China's retaliatory tariff on US Plastics & Rubber exports

China’s seventy-four point nine percent charge on US polyoxymethylene copolymer is the single steepest retaliatory rate any American exporter faces in 2026, and it is worth being precise about what it actually is. POM copolymer — an engineering thermoplastic prized for stiffness, low friction, and dimensional stability in gears, fasteners, and precision moulded parts — falls under Harmonised System heading 3907.10. The charge against it is not a flat counter-tariff of the kind China applied to US goods in 2018, but a provisional anti-dumping measure, which is a legally distinct instrument with different mechanics.

China’s Ministry of Commerce announced the provisional determination on May 18, 2025, finding that US-origin POM copolymer was being sold into the Chinese market below normal value, and collection of the provisional duty began in mid-June. Because it is an anti-dumping action, the rate is tied to a dumping margin rather than to a political product list, which carries two practical consequences. First, the margin can differ between individual US producers depending on the evidence each submitted during the investigation, so the headline figure is the rate applied where a producer-specific margin was not separately established. Second, the measure follows the product’s origin and pricing, not merely its shipping route — transshipment through a third country does not lawfully escape an anti-dumping order the way it might sidestep an origin-based tariff.

For the US chemical sector the stakes are concrete. A rate this high is not a cost to be absorbed in margin; at seventy-four point nine percent it effectively prices US resin out of the Chinese market against domestic and third-country suppliers, and several American producers have redirected volume toward other Asian buyers as a result. The provisional status matters too: an anti-dumping investigation typically moves from a provisional to a final determination, and the final margin can be set higher, lower, or be terminated outright, so the figure is more provisional than the long-standing 2018-era counter-tariffs on other Chinese lines. The rate recorded here is verified against the ITA Foreign Retaliations Database and attributed to the Ministry of Commerce announcement of May 18, 2025.

An exporter pricing a shipment of POM copolymer into China should treat the seventy-four point nine percent figure as a current provisional rate to be re-confirmed before each sale, watch for the final anti-dumping determination that will eventually supersede it, and request the producer-specific margin if one applies to their company. Because the charge stacks on top of China’s ordinary import duty for the heading, the all-in landed cost in the Chinese market is higher still.

See also: China tariff overview, Plastics & Rubber Products, and China’s full retaliation list.