What are US tariffs on China now?
The average effective US tariff rate has risen from 18% last year to 48% now
There’s lots of confusion in recent days on where China tariffs now stand. This post is a quick overview. Bottom line is that US tariffs - even with recent de-escalation - have risen from an average effective rate last year around 18 percent to 48 percent now, a rise of 30 percentage points. No matter how you cut it, that’s a very big rise.
The chart shows my estimate for the evolution of the average effective tariff rate on China. We’re now around 48 percent, up from 18 percent at the end of 2024, a rise of 30 percentage points. You can think of how we got here in two steps: (i) there were two 10 percentage point hikes in February and March that the US linked to fentanyl; (ii) following the escalation in April and subsequent de-escalation, we’re left with an additional universal tariff on China of another 10 percentage points. As a result, the rise in China tariffs is around 30 percentage points.
There’s lots of nuances around this number. The universal tariff is subject to exclusions, which cuts its impact on the effective rate by almost half. There’s smaller bumps to the average tariff rate from steel and aluminum tariffs as well as tariffs on autos and auto parts. These various things roughly offset each other, leaving the rise in the average effective tariff rate around 30 percentage points.
Two things are worth noting. First, the current wave of tariffs “stacks” on top of tariffs from 2018. That’s why the average effective tariff is now just shy of 50 percent, which is higher than many realize. Second, the speed with which US tariffs on China have gone up is breathtaking. It took a year and a half and multiple waves of tariffs for the average effective tariff rate to rise 16 percentage points during the first Trump term. We’ve done double that now in only a few months.