The official US import-tax list still prints taxes that were cancelled months ago
466 words · about 2 min
The US government's official list of import taxes still carries three entries — 9903.01.20, .24 and .25 — in full, with their explanatory notes intact and nothing marking them as dead, months after a Presidential order ended them. The list is called the HTSUS; those taxes were the ones imposed under the emergency-powers law, IEEPA.
- How it was measured
- We read the live chapter 99 of the schedule and the Presidential order that cancelled the taxes side by side. The order told agencies only to work out WHETHER the list needed changing, so nobody was ever instructed to change it, and nobody did.
- Last checked
Listen to this Playing read from this page, nothing added
Watch it plot 42s · narrated · the same figures as above
If you want to know what tax a country charges on an imported item, there is an official list that says so. In the United States it is called the Harmonized Tariff Schedule, or HTSUS. Checking a rate against it feels like the gold standard: it is published by the agency that administers the tax, and the page carries today's date.
It can still be wrong, and here is how.
A set of China tariffs had been imposed under an emergency-powers law — the International Emergency Economic Powers Act, or IEEPA. In February 2026 the Supreme Court ruled that the law does not allow tariffs at all, and a Presidential order cancelled them. A temporary replacement surcharge, imposed under a different law — Section 122 — expired in July.
The list still shows them. Entries 9903.01.20, 9903.01.24 and 9903.01.25 are still sitting in chapter 99, with their explanatory notes intact and nothing on the page saying they are dead.
Why? The order that cancelled the taxes told agencies to work out whether the list needed changing. Nobody was told to delete the lines, so nobody did.
How this catches you
Someone who checks a rate "against the live schedule" and stops there reads a cancelled tax as a current one — while correctly citing an official source, on a page carrying today's date.
Ordinary out-of-date information announces itself. A page stamped "Last updated: October 2021" tells you what you are looking at. This does not. The publisher is the right one, the address is the right one, the page is current, and the rate is dead.
Checking the date does not catch this. Nothing about the page is old.
The rule that does catch it
The list gives you the RATE. The record of orders and laws gives you the AUTHORITY.
A number with no live legal instrument behind it is not verified, however current the page looks.
Beyond tariffs, the general form: a published figure and the thing that makes it apply are often two different documents, and the second one is the one nobody fetches. Prices in a catalogue, and the contract that sets them. A rate card, and the date the media kit says it takes effect. A specification, and the standard it claims to follow.
A second finding from the same exercise
The same check turned up two products that anyone modelling "chargers from China" would treat as one thing, and that sit on entirely different legal tracks — 37.5% for one and 40.9% for the other. Lithium-ion batteries were never on the original tariff lists at all, and only became taxable through a separate review two years later.
A 3.4-point error, invisible to anyone working at the level of the category rather than the exact product code.
Tracked as HTSUS-NOT-SELF-INVALIDATING, TARIFF-IEEPA-GONE. If a number here looks wrong, tell us and we will check it against the source.