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 10% 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 is the surcharge still being collected if it was struck down?

Two procedural facts explain the gap between “struck down” and “still paying.” First, the Court of International Trade’s relief was party-limited: the permanent injunction it issued protects 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 is heard.^[6] The practical result is blunt: U.S. Customs and Border Protection continues to collect the 10% surcharge from non-party importers right now, and will keep doing so unless and until the appeal, the statutory clock, or Congress changes the picture.

That is why the only honest headline is the one at the top of this page: 10% still collected from non-parties under the CAFC administrative stay (as of 2026-05-31) If you import goods that are not otherwise exempt, you are almost certainly paying the surcharge today, regardless of the CIT ruling. Whether you can later recover those payments is a separate, unresolved question that depends on how the appeal is decided — which is 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)
• 2026-07-24Statutory 150-day limit reached — the surcharge lapses on this date unless Congress extends it. (19 U.S.C. § 2132; Federal Register 2026-03824)

The three live outcomes — in plain terms

Rather than a single foregone conclusion, the realistic picture is three distinct outcomes, any of which could come to pass. Each changes your landed cost differently, which is exactly why the calculator above models all three from one set of inputs.

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

If the appeals court affirms that the surcharge was imposed unlawfully, the administrative stay dissolves and the surcharge falls away for all importers, not just the original plaintiffs.^[5]In that world the Section 122 layer of your tariff stack drops to zero, and the live question shifts to whether refunds are available for what was collected during the stay. This is the “struck down” column in the calculator.

Scenario B — the Federal Circuit reverses the lower court

If the appeals court disagrees with the Court of International Trade and upholds the surcharge, the 10% continues at the border with full legal backing until the statutory expiry or a further order.^[6] For planning purposes this is the most conservative assumption: it is the highest-cost outcome, and it is the figure you are effectively paying today while the stay is in force.

Scenario C — the statutory clock runs out on July 24, 2026

Independent of the appeal, Section 122 carries a hard statutory limit of 150 days. That limit is reached on 2026-07-24, at which point the surcharge lapses on its own unless Congress passes legislation to extend it.^[2] This is the outcome most commentary fixates on, but it is only one of three — and like Scenario A it removes the Section 122 layer, which is why those two columns of the calculator show the same landed cost.

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 is being collected today, the practical advice is to plan for Scenario B — paying the surcharge — while preserving your options if Scenario A or C comes to pass. That means three concrete steps. Budget your landed costs at the with-surcharge figure so a continuation does not blow up your margins. Keep complete, well-organized entry documentation, because refund eligibility for amounts paid under the stay will turn on records if the surcharge is ultimately invalidated. And model your sourcing decisions against all three outcomes rather than betting on a single one — a supplier that looks expensive under Scenario B may look very different if the surcharge disappears, and vice versa.

It is also worth watching the calendar and the docket together. The July 24 statutory expiry and the Federal Circuit’s decision are two separate clocks, and whichever resolves first will set the near-term reality. Congress could also act at any time, either to extend the surcharge before it lapses or to constrain its use going forward. 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.