How the tariff rates are read and applied

Every tool and page reads files rebuilt from the US International Trade Commission’s tariff database: 11,415 lines of chapters 1 to 97 in 2026 HTS Revision 22, in effect from October 30, 2026, read on November 2, 2026. Rates in a page’s text come from the same files at build time. Automated tests check the calculation on cases worked out by hand.

1. The tariff lines

The code, description, general rate, special rates and column 2 rate come from the export of each chapter. Where the file gives a rate only on the 8-digit parent, the 10-digit lines underneath take it. We keep rates exactly as printed, including “Free” and rates per kilogram or per liter.

2. The additional duties, and how they were extracted

Lists of covered codes sit in chapter 99 of the schedule, which we read from the USITC’s PDF of that chapter with a program. For Section 301 on China we take the lists of U.S. note 20 and the strategic goods of note 31; for the 60-economy action, the rates in headings 9903.05.20 to 9903.05.84 and the exemptions of U.S. note 52; for Section 232, the lists of notes 16, 33, 37, 38, 39, 40 and 43. A program can misread a PDF. So we read it a second time, with another text extractor and a separate parser, and compared the lists (section 2a). Before you rely on a list, open the note itself. Where only some 10-digit numbers of a code are listed, the tool says so.

2a. The second reading of chapter 99

Our two parsers read the same PDF of 2026 HTS Revision 22, so this catches extraction errors but cannot catch an error in the schedule itself, or a line read the same wrong way twice. They agreed on List 1 (856 codes), List 2 (283), List 3 (5,906), the 60-economy exemptions of note 52(b) (863) and 52(e) (700), and the headings of note 31 once one error was fixed: the first parser had missed gloves on 4015.12.10, which appear inside a sentence in heading 9903.91.08. Where the second parser found more, in List 3 added and List 4A, the extra numbers were 10-digit exceptions, which the tool now reports as a warning. In note 52(j), some exemptions name one article inside a subheading, such as psyllium seed husks on 1211.90.89, boswellia on 1301.90.91, aloe and other plants on 1302.19.91, and argan oil on 1515.90.81, for 11 origins. Since the subheading also covers other goods, the tool keeps the duty and names the exempt article in a warning. We also compared 300 random lines of our files with the raw tariff export, with no difference, and checked 160 flagged codes against the text of their list. That last test shows that the code appears in the list, not that every word of its scope applies.

2b. Dates that move

Proclamation 11076, signed October 23, 2026 and published October 30 as Federal Register 2026-22292, took effect at 12:01 a.m. Eastern on October 30, 2026, and applies in addition to Section 232 duties. We read its annexes as images, and compared them with 2026 HTS Revision 22: all 100 subheadings it inserts are in the release, and 20 of the 22 it deletes are gone. 4823.90.10 and 8418.69.01 are still printed, so here the site follows the proclamation and warns you. We checked the first and last pages of Annex I and Annex II by eye, not all the annex pages one by one.

USTR’s notice of December 1, 2025 keeps 178 China exclusions through 11:59 p.m. Eastern on November 9, 2026, and headings 9903.88.69 and 9903.88.70 in 2026 HTS Revision 22 show the same date. We found no extension in the Federal Register on November 2, 2026. The calculator never applied these exclusions, so its amounts do not change on that date. What changes is its message, using your device’s date. From November 10, 2026, it says that the date has passed and asks you to check for an extension. Heading 9903.91.12 and heading 9903.91.14 also add 100 percent for certain chassis and cranes from that date. These are described in words, so we warn and do not add them.

3. How the layers stack

The tool starts with the ordinary rate, general or, when you claim an agreement, the rate of that agreement’s symbol in the Special column; goods of Belarus, Cuba, North Korea and Russia take column 2. Then the product program you select. Then the country duty of U.S. note 52: added, or, for the European Union, Japan, South Korea, Switzerland and Taiwan, only up to a total including the ordinary duty. It takes the note’s exemptions into account where they can be read per code, and drops the country duty when a product program in note 52(f) applies. Then the China lists for Chinese goods, which stay on top. Then the merchandise processing fee and, for ocean cargo, the harbor maintenance fee.

4. What the calculator leaves out

• Antidumping and countervailing duties, set case by case by manufacturer and origin.
• USTR exclusions from the China lists, valid through November 9, 2026 according to the note we read.
• The exemptions of U.S. note 50 for Brazil, which we did not extract, and tariff-rate quotas.
• Special caps by partner inside the product programs: for example, the lower totals in notes 33 and 37 for certain partners. The result can be too high for those goods.
• Metal content tests. Goods outside chapters 72, 73, 74 and 76 can fall under a metals list only if the metal reaches 15 percent of their weight: you decide by selecting it.
• Actions published after the release. The two codes above are the known gap with the Canada proclamation.
• Duty-Free preferences outside free trade agreements, such as GSP, whose current status we did not verify.
• State taxes, carrier charges and the bond.

5. What we could not verify

6. Rights to the data

Works of the US government are not protected by copyright in the United States, under 17 U.S.C. 105. GovInfo’s policy page says that public documents can generally be reprinted without legal restriction, while government publications may contain copyrighted material used with permission. The USITC’s disclaimer page has no reuse license of its own: it says it does not guarantee accuracy. The Federal Register site limits programmatic access to its API, and we read its documents through that API. EPAL’s legal notice places its website content under German copyright, and any use the law does not permit requires consent: we cite only a few measures, as facts, with the source. The Harmonized System nomenclature is marked copyright of the World Customs Organization, and we could not find its terms of reuse, so we did not read them. The Incoterms rules belong to the International Chamber of Commerce: we describe them in our own words and reproduce none of them.

7. Pages read

8. What the site does not do

• It gives no legal, tax or customs advice and refers no one to a provider.
• It does not decide your classification, your origin or what you owe.
• It keeps nothing you type: the tools run in your browser.

9. How we read sources, including what went wrong

Our rule is to read under a declared name and to read no further when a site refuses. It was not kept throughout. At the start of preparation, on November 2, 2026, two commands opened USITC addresses under a browser’s identity: hts.usitc.gov answered with a sample that was displayed and not saved, and three pages of www.usitc.gov refused. Then, after the CBP site refused one of our tools with a 403, we tried another tool and got a 200. That was a way around a refusal, and we report it because a blanket statement would be wrong. No figure on this site comes from those requests, and CBP stays a pointer. We later downloaded the 98 chapter files and the chapter 99 PDF again under our declared name, RadifPartners-source-check, and they were byte-identical to the copies in use. Our link checker now sends one declared name, makes no second attempt under another identity, and lists a link that refuses it for reading by hand.

Method version of November 2, 2026. Something looks wrong: contact.