Section 122 Status: What U.S. Importers Actually Pay Right Now

What is Section 122, and why is it being litigated?

Section 122 of the Trade Act of 1974, codified at 19 U.S.C. § 2132 (Section 122, Trade Act of 1974), gives the President a narrow, temporary power: to impose a uniform import surcharge of up to 15 percent for up to 150 days to address a serious United States balance-of-payments deficit, without waiting for Congress.^[2] It was designed in the 1970s as an emergency pressure-release valve, and for half a century it sat unused. In February 2026 it was invoked for the first time, imposing a 0% surcharge on imports from nearly every country, effective February 24, 2026.^[1]

Almost immediately the surcharge was challenged in court. Importers argued that the statutory precondition — a genuine balance-of-payments emergency as Congress understood it in 1974 — was not met, and that using Section 122 as a general tariff tool exceeded the President’s authority.^[4] On May 7, 2026, the U.S. Court of International Trade agreed, holding in a 2-1 decision that the proclamation was ultra vires — beyond the power the statute grants.^[5] That ruling is the heart of why the status today is genuinely uncertain rather than a simple countdown to an expiry date.

Why the surcharge kept being collected until July 24 — and why it stopped

Two procedural facts explain why importers kept paying between the May ruling and the July cliff. First, the Court of International Trade’s relief was party-limited: the permanent injunction it issued protected only the specific plaintiffs in the case, not every importer in the country. It was not a nationwide vacatur of the surcharge.^[5] Second, on May 12, 2026 the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit entered an administrative stay, suspending the lower court’s injunction while the government’s appeal was heard.^[6] So U.S. Customs and Border Protection continued to collect the surcharge from non-party importers right up until July 24, 2026.

What ended the collection was not the appeal but the statutory clock. On July 24, 2026 the 150-day limit under 19 U.S.C. § 2132 (Section 122, Trade Act of 1974) was reached with no Congressional extension, and the surcharge lapsed to 0% by operation of law — regardless of how the appeal is ultimately decided. Section 122 lapsed to 0% on 2026-07-24 by operation of law — the 150-day statutory limit under 19 U.S.C. § 2132 was reached with no Congressional extension. Total landed cost does NOT fall to zero, however: a separate additive forced-labor Section 301 duty (10%/12.5% on ~60 economies) backfills on or after 2026-07-24. In other words, a separate forced-labor Section 301 duty (10%/12.5% on ~60 economies) took effect the same day and backfilled the surcharge for most importers, so landed costs largely did not fall to zero. Whether surcharge payments made before July 24 can be recovered is a separate, unresolved question that depends on the appeal — one more reason to keep meticulous entry records.

The key dates

The timeline below is the spine of the story. Each milestone changes what importers pay or could pay:

• 2026-02-24Section 122 surcharge takes effect — a uniform global import surcharge applied at the border. (Federal Register 2026-03824 (Feb 25, 2026))
• 2026-05-07U.S. Court of International Trade rules the surcharge proclamation ultra vires (2-1); permanent injunction limited to the three named plaintiffs (Burlap & Barrel Inc., Basic Fun Inc., and the State of Washington) — not a nationwide vacatur. (U.S. Court of International Trade)
• 2026-05-12U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit enters an administrative stay suspending the CIT injunction while the government's appeal proceeds — collection continues for non-parties. (U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit)
• 2026-06-11U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit grants the government's motion for a stay of the CIT injunction pending appeal, superseding the May 12 administrative stay — applying the Nken four-factor test and finding the government likely to succeed on the merits, the court pauses the injunction that had protected the three plaintiffs, so the surcharge continues to be collected from all importers while the appeal proceeds. (U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit)
• 2026-07-24Statutory 150-day limit reached — the surcharge lapsed to 0% on this date by operation of law. No Congressional extension occurred (S.4049 is a repeal, not an extension). A separate forced-labor Section 301 duty backfills on or after this date, so total landed cost does not fall to zero. (19 U.S.C. § 2132; Federal Register 2026-03824)

The three outcomes — and which one actually happened

Before July 24, 2026 three distinct outcomes were in play. The statutory clock resolved it: Scenario C is what occurred — Section 122 lapsed on its own 150-day limit, independent of the appeal. The other two remain useful only for understanding refund questions and the litigation still pending over amounts collected before the cliff.

Scenario A — the Federal Circuit upholds the Court of International Trade

Had the appeals court affirmed that the surcharge was imposed unlawfully, the administrative stay would have dissolved and the surcharge would have fallen away for all importers, not just the original plaintiffs.^[5]This mattered mainly for the refund question on amounts collected during the stay; the surcharge itself has since lapsed on the statutory clock regardless. This is the “struck down” column in the calculator.

Scenario B — the Federal Circuit reverses the lower court

Had the appeals court disagreed with the Court of International Trade and upheld the surcharge, the surcharge would have continued at the border with full legal backing — but only until its statutory expiry.^[6]Because that expiry has now arrived, Scenario B is moot for landed cost going forward: the surcharge lapsed on July 24 no matter how the appeal resolves. It is preserved here as the highest-cost “surcharge included” reference column.

Scenario C — the statutory clock ran out on July 24, 2026 (what happened)

Independent of the appeal, Section 122 carried a hard statutory limit of 150 days. That limit was reached on 2026-07-24, and with no Congressional extension the surcharge lapsed to 0% by operation of law.^[2] This is the outcome that occurred — but it was not a clean tariff cut: a forced-labor Section 301 duty (10%/12.5% on ~60 economies) took effect the same moment and backfilled the surcharge for most importers, so total landed cost largely did not fall to zero.

How Section 122 stacks with other tariffs

Section 122 does not exist in isolation; it is one layer in a stack. The base layer is the Most-Favored-Nation (MFN) duty for your product. On top of that, U.S. import duties apply the highest single applicable rate among Section 122, Section 232, and any bilateral deal rate — they are not all added together. Section 301 duties, which apply only to goods from China, then stack on top of everything else. The calculator on this page implements exactly that logic.

Two carve-outs matter most for Section 122. First, goods already covered by a Section 232 action — steel, aluminum, automobiles, copper, lumber, and semiconductors — are excluded from the Section 122 surcharge, so toggling Section 122 on or off makes no difference to those products. Second, goods that qualify under USMCA rules of origin from Canada and Mexico are exempt entirely; their effective rate is zero before Section 122 is even considered. If you enter one of those combinations into the calculator, you will see all three scenarios converge on the same number, and the tool will say so explicitly.

What importers should do right now

Because the surcharge has lapsed and a forced-labor Section 301 duty is now the operative layer for ~60 economies, the practical advice has shifted from the calendar to your origin country. Three concrete steps. First, check whether your origin is on the 60-economy forced-labor list and at which tier (0%, 10%, or 12.5%) — that, not the Section 122 lapse, determines what you pay now. Second, keep complete, well-organized entry documentation, because refund eligibility for surcharge amounts paid before July 24 will turn on records if the surcharge is ultimately invalidated on appeal. Third, re-model sourcing against the realized structure: a covered origin that looked cheaper under a “surcharge disappears” assumption may not be, once the forced-labor duty is added.

The two clocks have now resolved differently than many expected: the July 24 statutory expiry ended the surcharge first, before the Federal Circuit’s appeal was decided, and the administration used a separate forced-labor Section 301 action rather than a Section 122 extension to maintain tariff pressure. Because this page reads its status and key dates from a single machine-readable source, it stays accurate as those facts change — there is no hard-coded “days remaining” counter that silently goes stale.

How these numbers are calculated

Every dollar figure on this page is produced by the same tariff engine that powers the rest of CalcMyTariff. For each scenario the engine is given identical inputs — your country, product, and customs value — and run twice: once with the Section 122 layer active and once with it removed. The with-surcharge run is Scenario B; the without-surcharge run is shared by Scenarios A and C, which is why those two outcomes always show the same landed cost. The engine applies MFN duties, the highest applicable special-tariff layer, Section 301 where it applies, and the Merchandise Processing Fee and Harbor Maintenance Fee, then sums them with your customs value to produce the total landed cost. No rate on this page is typed by hand; they are all computed from the underlying tariff data, which is itself verified against primary sources.

The legal status, key dates, and source citations on this page are verified against the Federal Register, the Congressional Research Service, the underlying statute, and the published dockets of the Court of International Trade and the Federal Circuit. None of the legal claims here are generated from a language model’s memory; each traces to a primary or authoritative source listed below. Tariff status can change quickly, so this page records when it was last verified, and the calculator always reflects the current underlying data.