China Section 301 tariffs — List 1

On June 15, 2018, USTR announced a 25% tariff on 818 product lines — roughly $34 billion of Chinese imports — under Section 301 of the Trade Act of 1974. The legal basis was a USTR investigation finding that China's policies on technology transfer, intellectual property and innovation were unreasonable and burdened U.S. commerce. The tariff took effect July 6, 2018, and China immediately retaliated in kind.

This was deliberately aimed at industrial and intermediate goods (machinery, transportation equipment, electronics), not consumer items, in a bid to pressure Beijing's industrial policy ("Made in China 2025") while limiting visible sticker shock on U.S. store shelves. A product-exclusion process let individual companies petition out specific items; many of those exclusions have since expired.

Crucially, Section 301 tariffs survived both the Federal Circuit and the Supreme Court challenges that killed the 2025 IEEPA tariffs. They rest on a different statute with explicit congressional backing, and after a mandatory four-year review USTR chose to keep them. List 1's 25% rate is still being collected at the border today.

In plain English: this is the tariff that started the trade war with China, and it never went away.

Directly: U.S. importers of the listed Chinese goods

Ultimately: U.S. manufacturers and consumers, through higher component and finished-product costs

Multiple studies (including by the NBER and the Federal Reserve) found the incidence of Section 301 tariffs fell almost entirely on U.S. buyers, not on Chinese exporters accepting lower prices.

Studies found the tariffs were fully passed through to U.S. prices, costing consumers and firms roughly $1.4 billion per month at the trade-war peak

Estimates vary; the consistent finding across methodologies is that U.S. importers and consumers bore the cost.

Source: Amiti, Redding & Weinstein — The Impact of the 2018 Tariffs (NBER)