to approve a claim.
Starting July 1, 2026, the EU replaces its €150 duty-free threshold with a flat €3-per-item customs duty on distance sales, so a three-item EU order with distinct HS codes can owe €9 in duty on top of VAT — here's what US sellers need to audit before the deadline.
The USMCA's mandatory six-year joint review began July 1, 2026, giving the US, Mexico, and Canada until 2036 to decide whether to extend the agreement—small businesses claiming preferential tariff treatment should audit certificates of origin now, since a paperwork gap can be treated as customs fraud during heightened review-period scrutiny.
