The New 50% U.S. Tariff on Canadian Goods: What Changed

The United States started charging an extra 50% duty on certain Canada-made goods at 12:01 a.m. Eastern on August 22, 2026. CUSMA will not exempt you from this one. Whether your goods are caught depends on your HTS code, so you can check rather than guess.

What the tariff is

An additional 50% duty, on top of whatever your goods already pay, applied to specific Canada-origin products.

The authority is Section 338 of the Tariff Act of 1930, an old provision that has never before been used to impose tariffs. Two things matter about it. No investigation was needed initially, and there is no end date specified. It stays until a future presidential action removes it.

Three proclamations signed July 20, 2026 cover alcoholic beverages, dairy and motor vehicles. The start date was originally August 19, but was paused for three days while talks continued. Talks ended without a deal on August 21.

The date that counts

The duty applies to goods entered for consumption, or taken out of a bonded warehouse, on or after 12:01 a.m. Eastern on August 22, 2026.

That is the entry date, not the order date or the ship date. A shipment that crossed earlier but entered on or after August 22 is subject to the tariff, and there is no grace period for goods already on a truck or on the water.

Why the sector names mislead

"Dairy, alcohol and motor vehicles" is the headline, and it undersells the reach badly.

Coverage is set by tariff code, not by industry. Reported items include wine, cement, plywood, electrical equipment, hockey sticks and medical supplies. Your product can be on the list without being dairy, drink or automotive in any normal sense.

Three codes carry the charge: 9903.03.12, 9903.03.13 and 9903.03.14. Your entry will show your regular classification plus one of these.

What is not covered

Two code ranges sit at 0% and act as exclusions.

Under 9903.03.15: steel, aluminum and copper articles and derivative steel or aluminum articles; passenger vehicles, meaning sedans, SUVs, crossovers, minivans and cargo vans, plus light trucks and the parts for both; medium- and heavy-duty vehicles and their parts; wood products; semiconductor articles; and patented pharmaceutical products.

Under 9903.03.16: civil aircraft other than military and unmanned aircraft, plus engines, parts, components and subassemblies, and ground flight simulators and their parts.

Being off this list does not make a shipment duty-free. Most of these goods still carry Section 232 tariffs.

CUSMA will not exempt you

Goods that qualify under CUSMA still pay the 50%. This catches importers out, because CUSMA protected them from several earlier tariff rounds.

CUSMA still helps in a narrower way. Qualifying goods skip the standard Most Favoured Nation duty. Goods that do not qualify pay that rate as well as the 50%. So your certificate of origin is still worth having, just not for the reason it used to be.

Check your codes in a minute

1. Tariff Impact Checker — we built this for exactly this action. Paste in your HTS codes, pick Canada as the country of origin, and see which are flagged, which rule applies, when it started, and the rate before and after. Up to ten codes, no account, no cost.
2. USA tariff lookup (HTS) — not sure a flagged code is right? Confirm the classification first.
3. Canada tariff lookup (HS) — for goods you bring into Canada, which face a separate Canadian tariff from September 8.

Canada published its response on August 25. See Canada's new tariffs on U.S. goods, starting September 8.

Screening a code list takes about a minute. Fixing a misclassified entry after it clears takes a great deal longer. If a flagged code is sitting near the edge of the list, talk to a BorderBuddy broker before you file.