China's retaliatory tariffs on US exports

How China’s counter-measures took shape

China’s retaliatory tariffs on US exports are the longest-running of any major trading partner, stretching back to the first round of Section 301 duties that the United States imposed on Chinese goods in 2018. When the US Trade Representative published List 1 on July 6, 2018, Beijing responded the same day with a mirror tranche of counter-tariffs on US-origin goods, and the tit-for-tat structure established that summer still shapes the schedule importers see in 2026. Rather than a single sweeping measure, China’s retaliation is a layered set of actions administered through the State Council Tariff Commission and announced through the Ministry of Commerce. The canonical English-language record of which US products carry a Chinese counter-tariff is the International Trade Administration Foreign Retaliations Database, which the figures on this page are drawn from and which was last verified for these entries in May 2026.

The measures in force today

The single highest charge a US exporter currently faces is a provisional anti-dumping measure of seventy-four point nine percent on polyoxymethylene copolymer, an engineering plastic classified under Harmonised System heading 3907.10. The Ministry of Commerce announced the provisional determination on May 18, 2025, with collection beginning in mid-June of that year. Although it is administered as an anti-dumping action rather than a flat counter-tariff, it lands on US-origin resin at a rate far above anything in the 2018 retaliation rounds, and for the chemical exporters affected it is the most punishing single line in the entire foreign-retaliation landscape. China’s Ministry of Commerce issues these provisional determinations through its official announcements, and the International Trade Administration database records the determination as the corroborating reference for the rate.

Two further measures survive from the original Section 301 era and remain collected under the 2025 trade framework. Aircraft parts under heading 8803.30 carry a twenty-five percent counter-tariff that dates to a Ministry of Commerce announcement on May 13, 2019, when Beijing added a second list of US goods in response to the US List 3 escalation. Passenger automobiles under heading 8703.23 carry the same twenty-five percent charge, imposed in the very first retaliation tranche on July 6, 2018 and reinstated after a brief suspension. Both rates are cross-referenced in the World Trade Organization’s dispute-settlement record, where the underlying complaint over the US tariff measures is docketed as case DS543.

Because these charges are assessed at the Chinese border on the declared customs value of the US shipment, their effect compounds with China’s ordinary most-favoured-nation import duty and value-added tax rather than replacing them. A US chemical exporter selling POM copolymer therefore faces the anti-dumping margin layered on top of the normal import duty for that heading, which is what makes the seventy-four point nine percent figure so consequential for downstream pricing in the Chinese market. For the aircraft-parts and passenger-vehicle lines, the twenty-five percent counter-tariff sits on top of China’s standard component and vehicle duties — a stack that has been enough to price several US-built models out of the market over the period the measure has been collected, and a useful reminder that a retaliatory rate is rarely the whole of what an exporter pays at the foreign border.

The agricultural retaliation that was withdrawn

Not every Chinese counter-measure is still being collected. The agricultural tariffs that drew the most attention during 2025 — a band of charges between roughly ten and fifteen percent on US soybeans, sorghum, and pork — were rolled back rather than escalated. The State Council Tariff Commission announced on November 5, 2025 that those retaliatory agricultural duties would be removed, with the withdrawal taking effect five days later on November 10. For that reason the animal-feed line on this site is recorded at zero percent: it models the removal event itself, not an active charge. Exporters of soybeans and feed grains who were paying the surcharge through most of 2025 should confirm the current zero status against the Foreign Retaliations Database before pricing a shipment, because the underlying political relationship remains volatile and a reinstatement would move quickly.

Who sets these rates, and under what authority

Chinese retaliatory tariffs are not set by the customs service. They are decided by the State Council Tariff Commission, the cabinet-level body that holds statutory authority over China’s import-tariff schedule, and they are published operationally through Ministry of Commerce announcements that specify the targeted Harmonised System lines and the effective date. This two-body structure matters for anyone tracking the measures, because a Ministry of Commerce press release will often describe the policy intent while the legally operative rate change flows from a separate Tariff Commission notice. China consistently frames its counter-measures as lawful responses to US actions it considers inconsistent with WTO rules, and it has pursued that argument formally through the dispute-settlement system. For an importer or exporter, the practical consequence is that these rates can change on short notice and without the multi-month comment periods that accompany US tariff proceedings.

What US exporters should watch

The exposure here runs in the opposite direction from most of this site’s calculators: these are charges that a foreign government places on goods leaving the United States, so they fall on US producers selling into the Chinese market rather than on US importers. Chemical manufacturers shipping engineering plastics, aerospace suppliers moving aircraft components, and automakers exporting finished vehicles are the three groups most directly affected by the rates still in force. The near-term outlook is tied closely to the broader US–China tariff truce and to the scheduled expiration of the US Section 122 balance-of- payments surcharge in July 2026; a breakdown in that wider arrangement is the most likely trigger for China to widen its retaliation list again. Because the measures are administered as a mix of anti-dumping actions and Section 301-era counter-tariffs, an exporter cannot assume that a single sourcing or routing change will remove them — an anti-dumping order follows the product’s origin and dumping margin, not merely its shipping path.

Verifying a specific rate

For any specific US export line, the verification path is to locate the product in the Foreign Retaliations Database by Harmonised System code, confirm the rate and effective date there, and then cross-check the Ministry of Commerce portal for the originating announcement. Where a measure is an anti-dumping action, the database notes the determination type, which signals that the charge is tied to a producer-specific dumping margin and may differ between exporters of the same product. The rates on this page reflect the database as verified in May 2026; because the bilateral relationship is one of the most fluid in global trade, any commercial decision should be checked against the live database and, for a binding transaction, with a licensed customs broker in the destination market.