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

TL;DR

I forecast a 22.3% median U.S. trade-weighted effective tariff rate on imports from China on July 1, 2026, with a 10–90% range of about 18.7–26.3%.

Context

The question is mostly about which rate concept the resolver uses and whether the temporary Section 122 surcharge survives until July 1. The best fit is the Budget Lab at Yale’s Tariff Rate Tracker, because it estimates statutory HTS-10-by-country rates in force on each day, covers almost 20,000 HS10 products across 240 trading partners, and weights them by 2024 Census import values rather than by tariff revenue after firms change sourcing (Budget Lab tracker; Budget Lab GitHub).

The live stack on China is normal MFN tariffs, legacy China Section 301 duties, Section 232 sector duties, and the temporary 10% Section 122 import surcharge. Proclamation 11012 imposed that surcharge for entries from February 24, 2026 through 12:01 a.m. EDT on July 24, 2026, unless changed earlier or extended by Congress (Federal Register, Proclamation 11012).

Evidence

The historical backbone is the Budget Lab daily China series. It is a statutory, pre-substitution, import-weighted ETR series, not customs collections divided by import value. The coverage window is January 1, 2025 through December 31, 2026; the public article was published April 1, 2026 and updated May 9, 2026, while the public repo cites version 2026.05.20 (Budget Lab tracker PDF; Budget Lab GitHub). The series has 730 calendar-day observations for 2025–2026; the table below lists all distinct China change points I used, so days between rows are flat or nearly flat in the tracker.

That table makes the July 1 base case simple: July 1 is inside the April 6–July 23 plateau, so the Budget Lab-style rate is about 22.2%. The post-expiry value near 17.8% is the right downside anchor if Section 122 is removed before July 1. The reason the 10% surcharge only lifts China by about 4.4 percentage points is that exemptions and non-stacking with Section 232 mean it does not apply to every dollar of Chinese imports (Budget Lab tracker; Federal Register, Proclamation 11012).

The main cross-check points higher, but it is a different metric. Penn Wharton’s May 12 update uses USITC DataWeb customs data and reports China at 25.0% in March 2026, the first full month after IEEPA tariffs were replaced by Section 122; it defines the rate as duties divided by import value, not a pure statutory rate on a target day (Penn Wharton Budget Model, May 12, 2026). USAFacts, using Census customs-duty estimates, reports China at 10.9% in 2024, 30.6% in 2025, 30.7% over the first two months of 2026, and 29.6% in February 2026; the page itself warns that the estimates are approximations of customs duties, not exact paid statutory rates (USAFacts, updated Apr. 16, 2026). I put more weight on Budget Lab because the question asks for the rate “in effect” on July 1.

The legal crux is Section 122. The Court of International Trade held the 10% Section 122 surcharge unlawful on May 7, 2026, but relief was limited and the Federal Circuit issued an administrative stay on May 12; PwC’s May 22 update says CBP continued collecting the surcharge because that stay suspended the CIT injunction (PwC, May 22, 2026). I assign 11% probability to broad pre-July-1 removal or exclusion of Section 122, centered near 17.8%. That is a real tail, but the short 28-day window and the appellate stay keep it from being the base case.

The near-term policy crux does not move July 1 much. On June 2, USTR proposed 10% or 12.5% additional duties in forced-labor-related Section 301 investigations, but comments are due July 6 and hearings start July 7, after the target date (USTR, June 2, 2026). USTR also opened a U.S.-China Board of Trade comment process on possible tariff modifications, but comments are due July 10 and rebuttals July 27, also after July 1 (USTR, June 2, 2026). The June 1 Section 232 metals proclamation takes effect June 8 and changes selected metal-derivative rates, including moving some agricultural and HVAC equipment from 25% to 15%; I treat that as a small adjustment around the 22.2% Budget Lab anchor, not a China-wide regime change (White House proclamation, June 1, 2026).

My distribution is a scenario mixture: 64% on the current Budget Lab-style statutory rate centered at 22.2%; 11% on Section 122 removal centered at 17.8%; 10% on a higher PWBM-style observed-duty source centered near 24.9%; 6% on a still higher realized-duty or methodology outcome around 28.2%; 4% on limited tariff cuts centered near 20.4%; 3.5% on modest pre-July tariff additions centered near 26.7%; 1% on a larger pre-July escalation centered near 33.5%; and 0.5% on an extreme tail above 40%. This gives a mean of about 22.6%, median about 22.3%, about 12% probability below 20%, and about 2% probability above 30%.

What's non-obvious

The common “China is around 30%” read is stale for this resolution. It mostly comes from customs-revenue series that include older tariff regimes, transitional months, and import-behavior effects. A date-specific statutory tracker puts July 1 closer to 22% as long as Section 122 remains in force (Budget Lab tracker; Penn Wharton Budget Model, May 12, 2026).

The second trap is adding the full 10 percentage points from Section 122 to China’s old Section 301 baseline. The Budget Lab tracker implies Section 122 contributes only about 4.4 points to China’s import-weighted rate, because the surcharge has exemptions and interacts with Section 232 rather than stacking cleanly on the whole import base (Budget Lab tracker; Federal Register, Proclamation 11012).

Limitations

The biggest uncertainty is source choice. Budget Lab is the cleanest match for “in effect on July 1,” but PWBM and USAFacts use realized customs-duty measures that can land several points higher because import weights, entry timing, exclusions, refunds, and tariff-avoidance behavior differ (Penn Wharton Budget Model, May 12, 2026; USAFacts, updated Apr. 16, 2026).

The second uncertainty is legal timing. A Federal Circuit order before July 1 could change whether Section 122 is collected, and a later source might treat a pre-July judicial invalidation differently from an operational CBP collection rule (PwC, May 22, 2026). The third uncertainty is the exact HS10-weighted effect of the June 1 metals changes, which the Budget Lab public tracker had not yet reflected when I formed the estimate (White House fact sheet, June 1, 2026).