What will the US tariff rate on China be on July 1?

TL;DR

My forecast is 23.7%. The best direct source is the Budget Lab's June 9 Tariff Rate Tracker, whose China row for July 1, 2026 has weighted_etr = 0.237333, or 23.7%, with the Section 122 surcharge still in force on that date (Budget Lab CSV, Budget Lab manifest, Federal Register Proclamation 11012). The main risk is source choice, not a scheduled policy change before July 1: realized customs-collection measures could resolve closer to 24-30%, while a source that excludes Section 122 would resolve near 19.3% (PWBM June 16 update, USAFacts China series, Budget Lab CSV).

Context

July 1, 2026 falls after the February 20, 2026 Supreme Court decision invalidating IEEPA tariff authority, and before the temporary Section 122 surcharge is scheduled to lapse at 12:01 a.m. EDT on July 24, 2026 (Jones Day IEEPA summary, Federal Register Proclamation 11012). The live China stack is ordinary MFN duties, China Section 301 duties, Section 232 sector duties where applicable, and the Section 122 surcharge; the IEEPA layer should be excluded because the court ruling removed it, while Sections 232 and 301 were not affected (Kilpatrick IEEPA summary, CBP metals guidance).

The best match to the resolution wording is a statutory, trade-weighted, by-country series rather than a monthly revenue-collection series. Budget Lab says its published tracker computes statutory tariff rates for HTS-10 product-by-partner pairs, aggregates them to daily country series, treats rates as decimals, and defines weighted_etr as an import-weighted effective tariff rate using Census import values (Budget Lab release README). The same README warns that trailing dates after the latest HTS revision are a status-quo projection, not a political forecast (Budget Lab release README).

Evidence

The historical backbone is a jump from a long-run China customs-duty rate near 5% to high-20s or low-30s values during the 2025-early-2026 tariff shock. USAFacts, using customs duty revenue as a share of goods imports from Census and USITC inputs, reports China at about 5% for 2002-2024, 10.9% in 2024, 30.6% in 2025, 30.7% over the first two months of 2026, and 29.6% in February 2026; USAFacts also says these are approximations, not precise entry-by-entry payments (USAFacts China series). That history is useful as a high-side check, but it is not the cleanest July 1 legal-rate estimate because February 2026 straddled the IEEPA removal and the Section 122 replacement (Jones Day IEEPA summary, Federal Register Proclamation 11012).

The exact Budget Lab China row is decisive. The June 9 release has daily_by_country_2026-06-09.csv, 730 dates by 240 partners, and the China row uses country code 5700 with 20,329 products present out of 20,329 products total (Budget Lab manifest, Budget Lab CSV). The July 1 decimal value is 0.23733267128601285, so the percentage is 23.733267% (Budget Lab CSV).

The legal calendar supports the Budget Lab row. Proclamation 11012 imposed a 10% ad valorem surcharge effective February 24, 2026 and continuing through July 24, 2026 unless changed earlier or extended by Congress; it also says the surcharge is generally in addition to other duties but does not stack on the Section-232-covered portion of an import (Federal Register Proclamation 11012). The Court of International Trade ruled against Section 122 on May 7, 2026, but the Federal Circuit granted a stay pending appeal on June 11, 2026, allowing collection to continue while the appeal proceeds (Subject to Inquiry, June 15). USTR's forced-labor Section 301 action is still proposed: comments are due July 6, 2026 and hearings are scheduled for July 7, 2026, so I do not include it in the July 1 rate (USTR June 2 release).

I model the outcome as a mixture because the uncertainty is mostly definition and resolution-source risk. Most mass sits on the Budget Lab July 1 value and nearby current-law variants. Smaller branches cover a later tracker revision, a legal or resolver choice that excludes Section 122, a customs-collections source in the high 20s, and a thin tail for a mistaken simple-average or surprise escalation. This gives a median of 23.7%, a mean of 24.1%, about an 84% chance between 22.5% and 24.5%, and about a 0.4% chance above 40%.

What's non-obvious

The headline answer "around 30%" is mostly a stale or different measurement. USAFacts' 29.6% February 2026 value is a customs-collections measure during a transition month, while PWBM's April 2026 observed customs estimate is already 24% after the IEEPA repeal and Section 122 replacement (USAFacts China series, PWBM June 16 update). The Budget Lab statutory series is lower than the headline stack because IEEPA is zeroed out, Section 122 has exemptions and non-stacking rules, and the calculation is trade-weighted rather than a simple product-line average (Budget Lab release README, Federal Register Proclamation 11012).

The second trap is the date. The big cliff is July 24, not July 1: the same Budget Lab file keeps China at 23.733267% through July 23 and then drops it to 19.326998% on July 24 (Budget Lab CSV). The simple unweighted China product average is also not the answer: Budget Lab's mean_total_all_pairs for China on July 1 is 34.7157%, while the trade-weighted weighted_etr is 23.733267% (Budget Lab CSV).

Limitations

Budget Lab's tracker is statutory, not collected. The README says it reports rates prescribed by the tariff schedule and executive actions, not the duties importers actually paid, and it flags that specific and compound duties are not yet converted to ad-valorem equivalents and that some conditional carve-outs are approximated or unmodeled (Budget Lab release README). That makes Budget Lab the right source for "in effect" language, but not a perfect mirror of customs cash receipts.

The latest public Budget Lab data publication I found is still the June 9, 2026 release, not a June 25 re-run. The repository has later code and audit commits, including a June 15 Section 122 exemption-row fix and a June 23 test build configuration, but those commits did not move the published release/ data as of June 25 (June 15 commit, June 23 commit, Budget Lab manifest). A later Budget Lab publication could revise the exact third decimal place, though the one-row Section 122 fix should not move the country average by much.

The largest residual uncertainty is resolution-source choice. If the resolver uses the Budget Lab statutory tracker, the result should be 23.7%; if it uses a monthly customs-revenue source closest to July 1, the value could land near PWBM's April 2026 24% estimate or higher if product mix and liquidation timing pull it toward USAFacts' early-2026 values (PWBM June 16 update, USAFacts China series). I did not find an OECD, World Bank, or USITC table that gives an exact July 1, 2026 China trade-weighted statutory rate, so Budget Lab is the controlling direct source rather than one source among many exact-date estimates.