Industrial Policy & Trade Monitor· 2667 actions· ✨ 89 recent

On June 3, 2026, USTR formally initiated a Section 301 investigation (FR Doc. 2026-11043) into Vietnam's acts, policies, and practices relating to intellectual property protection and enforcement. This is the first Vietnam-specific Section 301 investigation carrying tariff-imposition authority — distinct from the Special 301 process (Section 182, which designates but cannot impose tariffs) and from the simultaneous June 2, 2026 forced-labor Section 301 (60 economies) and March 11, 2026 overcapacity Section 301. USTR proposes additional duties of 10–12.5% on Vietnamese goods if the investigation confirms actionable IP failures. The public comment period closes July 6, 2026.

On June 2, 2026, USTR published final actionability findings in 60 parallel Section 301(b) investigations — the largest simultaneous Section 301 action in US history — determining that all 60 economies maintain unreasonable acts, policies, or practices by failing to impose or effectively enforce a prohibition on imports produced with forced labor. USTR proposed two additional duty rates: 10% on the 14 economies with partial forced-labor regimes (Canada, Ecuador, EU, Indonesia, Mexico, Pakistan, Argentina, Bangladesh, Cambodia, El Salvador, Guatemala, Malaysia, Taiwan, UK) and 12.5% on the remaining 46 economies. Tariff rates remain proposed pending a July 7, 2026 public hearing and subsequent finalization; the actionability determination is final.

The US Department of Commerce published its final affirmative determination in the less-than-fair-value (LTFV) antidumping investigation of polypropylene corrugated boxes from Vietnam (Federal Register doc 2026-10109, published 20 May 2026), finding that all Vietnamese producers/exporters constitute a single Vietnam-wide entity subject to a 130.58% AD rate based solely on Adverse Facts Available (AFA) due to non-cooperation. Commerce also issued a final affirmative determination of critical circumstances, triggering retroactive provisional-measures liability on entries made during the 90-day look-back period. The period of investigation covered 1 July 2024 through 31 December 2024; the ITC must issue its final injury determination within 45 days for an AD order to take effect.

Presidential decree signed by President Claudia Sheinbaum and published in the evening edition of the Diario Oficial de la Federación on 23 April 2026, in force 24 April 2026. The decree amends the Tariff of the Ley de los Impuestos Generales de Importación y de Exportación (LIGIE/TIGIE) and the Decreto que establece diversos Programas de Promoción Sectorial (PROSEC), imposing MFN import duties at 5%, 10%, 15%, 25%, 30% or 35% ad valorem on 185 tariff fractions covering chemical products, cosmetics, paper and cardboard, textiles, steel, graphic arts, aluminum manufactures, auto parts, electrical material, bicycles, musical instruments, furniture, wind turbines, and trailers. Goods originating in countries with which Mexico has a free-trade agreement remain eligible for preferential treatment, so practical incidence falls on China and other non-FTA suppliers (Korea, India, Vietnam, Thailand, Brazil, Indonesia, Taiwan, UAE, South Africa). Paired PROSEC modifications add tariff fractions to Article 5 sections I, II.b and XIX (electrical, electronic, automotive and auto-parts industries) at exempt (EX) rates.

On 13 April 2026 the Council of the EU and the European Parliament reached a provisional political agreement, in trilogue with the Commission, on the new EU steel safeguard regulation that will replace the existing WTO-safeguard-based measure (Regulation (EU) 2019/159, last tightened by Implementing Regulation 2025/612) expiring on 30 June 2026. The agreement adopts the core architecture of the Commission's October 2025 proposal (procedure 2025/0726(COD)): an overall duty-free tariff-rate quota of approximately 18.3 million tonnes per year — a roughly 47% reduction versus the 2024 safeguard quotas — covering 30 product categories, with the out-of-quota customs duty raised from 25% to 50%. The deal also introduces a mandatory "country of melt and pour" declaratory requirement on steel imports and obliges the Commission to assess, within two years, whether the country of melt-and-pour should become the basis for country-specific TRQ allocations (closing transhipment loopholes that have allowed Chinese-melted steel to enter via third-country processors). The co-legislators added a reinforced and time-bound review mechanism: a first Commission review of product scope within six months of entry into force, with subsequent biennial scope reviews thereafter. Statutorily, this is a NEW instrument — a regulation adopted under the ordinary legislative procedure, not an implementing act under the WTO Agreement on Safeguards / Regulation (EU) 2015/478 — so it is filed as a new action with a `responds_to` link to the predecessor regime. Formal adoption by Council and EP plenary is expected in May 2026 ahead of the 1 July 2026 application date.

On 2 April 2026, Vietnam's Ministry of Industry and Trade signed Decision 612/QĐ-BCT imposing a provisional anti-circumvention duty of 27.83% on hot-rolled steel coil/sheet (HRC) imports from China in widths above 1,880mm up to 2,300mm (thickness 1.2-25.4mm, ~24 HS codes under HS 7208 and 7226), effective 17 April 2026. The Trade Remedies Authority of Vietnam found that Chinese exporters were widening HRC coils beyond the 1,880mm ceiling of Vietnam's existing definitive anti-dumping measure (Decision 1959/QĐ-BCT, case AD20) specifically to evade that duty, and the new measure extends the same 27.83% rate to the wider product range under a distinct anti-circumvention investigation (case AC03.AD20, initiated via Decision 3176/QĐ-BCT on 27 October 2025).

On 11 March 2026 USTR Ambassador Jamieson Greer initiated parallel Section 301 investigations into the acts, policies, and practices of 16 economies — China, the European Union, Singapore, Switzerland, Norway, Indonesia, Malaysia, Cambodia, Thailand, Korea, Vietnam, Taiwan, Bangladesh, Mexico, Japan, and India — relating to structural excess capacity and overproduction in manufacturing sectors. The Federal Register notice (FR doc 2026-05214; dockets USTR-2026-0067 and USTR-2026-0068) was published on 17 March 2026. Covered sectors include aluminum, automobiles, batteries, cement, chemicals, electronics, energy goods, glass, machine tools, machinery, paper, plastics, processed food and beverages, robotics, satellites, semiconductors, ships, solar modules, steel, and transportation equipment. Written comments were due by 15 April 2026; USTR held the public hearing beginning 5 May 2026. This is the most sweeping multi-economy Section 301 initiative since the 2018 China investigation and is structurally distinct from the China-only 2024-05-14 §301 tariff hikes and the 2025-07-15 Brazil §301 investigation.

President Trump signed a Presidential Proclamation on 20 February 2026 invoking Section 122 of the Trade Act of 1974 (19 U.S.C. § 2132) to impose a temporary 10% ad-valorem import surcharge on articles imported into the United States, effective 12:01 a.m. EST on 24 February 2026. The proclamation was issued within hours of the US Supreme Court's 20 February 2026 ruling in Learning Resources, Inc. v. Trump, which held that the International Emergency Economic Powers Act (IEEPA) does not authorize the president to set tariffs and vacated the IEEPA-based reciprocal-tariff regime previously in effect. The Section 122 surcharge is statutorily limited to 150 days (terminates 24 July 2026 absent Congressional extension) and the statute caps any such surcharge at 15% ad valorem. Goods qualifying as USMCA originating from Canada or Mexico are exempt; CAFTA-DR textile/apparel articles meeting specified rules of origin are exempt; and a substantial product-exception list excludes critical minerals, energy products, certain pharmaceuticals, electronics, vehicles, aerospace products, specified agricultural goods, and goods already subject to Section 232 duties (the Section 122 duty does not stack on Section 232).

On 26 January 2026 Vietnam's Ministry of Industry and Trade issued Circular No. 04/2026/TT-BCT, setting the 2026 in-quota tariff-rate quota (TRQ) for raw-tobacco imports (HS 2401) at 79,199 tonnes, a roughly 5% increase over the 2025 quota of 75,427 tonnes. The circular took effect 15 March 2026 and runs through 31 December 2026, with allocation administered via import licences under Decree No. 69/2018/NĐ-CP and Circular No. 12/2018/TT-BCT. The annual increase follows Vietnam's WTO tariff-rate-quota commitment schedule for raw tobacco rather than a discretionary policy shift.

The US Department of Commerce issued affirmative preliminary countervailing duty (CVD) determinations on hardwood and decorative plywood from China, Indonesia, and Vietnam, finding countervailable government subsidies in all three countries. Preliminary subsidy rates are 81.34% for China, 2.40% to 128.66% for Indonesia (case-by-case, non-cooperating producer PT Mustika Buana Sejahtera at the top of the range), and 4.37% to 26.75% for Vietnam. Commerce published the determinations in the Federal Register on 22 January 2026, triggering CBP collection of cash deposits at these rates pending final determinations. A parallel antidumping (AD) investigation on the same product and countries runs on a separate track (see responds_to) with preliminary AD margins of 187.27% (China), up to 84.94% (Indonesia), and 196.14% (Vietnam) announced 25 February 2026 — AD and CVD duties stack cumulatively.

On 14 January 2026 President Trump issued a Presidential Proclamation under Section 232 of the Trade Expansion Act of 1962 imposing a 25% ad valorem tariff on imports of certain advanced computing chips and their derivative products, effective 12:01 a.m. EST on 15 January 2026. The measure adopts findings of the Section 232 investigation initiated 1 April 2025 (Department of Commerce report transmitted 22 December 2025) into semiconductors, semiconductor manufacturing equipment, and derivative products. Coverage is narrowly drawn to high-performance AI accelerators meeting specified technical parameters (publicly characterised as covering devices in the NVIDIA H200 / AMD MI325X performance tier), with broad use-based exemptions for chips going into US data centres, US R&D, US repairs, and other uses deemed to strengthen domestic supply chains.

The US Department of Commerce issued a countervailing duty (CVD) order on steel concrete reinforcing bar (rebar) from Algeria, effective 6 July 2026, imposing a 72.94% subsidy-offset rate on Tosyali Iron Steel Industry Algeria SPA and, by default, all other Algerian producers — a rate based on facts available with adverse inferences after the Algerian government and/or exporters did not fully cooperate with Commerce's subsidy questionnaires. Because USTR determined Algeria is not a "Subsidies Agreement country," the US ITC was not required to make an injury determination, so the CVD order took effect on Commerce's final subsidy determination alone. This is a separate legal track from the parallel antidumping case on the same product (see responds_to) — the AD investigation used a 127.32% margin, the CVD order uses 72.94%, and both stack as cumulative duties on Algerian rebar. Parallel countervailing-duty investigations on Egypt and Vietnam remained at the preliminary stage as of Commerce's 13 January 2026 determinations, with net subsidy rates set at 29.51% (Egypt) and 1.08% (Vietnam); these are provisional cash-deposit rates pending each country's final CVD determination.

The Ministry of Finance, Department of Revenue (Central Board of Indirect Taxes and Customs) issued Notification No. 02/2025-Customs (SG) dated 30 December 2025, imposing a definitive three-year safeguard duty on imports of "Non-Alloy and Alloy Steel Flat Products" classified under Customs Tariff headings 7208, 7209, 7210, 7211, 7212, 7225 and 7226 (hot-rolled coils/sheets/plates, hot-rolled plate-mill plates, cold-rolled coils/sheets, metallic coated sheets including galvanneal and aluminium-zinc coated, and colour-coated coils/sheets). Duty rates are graduated: 12% ad valorem for 21 April 2025 – 20 April 2026, 11.5% for 21 April 2026 – 20 April 2027, and 11% for 21 April 2027 – 20 April 2028. The notification implements the final findings of the Director General (Trade Remedies) (DGTR notification 22/01/2024-DGTR dated 16 August 2025) which concluded that imports of subject goods rose from 2.293 mt in FY 2021-22 to 6.612 mt during the period of investigation, causing serious injury and threat of serious injury to the domestic industry. The definitive measure supersedes the provisional 200-day safeguard duty imposed at 12% ad valorem from 21 April 2025 by Notification 01/2025-Customs (SG); no safeguard duty applies for the interim period between expiry of the provisional duty (early November 2025) and the day preceding Gazette publication of the definitive notification. Imports from developing-country WTO members are exempt unless the share of any individual developing country exceeds 3% of total imports of the subject goods, or the collective share of developing countries exceeding 3% individually exceeds 9% — the China and Vietnam carve-outs from this exemption preserve full applicability of the duty to the dominant cheap-import sources.

Decree reforming various tariff fractions of the General Import and Export Duties Tariff (TIGIE), published in the Diario Oficial de la Federación on 29 December 2025 and in force 1 January 2026. The reform, approved by Congress as a statutory amendment to the LIGIE (Chamber of Deputies and Senate, Dec 2025) and signed by President Claudia Sheinbaum, raises MFN import duties to between 5% and 50% ad valorem on 1,463 tariff lines covering more than 20 chapters of the TIGIE, spanning automotive, auto parts, textiles, apparel, footwear, steel, aluminum, plastics, paper, leather, furniture, glass, toys, appliances and cosmetics. The increases apply only to goods originating in countries without a free trade agreement with Mexico — principally China, South Korea, India, Vietnam, Thailand, Brazil, Indonesia, Chinese Taipei, the UAE, and South Africa. The decree formalises at statutory level the September 2024 Sheinbaum executive order placing a 50% duty on finished passenger vehicles from non-FTA states and is framed by the Secretaría de Economía and SHCP as the operational tariff instrument of Plan México (2025-01-21).

On 26 November 2025 Prime Minister Mark Carney announced a package of measures to protect Canada's steel and softwood lumber industries, effective 26 December 2025. For steel, Canada tightened the tariff-rate quota (TRQ) available to countries without a Canada free trade agreement from 50% to 20% of 2024 import levels, and cut the TRQ for FTA partners outside CUSMA (i.e. not the US/Mexico) from 100% to 75% of 2024 levels; imports above quota face a 50% surtax. A new 25% tariff on the full value of listed steel-derivative products (doors, windows, fasteners, structural components and related goods) applies to all countries, covering an estimated CAD 10 billion+ of derivative imports. For softwood lumber, Canada added CAD 500 million to the BDC Softwood Lumber Guarantee Program (bringing it to CAD 1.2 billion) and earmarked a further CAD 500 million under the Large Enterprise Tariff Loan facility for lumber-sector liquidity support.

Following an anti-dumping investigation initiated 6 February 2025 (petition by domestic producer CSC Steel Sdn Bhd) and an affirmative preliminary determination imposing provisional duties from 5 July 2025, Malaysia's Ministry of Investment, Trade and Industry (MITI) issued an affirmative final determination and imposed DEFINITIVE anti-dumping duties on imports of galvanised iron/steel coils and sheets (flat-rolled products of alloy or non-alloy steel, plated or coated with zinc via the hot-dip process) originating in or exported from China, South Korea and Vietnam. The measure runs for five years, 1 November 2025 to 31 October 2030, and is enforced by the Royal Malaysian Customs Department under the Countervailing and Anti-Dumping Duties Act 1993 and its 1994 Regulations. Definitive duty rates: China 5.60%-26.80%; South Korea 2.21%-31.47%; Vietnam -14.17% (de minimis/negative for some exporters) to 57.90%.

Brazil's Foreign Trade Executive Committee (GECEX/CAMEX) imposed definitive anti-dumping duties for up to five years on imports of synthetic polyester fibres (NCM 5503.20.90) from China, India, Thailand, and Vietnam, following a petition filed by ABRAFAS (Brazilian Association of Artificial and Synthetic Fibre Producers) in October 2023 and a six-month provisional measure (Resolução Gecex 653/2024) applied from October 2024. Duties are levied as specific tariffs in USD per metric tonne: China residual USD 390.94/t (Zhejiang Hengyi group USD 74.98/t), India USD 194.69/t, Thailand USD 171.21/t, Vietnam USD 297.95/t. Two named exporters — Zhongthai Chemical Fiber Co., Ltd. (Thailand) and Vietnam New Century Polyester Fibre Co., Ltd. (Vietnam) — are explicitly excluded from the measure.

Vietnam's government issued Decree 199/2025/NĐ-CP on 8 July 2025, amending Decree 26/2023/NĐ-CP's Export Tariff and Preferential Import Tariff Schedules. The headline change is a staged export-tax increase on yellow phosphorus, from 5% currently to 10% effective 1 January 2026 and 15% effective 1 January 2027 — a resource-nationalism measure to discourage raw export of an input used in electronics, agrochemical, and specialty- chemical production. The decree also narrows the 0% preferential import tariff window for tin-mill blackplate (TMBP) steel to end-August 2025 and adjusts minimum-production-volume conditions for the auto-parts tariff incentive programme covering electric, hybrid, and fuel-cell vehicle manufacturing/assembly.

Vietnam's Ministry of Industry and Trade (MoIT), acting through the Trade Remedies Authority of Vietnam (TRAV), issued Decision 1959/QĐ-BCT on 4 July 2025, imposing definitive anti-dumping duties of 23.10%–27.83% on imports of certain hot-rolled steel coils (HRC) of width up to 1,880 mm originating in China. The measure covers the definitive phase of case AD20, remains in force for five years (to ~July 2030), and simultaneously terminated the parallel investigation on Indian-origin HRC (no duties on India). The same date saw Decision 1958/QĐ-BCT reject a Chinese producer price undertaking proposal.

The US Department of Commerce initiated antidumping and countervailing duty investigations on steel concrete reinforcing bar (rebar) from Algeria, Bulgaria, Egypt, and Vietnam following a June 2025 petition by the Rebar Trade Action Coalition. On 19 December 2025, Commerce published its preliminary affirmative less-than-fair-value determination for Algeria, setting a 127.32% dumping margin (Tosyali Iron and Steel Industry — Algeria, applied to all other Algerian exporters) and requiring cash deposits at that rate. Parallel LTFV and countervailing-duty investigations on Bulgaria, Egypt, and Vietnam remained pending at the provisional/preliminary stage as of this determination, with Bulgaria and Egypt preliminary determinations later postponed to March 2026 (Egypt/Vietnam preliminary CVD margins of 29.51% and 1.08% respectively were set earlier in the case). The investigation covers rebar in straight-length or coil form (HTS-classified, excluding plain/smooth rounds), imported for use in reinforced-concrete construction. Algeria's period of investigation was April 2024–March 2025.

Indonesia's Ministry of Finance extended for a second three-year term the import safeguard duty (Bea Masuk Tindakan Pengamanan / BMTP) on expansible polystyrene (EPS) resin (HS 3903.11.10), via Peraturan Menteri Keuangan (PMK) No. 29 of 2025, effective 23 May 2025 to 22 May 2028. The extension follows a KPPI investigation opened 22 July 2024 that found the domestic industry still needed time to complete structural adjustment despite a fall in import volumes. The duty is a specific (per-kilogram) levy declining annually and applies to all source countries, principally Taiwan, China and Vietnam.

President Trump signed Executive Order 14257 on 2 April 2025 declaring a national emergency over US trade deficits and imposing a baseline 10% ad-valorem tariff on imports from nearly all trading partners effective 5 April, with higher country-specific "reciprocal" rates effective 9 April. The rate schedule was constructed from a formula tied to bilateral goods-trade deficits and ranged from 10% (UK, Singapore, Brazil, Australia, others) through 20% (EU), 24% (Japan), 25% (Korea), 32% (Taiwan, Indonesia, Switzerland), 34% (China, later raised to 84% then 125% during the April escalation), 46% (Vietnam), 49% (Cambodia). Multiple subsequent EOs paused the country-specific rates for 90 days for non-China destinations on 9 April while keeping the 10% baseline, pending bilateral negotiations.

Commission Implementing Regulation (EU) 2025/612 of 24 March 2025 amends the EU steel safeguard regime first imposed by Regulation (EU) 2019/159, materially tightening the tariff-rate quota (TRQ) system that governs imports across 26 product categories of finished and semi-finished steel. The Commission cuts the annual liberalisation rate (the volume by which TRQs grow each year) from 1% to 0.1%, effectively freezing the in-quota volumes available to third-country exporters at near-current levels through the safeguard's expiry on 30 June 2026. The regulation also repeals the carry-over mechanism that previously allowed unused quarterly TRQ volumes to roll into the next quarter for product categories under significant import pressure, and eliminates the ability of exporting countries to access the residual (other-country) quota in the final quarter of each safeguard year for those categories. The latter change forecloses the route by which Chinese, Indian, Turkish, Korean and Vietnamese mills had increasingly back-filled into unused Russian and Belarusian quota allocations after the 2022 sanctions disruption. Most adjustments enter into force on 1 April 2025; the slower liberalisation pace and the carry-over removal in the most pressured categories take effect 1 July 2025. The measure is the headline trade-policy deliverable of the European Steel and Metals Action Plan unveiled by the Commission on 19 March 2025, and it is explicitly framed as a defensive response to (i) global overcapacity in Chinese steel and (ii) anticipated trade diversion into the EU after the United States reinstated universal 25% Section 232 steel/aluminum tariffs on 12 March 2025. Above-quota imports remain subject to the 25% out-of-quota duty inherited from the 2019 safeguard.

President Claudia Sheinbaum's government published in the Diario Oficial de la Federación on 19 Dec 2024 a decree amending the General Import & Export Tax Law (TIGIE) and the IMMEX Decree. The decree imposes a 35% temporary import duty on 138 finished-apparel tariff lines (Chapters 61, 62, 63 plus tariff item 9404.40.01) and a 15% duty on 17 textile-input tariff lines (Chapters 52, 55, 58, 60), totalling 155 fractions. Concurrently, 302 tariff fractions in Chapters 61/62/63 are removed from IMMEX duty-deferral eligibility (moved out of Annex II Section C into Annex I). The measure exempts countries with which Mexico has an FTA (notably USMCA partners) and is in force from 20 Dec 2024 until 23 Apr 2026.