US-China Tariffs and Amazon Pricing: What Applies Now and How to Price Through It

If you are reading a tariff guide written before 2026, the rates in it are wrong. Not out of date at the margins. Wrong, because the legal basis for most of them was struck down and the duties are being refunded.

This guide sets out what is actually in force on Chinese imports today, what is scheduled to change next, and the part that matters most for an Amazon seller: how to run a pricing floor when a cost input moves several times a year on dates nobody controls.

TL;DR

The headline China tariff rates quoted across most seller content no longer exist, and the number that replaced them is built differently. On 20 February 2026 the Supreme Court held that the International Emergency Economic Powers Act does not authorise the President to impose tariffs, voiding the reciprocal and fentanyl-related duties that produced the familiar 145%, 30% and 20% figures. What remains is a stack: ordinary MFN duty, Section 301 duties of 7.5% to 25% from the 2018 actions, a 12.5% Section 301 forced-labour duty in force since 24 July 2026, and Section 232 sectoral duties on specific goods. The Peterson Institute put the average US tariff on Chinese imports at 35.2% as of 22 August 2026. Two dates are close: 178 Section 301 exclusions lapse on 10 November 2026, and the current truce runs to 10 January 2027.

Why the Rates in Older Guides Are Wrong

On 20 February 2026, in Learning Resources, Inc. v. Trump, the US Supreme Court ruled 6 to 3 that the International Emergency Economic Powers Act does not give the President authority to impose tariffs.

That one ruling voided the duties that every 2025 tariff guide was built around: the reciprocal tariff and the fentanyl-related tariff. Customs and Border Protection stopped collecting them, and is now refunding them. The figures those guides quote, the 145% peak, the 30% truce rate, the later 20%, were all IEEPA-based. None of them is a current rate.

There is a refund worth checking. CBP is processing repayments through its Consolidated Administration and Processing of Entries programme, with a third phase opened on 6 October 2026. Reporting on the programme notes a large block of refunds, around $1.3 billion across roughly 20,000 importers, held up purely because CBP does not have current bank details on file. If you imported from China during that window, that is a few minutes of work against real money.

How the Rate Got to 145% and Back Down

The 145% figure was real, it lasted about a month, and it was not the whole story.

Two things are worth getting right, because most summaries do not.

145% was an additive headline rate, not what everyone paid. It was 125% reciprocal plus 20% fentanyl-related, and ordinary duty and Section 301 stacked on top of it. Exclusions and carve-outs pulled the other way. The Peterson Institute's average figure for US tariffs on imports from China, which is closer to what importers actually paid, peaked at 126.1% in early May 2025.

The 30% that followed was two numbers. Geneva set the reciprocal rate at 10%. The 20% fentanyl-related tariff was untouched. Guides that describe Geneva as cutting the rate to 30% are right about the total and wrong about the mechanism, which matters because the two components then moved separately.

What Actually Applies to Chinese Imports Today

There is no single headline China rate any more. There is a stack, and which parts apply depends on what you import.

For a single comparable figure, the Peterson Institute for International Economics put the average US tariff on Chinese imports at 35.2% as of 22 August 2026. Quote it with its date, because it moves.

A typical consumer-goods importer outside the Section 232 categories is looking at ordinary duty plus a Section 301 list rate plus the 12.5% forced-labour duty. Category matters a great deal: furniture carries a 25% Section 232 duty but is exempt from the forced-labour duty, while several goods targeted in the 2024 Section 301 review carry far higher rates, including electric vehicles at 100% and solar cells and semiconductors at 50%.

The truce still exists, but it is not about tariff rates any more. It was extended on 23 September 2026 and now runs to 10 January 2027. Since the IEEPA rates it originally suspended no longer exist, what it demonstrably covers now is export controls and rare earths. Treat reporting that describes it as holding tariff rates down with care.

Two Dates on the Near Horizon

10 November 2026: 178 Section 301 exclusions lapse. The US Trade Representative extended these exclusions to 10 November 2026. As things stand no further extension has been announced. If a line you import sits under one of those exclusions, entries on or after that date revert to the standard Section 301 rate for that line. Some trade coverage describes the cut-off as the end of 9 November, so treat 9 November as the last safe day rather than cutting it fine. This is the nearest thing to a scheduled cost increase on the calendar, and it will not arrive as an announcement.

10 January 2027: the current truce expires. A set of potential tariff reductions covering roughly $30 billion of goods each way was announced in late September 2026, and the US list reportedly includes categories that matter to Amazon sellers, among them appliances, toys and holiday decorations. These are proposals. They require a formal notice-and-comment process, and the US Trade Representative has said there is no timeline. Do not price as though they have happened.

The practical reading: one date is a probable cost increase on a known day, the other is an open question. Plan for the first and watch the second.

De Minimis Is Gone, and That Matters More Than the Duty

The $800 duty-free threshold no longer applies, it was not restored by the Supreme Court ruling, and it is scheduled to disappear from the statute entirely.

The sequence: the exemption ended for China and Hong Kong on 2 May 2025, was suspended globally from 29 August 2025, and then survived the IEEPA ruling because Customs re-grounded it on separate statutory authority. A Customs interim final rule published on 24 June 2026 suspended it indefinitely for everything arriving outside the international postal network, with a companion rule published the same day covering mail shipments. Statutory repeal follows on 1 July 2027.

For a small seller the duty is often not the painful part. The process is. Every commercial shipment now needs formal or informal entry, which means a customs broker, correct tariff classification and country-of-origin data on every line. Sellers who previously shipped small parcels direct and never thought about classification now carry a compliance cost that does not scale down. Bona fide gifts and goods accompanying travellers remain exempt.

What This Did to Amazon Prices

The measured effect on Amazon prices has been real but smaller than the headline rates imply.

An analysis by DataWeave conducted for Reuters tracked 1,407 China-made products sold on Amazon out of a set of more than 25,000. Between January and mid-June 2025, the period covering the sharpest tariff movement, the median price rose 2.6%. Home and furniture rose 3.5% and electronics 3.1%. Of the 1,407 items, 475 rose, 633 were unchanged and 299 fell.

That is well below the headline tariff movement, for the reasons the stack explains: the headline rate was never the effective rate, importers had pre-tariff inventory, and some absorbed cost rather than passing it on.

Absorption has limits. Speaking to CNBC in January 2026, Amazon chief executive Andy Jassy described tariff costs beginning to show up in prices and noted that in a business running mid-single-digit retail margins, there are not endless places to absorb them. It was a change from his position a year earlier that prices had not risen.

Pricing Through a Moving Cost Input

The lesson of the last two years is not which rate to use. It is that landed cost is now a variable that changes on dates you do not control.

Everything above is a cost input. A floor built on a tariff rate from a guide, or from the invoice before last, is wrong from the day the rate moves, and nothing in your repricer will flag it.

Three things follow:

1. Recalculate landed cost per shipment, not per year. If duty paid on your most recent entry differs from the figure in your floor calculation, the floor is wrong by that difference divided by one minus your referral rate. The cost stack guide covers which components belong in the calculation.

2. Separate inventory by landed cost, not by SKU. During a rate change you will hold pre-change and post-change stock of the same product at genuinely different costs. Pricing both off one floor either leaves money on the table or sells the expensive units at a loss.

3. Derive the floor rather than typing it. Profit Protection calculates the minimum from your cost inputs, so updating a landed cost once moves every floor that depends on it. The alternative is a catalogue-wide spreadsheet job every time policy moves, which is the pattern that produced the stale floors in the first place.

A note on the temptation to pass savings through quickly. When costs fall, the sellers who cut hardest and fastest tend to set a market price that is difficult to walk back when the next increase lands. The repricing rules guide covers building rules on relative position rather than fixed price points, which is what makes a recovery possible.

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Key Takeaways

1. The familiar China tariff numbers are void. The Supreme Court struck down the IEEPA tariffs on 20 February 2026, and those duties are being refunded.

2. What applies now is a stack, not a headline: MFN duty, Section 301 at 7.5% to 25%, a 12.5% forced-labour duty since 24 July 2026, and Section 232 duties on specific sectors.

3. The best single comparable figure is 35.2%, the Peterson Institute average as of 22 August 2026. Always cite it with its date.

4. 10 November 2026 is the near-term risk: 178 Section 301 exclusions lapse with no extension announced.

5. The truce now runs to 10 January 2027 and governs export controls rather than tariff rates.

6. De minimis is gone for good, with statutory repeal on 1 July 2027, and the entry-process burden outweighs the duty for most small sellers.

7. Measured Amazon price impact was 2.6% median across 1,407 China-made products from January to mid-June 2025, far below the headline rates.

8. Treat landed cost as a variable. A derived floor survives a policy change; a typed one does not.

Action Plan

1. Check whether you are owed an IEEPA refund and, if so, that Customs holds current bank details for you. A substantial block of refunds is stalled for that reason alone.

2. Identify which of your tariff lines sit under a Section 301 exclusion and model the cost if it lapses on 10 November 2026.

3. Pull the actual duty paid on your most recent entry and compare it against the landed cost figure behind your current floors.

4. Recalculate floors for any SKU where those two numbers differ by more than a few cents per unit.

5. Split pre-change and post-change inventory in your cost records so each batch prices off its own landed cost.

6. Confirm your entry process now that de minimis is gone: broker, classification and country-of-origin data on every commercial shipment.

7. Move to derived floors so the next policy change is one input update rather than a catalogue-wide job.

Frequently Asked Questions

1. What is the current US tariff rate on Chinese imports?

There is no single rate. Since the Supreme Court voided the IEEPA tariffs on 20 February 2026, what applies is a stack: ordinary MFN duty for the tariff line, Section 301 duties of 7.5% to 25% from the 2018 actions, a 12.5% Section 301 forced-labour duty in force since 24 July 2026, and Section 232 sectoral duties on goods such as furniture at 25% and steel, aluminium and copper at 50%. The Peterson Institute put the average at 35.2% as of 22 August 2026. Check your own tariff lines rather than applying an average.

2. Are the 145% and 30% figures still relevant?

Only as history. The 145% headline applied for roughly a month from early April 2025 and was 125% reciprocal plus 20% fentanyl-related. The 30% that followed the May 2025 Geneva statement was 10% reciprocal plus the unchanged 20%. All of those were IEEPA-based and were voided in February 2026. Any guide quoting them as current rates predates the ruling.

3. Can I still use the $800 de minimis exemption?

No. It ended for China and Hong Kong in May 2025, was suspended globally from August 2025, and a Customs interim final rule suspended it indefinitely from 24 June 2026 on authority unaffected by the Supreme Court ruling. Statutory repeal follows on 1 July 2027. Commercial shipments now need formal or informal entry regardless of value, which for most small sellers is a bigger operational change than the duty itself.

4. What happens on 10 November 2026?

178 Section 301 product exclusions are due to lapse. If one of your tariff lines is covered, entries on or after that date revert to the standard Section 301 rate for that line. No further extension has been announced. Check your lines against the US Trade Representative's notice and model the cost before the date rather than discovering it on an invoice.

5. Should I cut prices when tariffs fall?

Not reflexively. Cost reductions reach sellers at different times depending on when inventory was imported, so the first movers set a market price against costs that others do not yet have. A derived floor tells you what you can afford; the competitive decision of whether to take the saving as margin or as volume is separate, and worth making deliberately rather than in the first week of a rate change.