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

TL;DR

I forecast a 23.2% mean U.S. trade-weighted effective tariff rate on imports from China on July 1, 2026, with the modal resolving value at Yale Budget Lab’s 22.22% current-law China rate.

Context

The July 1 date falls inside the temporary Section 122 window. After the Supreme Court held on February 20, 2026 that IEEPA did not authorize the president to impose tariffs, the administration used Section 122 of the Trade Act of 1974 as a bridge: CBP guidance issued February 23 says covered imports entered from February 24 through 12:01 a.m. EDT on July 24, 2026 face an additional 10% ad valorem duty, with product and program exemptions (Supreme Court/Justia, CBP CSMS #67844987, White House Section 122 fact sheet).

The court risk is real but not the base case. The Court of International Trade ruled on May 7, 2026 that the Section 122 tariff was unlawful, but relief was limited to named plaintiffs, and the Federal Circuit’s May 12 administrative stay left the surcharge in place while it considers a longer stay; PwC’s May 22 update says CBP continues to collect the 10% surcharge (Skadden, Davis Wright Tremaine, PwC Canada).

Evidence

The historical backbone says China tariffs are far above the pre-2025 regime, even after the IEEPA layer disappeared. USAFacts uses Census/USITC customs-duty revenue divided by goods imports, so it is a realized-collections measure rather than a point-in-time statutory tracker (USAFacts).

The best current-law source is Yale Budget Lab’s tariff tracker, because the question asks what rate is in effect on a day. The tracker assigns daily statutory rates to almost 20,000 HS10 products across about 240 partners, weights them by 2024 Census import values, and excludes behavioral substitution from the daily ETR (Budget Lab tracker note, Budget Lab GitHub). The public Datawrapper dataset for Figure 3 gives China at 22.22% on July 1, 2026 and 17.81% on July 24, 2026, so the Section 122 layer adds 4.41 percentage points in that framework (Datawrapper CSV, Datawrapper chart). That is my central anchor.

Other credible sources sit higher, but they are less directly tied to the July 1 statutory question. Budget Lab’s April 8 country table gives China at 23.9% pre-substitution if Section 122 is extended and 19.4% if it expires, with post-substitution values of 23.5% and 18.9% (Budget Lab, Apr. 8, 2026). Penn Wharton’s May 12 update, using USITC DataWeb customs data, reports a 25.0% effective rate for China in March 2026, the first full month after IEEPA was replaced by a 10% Section 122 tariff (Penn Wharton Budget Model, May 12, 2026). Global Trade Alert’s February 21 model uses 274,000-plus exporter-by-HS8 flows and 2024 import weights; it reports aggregate U.S. rates of 11.4% under Section 122 at 10% and 13.0% under Section 122 at 15%, and a China rate near 29.7% under its 15% scenario (Global Trade Alert). CBP and the White House still point to 10%, so I treat the 15% figures as source-method upside, not the base case (CBP CSMS #67844987, White House Section 122 fact sheet).

The near-term policy calendar supports no broad change before July 1. The scheduled Section 122 expiry is July 24, not July 1 (CBP CSMS #67844987). USTR’s March 2026 Section 301 investigations into structural excess capacity and forced labor are live, with hearings in late April and early May, but I found no final tariff action effective before July 1 (USTR structural-excess-capacity page, USTR forced-labor release). The May 17-18 U.S.-China summit created boards of trade and investment and purchase commitments, but the U.S. readouts did not announce a broad U.S. tariff cut; USTR said the next step is a public-comment process for non-sensitive goods (White House China fact sheet, USTR, May 18, 2026).

My scenario model is centered on source selection and whether Section 122 is counted on July 1:

This mixture gives a mean of 23.2%, a median of 22.3%, a 10th-90th percentile range of 20.0%-26.9%, and about 0.9% probability above 40%.

What's non-obvious

The obvious answer from recent customs collections is near 30%, but that is not the cleanest resolution concept. USAFacts’ 29.6% for February 2026 and Penn Wharton’s 25.0% for March 2026 are realized customs-duty measures, while Yale’s 22.22% is a statutory daily rate weighted by 2024 import values and explicitly designed for “rate in effect” questions (USAFacts, Penn Wharton Budget Model, May 12, 2026, Budget Lab tracker note, Datawrapper CSV).

The second trap is the Section 122 court ruling. The May 7 ruling makes Section 122 legally vulnerable, but it does not by itself zero out the tariff for July 1 because the relief was narrow and the Federal Circuit stay keeps collection going for now (Skadden, PwC Canada). If Section 122 were broadly removed, the natural anchor would fall toward 18%, not to zero, because Section 301, Section 232, and ordinary MFN duties remain (Budget Lab, Apr. 8, 2026).

Limitations

The biggest uncertainty is resolution method. If the resolver privileges the Yale daily statutory tracker, the answer is close to 22.2%. If it takes a median across Yale, Penn Wharton, and Global Trade Alert-style estimates, the value can land in the mid-20s. If it uses backward-looking customs collections, the value can land in the high-20s even without a new policy change (Budget Lab tracker note, Penn Wharton Budget Model, May 12, 2026, Global Trade Alert).

The legal and policy state can still change before July 1. A Federal Circuit order, a broad CBP implementation change, or a fast Section 301 determination could move the answer by several percentage points. I did not find a country-specific OECD, World Bank, or USITC July 1 estimate that improves on the Yale daily tracker as of May 24, 2026.