Tariff 'stacking' adds another headache for US importers
That's because Hamer's 30% tariff was stacked on top of existing tariffs, including a tariff on Chinese steel products that varies depending on the amount of steel used in a fixture.
When U.S. President Donald Trump adds a new tariff the old ones don't go away. Some companies will pay far more because of a phenomenon called tariff stacking, the latest complication for U.S. importers trying to navigate Trump's on-again, off-again trade war.
The reality for many U.S. businesses is that their tariff bills are often far higher than the headline number touted in trade talks.
Tariff stacking applies to any country exporting to the U.S., but the most extreme cases tend to be with China, where the U.S. has accumulated a long list of sometimes hefty existing tariffs, implemented under different provisions of U.S. trade law.
The latest twist is an announcement that the two sides have agreed to a 55% tariff, but that's in part only an estimate of what the average pre-existing tariffs were. Hamer isn't sure what his tariff total will be now, but he figures it couldn't get much worse.
'Hopefully this will bring the (tariff) number down - and some of the clients who've been sitting on the sidelines will go ahead and place orders,' he said, 'because it's been all over the map.'
Hamer is searching for suppliers outside China to avoid his stacked tariffs. He's checked Mexico and is planning a trip to India next month as part of the effort. In the meantime, he is passing through all the tariffs.
"The customers pay the tariff," said Hamer. "When it comes in, we say, 'Here's the tariff bill.'"
Many businesses are still hoping for a reprieve from President Donald Trump's trade war. Federal courts, including the U.S. Court of International Trade, have ruled that Trump's imposition of tariffs exceeded his authority. A federal appeals court is considering the administration's appeal to that ruling, and the tariffs remain in effect while that plays out, a process expected to take months.
Some are counting on tariff exemptions, a popular tool used by companies during the first Trump administration to get goods imported without the taxes.
Michael Weidner, president of Lalo Baby Products in Brooklyn, is one of them. 'We believe there should be an exemption for baby products,' he said. 'Same with toys.'
The Trump administration has said it will resist creating such carve-outs. And even during the last trade war, it was a complex process. For instance, Lalo imports a 'play table' from China that happens to be classified under a customs category that was subject to a 25% tariff under a part of trade law that aims to fight unfair trade practices. So Weidner has been paying 55% tariffs on those, thanks to stacking.
Trump campaigned on a vow to use tariffs to pull manufacturing back to U.S. shores and collect revenue to help fund a major tax cut. His battle with China quickly spiraled into a conflagration with the U.S. imposing a 145% across-the-board tariff that shut down much of the trade between the world's two largest economies.
The agreement to curb the tariffs is part of a larger effort to negotiate individual deals with most of the U.S.'s trading partners.
On Wednesday, a White House official said the 55% figure represents a sum of a baseline 10% 'reciprocal' tariff Trump has imposed on goods from nearly all U.S. trading partners; 20% on all Chinese imports because of punitive measures Trump has imposed on China, Mexico and Canada associated with his accusation that the three facilitate the flow of the opioid fentanyl into the U.S.; and finally pre-existing 25% levies on imports from China that were put in place during Trump's first term.
'It sounds like that's the way he's thinking of the baseline - 55% - at least for some products," said Greta Peisch, a trade lawyer at Wiley Rein in Washington.
Ramon van Meer's business selling filtered shower heads from China may yet survive the trade war, though he's not certain.
That depends entirely on whether he can can manage the multiple tariffs placed on his $159 shower heads, which became a viral sensation on Instagram.
When the Trump administration trimmed tariffs on China to 30% in May, van Meer's tariff bill was actually 43%. That's because the 30% tariff was stacked on top of an existing 13% tariff.
It's an improvement over the 145% tariffs slapped on Chinese imports in April, when he halted shipments entirely.
'At least I can afford to pay it,' said van Meer, chief executive of Afina, based in Austin, Texas, referring to his latest calculations. "And I don't have to raise the price by that much."
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
AFP
2 hours ago
- AFP
Altered Trump video spreads amid Iran-Israel war
"We need to avoid getting involved in this conflict #trump #maga #israel #iran #middleeast #wwiii," says a June 15, 2025 post sharing the video on Instagram. The clip -- also shared to X, TikTok and YouTube -- claims to show Trump saying the United States should stay out of the conflict between the two arch enemies, which began when Israel targeted Iranian military bases and nuclear sites in a June 13 attack and has seen Iran respond with barrages of missiles and drones. "I think we should skip it," Trump appears to say in the video. "I don't know. I'm just not really feeling it. World War III folks, hard pass." Image Screenshot from Instagram taken June 20, 2025 Referencing nationwide protests against his agenda, Trump supposedly continued: "We've got enough going on stateside. We've got the 'No Kings' riots set to kick off this weekend. 'No Kings.' We like kings, actually, folks. We like one king in particular, quite frankly. The king of kings, our lord and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has been working to draw elevated support from Trump, but the Republican US president said June 20 that Iran had a "maximum" of two weeks to avoid possible US air strikes, indicating he could take a decision before the fortnight deadline he set a day earlier. He had spent weeks before the attack pursuing a diplomatic path towards a deal to replace the nuclear deal with Iran that he tore up in his first term in 2018. The video purporting to show him saying the United States "should skip it," meanwhile, is altered. Reverse image searches reveal the footage was lifted from a May 28, 2025 event -- more than two weeks prior to Israel's strikes on Iran (archived here). Former Fox News host Jeanine Pirro, who was sworn in at the ceremony as the interim US attorney for the District of Columbia, can be seen standing behind Trump throughout. The video and transcript show the president mentioned Israel's war on the Palestinian militant group Hamas and the US efforts to reach a deal with Iran, but he did not call for the United States to stay out of a conflict between the two Middle Eastern nations (archived here and here). He was asked at one point whether he warned Netanyahu against taking any action that could disrupt his talks with Iran, but he said he was pushing to follow the diplomatic path. The president made no mention of the "No Kings" protests. The manipulated video appears to lift footage from around the 18:36 mark of the May 28 footage, based on Trump's hand movements. In that moment, the president was talking about inflation. The voice cloning detection tool in the Verification Plugin, also known as InVID-WeVerify, found that the audio on the altered version is "very likely AI-generated." Some of the earliest posts sharing the clip included disclaimers saying it was a parody generated by artificial intelligence. AFP has debunked other misinformation about the Iran-Israel war here.
France 24
3 hours ago
- France 24
Trump says two weeks is 'maximum' for Iran decision
Trump added that Iran "doesn't want to talk to Europe," dismissing the chance of success in talks between European powers and Iran in Geneva on resolving the conflict between Israel and Iran. Trump also played down the possibility of asking Israel to halt its attacks, after Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi said Tehran would not resume talks with the United States until Israel relented. "I'm giving them a period of time, and I would say two weeks would be the maximum," Trump told reporters when asked if he could decide to strike Iran before that. He added that the aim was to "see whether or not people come to their senses." Trump had said in a statement on Thursday that he would "make my decision whether or not to go within the next two weeks" because there was a "substantial chance of negotiations" with Iran. Those comments had been widely seen as opening a two-week window for negotiations to end the war between Israel and Iran, with the European powers rushing to talks with Tehran. But his latest remarks indicated that Trump could still make his decision before that if he feels that there has been no progress towards dismantling Iran's nuclear program. Trump dismissed the chances of Europe making a difference, saying the talks between Britain, France, Germany and EU diplomats and Tehran's foreign minister "didn't help." "Iran doesn't want to speak to Europe. They want to speak to us. Europe is not going to be able to help in this," Trump told reporters as he arrived in Morristown, New Jersey. Asked if he would ask Israel to stop its attacks as Iran had asked, Trump said it was "very hard to make that request right now." "If somebody's winning, it's a little bit harder to do than if somebody's losing, but we're ready, willing and able, and we've been speaking to Iran, and we'll see what happens."
France 24
7 hours ago
- France 24
NATO scrambles to overcome Spain block on summit spending deal
Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez on Thursday threw a last-minute hand grenade into preparations for the gathering in The Hague by coming out strongly against the agreement. In a blistering letter to NATO chief Mark Rutte, Sanchez said that committing to a headline figure of five percent of GDP "would not only be unreasonable, but also counterproductive". The outburst from Madrid's centre-left leader has sparked fury from other NATO members who fear it could derail the carefully crafted compromise designed to keep Trump happy at the summit. Ambassadors held a round of negotiations at NATO headquarters in Brussels on Friday, but broke up without a deal being reached. Several diplomats said talks could drag on through the weekend in an effort to reach a breakthrough or the start of the summit on Tuesday. "There is no clarity yet," one diplomat said, speaking on condition of anonymity to discuss ongoing deliberations. In a bid to satisfy Trump's demand to spend five percent of GDP on defence, NATO chief Rutte has corralled allies towards a diplomatic trade-off. That would see them agree to coughing up 3.5 percent on core military needs, and 1.5 percent on a looser category of "defence-related" expenditures such as infrastructure and cybersecurity. As a string of reluctant European capitals fell into line, officials believed they were comfortably on track to reach the deal for the Hague summit. Washington's allies fear that Trump -- who has previously threatened not to protect countries he thinks don't spend enough -- could blow a hole in NATO if he doesn't get what he wants. Spain has been one of the lowest spending NATO countries on defence in relative terms. The country is only set to hit the alliance's current target of two percent this year after a 10 billion euro ($11.5 billion) injection. Sanchez is facing a difficult balancing act of aligning with NATO allies and cajoling his junior coalition partner, the far-left alliance Sumar, which is hostile to increasing military spending. © 2025 AFP
