How to Apply for an Exclusion from Trump’s Section 301 Tariffs on Chinese Products

The USTR announced on Friday, July 6, 2018 the process for applying for exclusions from Trump’s first Section 301 Tariffs on products from China. The actual procedures for applying for the exclusion were later published in the Federal Register.

Importers who have products on Trump’s first tariff list should make note of the following when considering whether they should apply for an exclusion:

The request period for an exclusion ends on October 9, 2018. This is less than 90 days from now.
The government highly recommends using the Regulations.gov website to file the exclusion request.
The exclusion request is subject to public commentary.
Exclusions are effective for one year.
Exclusions will apply retroactively to July 6, 2018.
Exclusions are made on a product basis, not an importer basis. Therefore if an importer successfully requests an exclusion for a product, it will apply to all similar products including those brought in by other importers.

We also highly recommend that importers who are thinking of requesting an exclusion read through page 5 and 6 of the exclusion process published in the Federal Register. These two pages describe the rationale that should be used when requesting an exclusion.