The US Canada tariff Section 338 regime changed again on 30 October 2026, and the change is a swap, not a cut. On 23 October, President Donald Trump signed a proclamation further revising the Canadian products subject to an additional 50 percent duty under Section 338 of the Tariff Act of 1930. The new proclamation removes 22 Harmonized Tariff Schedule (HTSUS) lines from the 50 percent duty and adds 100 lines, effective for goods entered for consumption, or withdrawn from a warehouse for consumption, on or after 12:01 a.m. Eastern time on 30 October 2026. The 50 percent duty itself stays in place for everything still on the list, it still applies regardless of whether goods qualify under the United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement, and it still stacks with Section 232 tariffs. For importers, exporters and anyone who buys Canadian goods, the question is not whether tariffs changed but whether a specific product moved on or off the list.
US Canada Tariff Section 338: What Changed on 30 October
The October 23 proclamation amends Proclamation 11048, issued on 20 July 2026 and first modified on 8 September. The original Section 338 action imposed the additional 50 percent duties on specified Canadian goods, addressing what the administration described as Canadian discriminatory policies relating to alcoholic beverages, dairy and motor vehicles, and the duties took effect on 27 August. The original list covered about 554 eight-digit HTS lines, including maple syrup, ice hockey equipment and dairy products, and applied to about US$20 billion of Canadian goods. Canada responded in September with counter-tariffs of 15 to 50 percent on a similar value of US imports. The October revision changes only the product list: it amends subdivision (b)(3) of U.S. note 51 to subchapter III of Chapter 99 of the HTSUS, the product list associated with heading 9903.03.14, with Annex I identifying the affected provisions and Annex II making the conforming tariff-schedule amendments.
The changes matter because timing decides which rate applies. Goods entered for consumption before 30 October still pay the 50 percent rate on items that were removed, and newly added items start paying from 30 October. An importer whose shipment crossed the border on 29 October pays the old list; the same shipment on 30 October pays the new one. The White House fact sheet lists product categories rather than tariff codes, and the exact HTS lines are in the proclamation's annex, so importers need to check those lines, not the summary, to see whether a specific shipment is covered.
What Came Off the List — and What Went On
The products removed from the additional 50 percent duty include certain plywood sheets, some paper and paperboard products, corrugated cartons and boxes, plastic film, boxes and bags, paper pulp articles, and certain refrigerating, temperature-treatment, filling, packing and agricultural produce machinery. The removals help specific industries: packaging makers, paper producers and the food producers who use their products, including blueberry, potato, apple and seaweed producers who were named in the debate around the changes. Fresh and dried seaweed also came off the list, as did certain plastic containers and crates and sealing and labelling machinery.
The additions are broader and more varied. They include carpets, rugs and other textile floor coverings, certain valves, waste products, sweetened cocoa powders, paints, varnishes, caulking compounds, mastics, laboratory reagents, prepared waxes, certain polyethylene terephthalate (PET), polyurethanes and plastic articles, fibreboard, wood flooring, wood packaging, and paper, paperboard and labels, including uncoated kraft paper, composite paper and paperboard, self-adhesive paper and pressure-sensitive labels. The net effect is that the tariff's reach shifts rather than shrinks: some manufacturers get relief while others, including makers of carpets, valves and paper products, face a new 50 percent duty on shipments they previously sent duty-free under the Section 338 regime.
US Canada Tariff Section 338: Why USMCA Does Not Exempt Goods
The most important feature of the Section 338 duties is that they apply to covered goods regardless of whether the goods qualify as originating under the United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement (USMCA), known as CUSMA in Canada. USMCA-originating status does not, by itself, exempt an otherwise covered Canadian product from the additional duty. That is unusual: most US tariffs on Canadian goods respect USMCA preferences, but Section 338, which rests on the Tariff Act of 1930 rather than on the trade agreement, does not. The White House fact sheet reaffirms that position, and trade advisers have stressed it to importers who assumed their USMCA paperwork protected them.
The duties also stack. The proclamation provides that the Section 338 duty applies in addition to applicable Section 232 tariffs imposed under the Trade Expansion Act of 1962, so a product covered by both regimes pays both duties plus ordinary customs duties. Canadian softwood lumber, by contrast, sits under Section 232 rather than Section 338, so the October order does not change its tariff treatment. The stacking and the USMCA point together mean that the effective duty on some Canadian goods is far above the headline 50 percent, and that the compliance question for importers is classification first and origin second.
What Importers Should Do Next
For businesses that trade across the border, the immediate task is to check the HTSUS classification of every product imported from Canada against the revised list in Annex I of the proclamation, and to review entry timing and potential tariff stacking before shipping. Classification, entry timing and stacking should all be reviewed, because a product that moved off the list on 30 October still pays the duty if it was entered before then, and a product that moved on pays from 30 October even if the order was placed earlier. Insurers are also watching: the partial relief adds to valuation headaches for Canadian exporters and their insurers, because insured values and business-interruption assumptions shift with each revision of the list.
The political context is that the changes come less than two weeks before the 3 November US midterm elections, and no formal response from Ottawa had been reported by the time the changes were announced. Canada's retaliatory tariffs on US goods remain in place. Whether the October revision is the last word is unknowable: the list has now been revised three times since July, and each revision has moved products in both directions. For the wider trade picture, see our report on the near Canada-US trade deal, our account of the Canada-EU summit, and our explainer on the delayed robotics tariffs.