On September 17, the Office of the U.S. Trade Representative (USTR) released its final list of approximately $200 billion in Chinese imports subject to an additional ad valorem tariff. The final list, which covers 5,745 product categories, will take effect on September 24, 2018. The tariff rate will initially be set at 10 percent and will increase to 25 percent after January 1, 2019. The announcement of the final tariff list does not address whether the Administration will provide a product-level exclusion process from these tariffs, as it has done for two other rounds of tariffs imposed on Chinese imports earlier this year.
The Administration also announced a product-level exclusion process for the products covered by the tariffs on $16 billion in Chinese imports, which were released in August. Exclusion requests for products covered by these tariffs are due by December 18, 2018. As requests are posted to USTR’s docket, parties will have 14 days to file responses either in support of or opposition to a particular request.