Published July 6, 2026
If you built a landed-cost model around the IEEPA tariffs on Chinese goods, you need to rebuild it — because those tariffs no longer exist in the form they were imposed. The IEEPA program was one of the biggest tariff stories of 2025, and its collapse in early 2026 is one of the biggest of this year. This is what actually happened, what replaced it, and — most importantly — which China duties are still solid enough to plan around.
Tariff law is moving fast and is actively being litigated. Treat every rate below as "verify before you commit," and confirm your specific product's current combined rate at a live source like lgistics.ai before making any decision.
IEEPA stands for the International Emergency Economic Powers Act, a 1977 law giving the President broad authority to regulate international commerce during a declared national emergency. It was designed for sanctions and asset freezes — not tariffs. In 2025, the administration used it to impose broad tariffs on Chinese goods (and others) on national-security and trade-balance grounds, reaching roughly 20% on most Chinese imports on top of existing duties. Because IEEPA is an emergency power rather than a trade statute, these tariffs could be imposed and changed quickly, with far fewer procedural constraints than a Section 301 action.
That speed cut both ways. The same lack of a normal statutory basis that made IEEPA tariffs fast to impose also made them legally vulnerable — and that vulnerability is exactly what caught up with them.
On February 20, 2026, the Supreme Court held that IEEPA does not authorize the President to impose tariffs at all. The ruling removed IEEPA as a legal basis for the tariff program and reaffirmed that tariff authority has to come from Congress or from statutes that clearly delegate it. In plain terms: the roughly 20% IEEPA layer that importers had been stacking onto Chinese goods was invalidated.
That did not make Chinese imports cheap again — because the administration moved immediately to replace the lost tariffs through a different legal door.
Within days of the ruling, the administration pivoted to Section 122 of the Trade Act of 1974, imposing a global surcharge of 10% (with an announced increase toward 15%, the statutory maximum). Section 122 is a balance-of-payments tool, applies broadly rather than China-specifically, and is time-limited by statute.
But Section 122 landed in court too. On May 7, 2026, the US Court of International Trade struck down the 10% Section 122 tariff. That decision is under appeal, and — this is the practical part — tariffs can continue to be collected while the appeal proceeds. So as of now the "reciprocal/emergency" tariff layer is genuinely unsettled: IEEPA is dead, its Section 122 replacement has been struck down but is being litigated, and the rate that actually applies to your goods depends on where that fight stands the day your entry clears customs.
The honest takeaway: do not build a cost model that depends on a specific emergency-tariff rate right now. That layer is in flux and could change again with a court ruling or a new executive action.
Underneath the noise, the stable China duties are the ones that come from ordinary trade statutes and haven't been touched by these rulings:
Section 301 tariffs — still in force. These were imposed through the normal USTR process and remain active, at 7.5% to 25% depending on the product list, with elevated rates on specific sectors (electric vehicles, semiconductors, solar cells, batteries, steel, and aluminum). Section 301 is the solid, China-specific tariff layer to plan around. See our Section 301 rates by category.
Anti-dumping and countervailing duties (AD/CVD) — still in force. Product-specific and unaffected by the tariff rulings; where they apply, they can be very high. See anti-dumping duties on Chinese products.
Standard MFN duties — unchanged. Your baseline HTS rate.
If you want a number you can actually plan a purchase around today, build it on MFN + Section 301 + any AD/CVD, and treat whatever emergency/Section 122 surcharge is in effect as a volatile add-on to verify at the time of entry.
Alongside the tariff actions, the duty-free de minimis treatment for low-value Chinese shipments (previously under $800) was eliminated — a change that hit cross-border e-commerce and direct-to-consumer platforms hardest, and created formal-entry obligations for arrangements that used to skate under the threshold. Like everything else in this area, the exact treatment has been subject to change, so confirm current de minimis rules before relying on them.
The practical guidance hasn't changed even though the law has: any cost model for Chinese-sourced goods needs to be recalculated at current rates, and "current" now means "as of this week," not "as of when I signed the supplier agreement." Concretely:
For strategies to reduce your total duty burden — several of which survive regardless of how the emergency-tariff litigation ends — see tariff engineering. For the full stack and how the pieces fit, see the China tariffs guide, and how to calculate landed cost once you've pinned your current rate.
IEEPA tariffs on China were real, then the Supreme Court struck them down in February 2026, and the Section 122 surcharge that replaced them is itself being fought in court. The emergency-tariff layer is unsettled and will keep moving. What's solid is Section 301 (7.5–25%, higher on key sectors) and AD/CVD — build your cost model on those, and verify the current combined rate on your specific product before you commit to a supplier or a price.
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