Many US tariffs are expiring on Friday. What does this mean for supply chain teams?
A US tariff surcharge on most imports expires July 24. On its own, that sounds like good news: tariffs going away. But as any supply chain team can tell you, what matters more is what replaces it - and the fact that we aren’t exactly operating in an environment full of certainty!
What's expiring: Section 122 tariffs
The short version: Trump’s current tariffs, which expire in a few days, were a temporary, uniform tax on nearly all imports. This surcharge was a flat 10% fee on nearly all imports, from nearly every country, with no exceptions by country of origin. The administration put it in place in February 2026 as a quick patch after the Supreme Court struck down the broader tariff program Trump had implemented. The law only allows a surcharge like this for 150 days. That clock started February 24 and runs out July 24, so the tariff really is expiring on schedule, with no sign Congress will extend it.
The administration is signaling that the tariffs under Section 122 will be replaced by a set of investigations that are likely to single out individual countries, including those that companies diversified into specifically to avoid tariff risk. That is going to create a lot of headaches and strategic conundrums for businesses with global supply chains.
What’s likely to happen: Section 301 tariffs
Section 122 was always meant to be temporary: a placeholder, not a policy. The administration has spent the months since February building what comes next; it would be unwise to bet that lower tariffs will continue.
The primary likely impact is that individual countries will once again be targeted with different policies. Section 122 treated every country the same: one flat rate, no distinctions. According to reports, tariffs are being built under Section 301, a different law with no cap on the rate and no built-in expiration date. Since March, the US Trade Representative has opened two major investigations under it: one covering 16 economies over manufacturing overcapacity, the other covering 60 economies over forced-labor enforcement, which has already produced proposed tariffs of 10–12.5%.
Once one of these cases is ready, it won’t take long to enact legislation around them. A separate, already-completed Section 301 case against Brazil moved from a published tariff proposal to that tariff taking effect in about seven weeks.
A broad, more legally defensible impact
The 16-country overcapacity list isn't random. It reads as a map of exactly where companies moved sourcing to when they diversified out of China: Vietnam, India, Thailand, Malaysia, Mexico, Korea, Taiwan; there is little regard for whether a country is a U.S. ally or adversary.
Back in the first Trump administration, China-specific tariffs pushed companies to diversify, and it worked: China's share of US manufacturing imports has fallen below 10%, down from 20% four years ago, with other Asian countries absorbing nearly all of what China lost. A recent survey of more than 1,000 companies found the same pattern: new US sourcing volume has flowed mainly to Vietnam, India, Bangladesh, and Mexico. Years of "reduce China exposure" decisions sent sourcing volume to precisely where the scrutiny is now landing.
Two things temper how worried to be about that overlap. First, the 60-country forced-labor list covers economies responsible for 99.4% of everything the US imports, so simply appearing on it doesn't mean diversification backfired; almost nowhere is excluded. Second, the 16-country overcapacity case (the one aimed more directly at diversification destinations) hasn't produced a proposed tariff yet, and several named economies, including the EU, Japan and South Korea, are negotiating separately. The outcome could still end up closer to the old, narrower tariff map than the sweeping one it resembles today.
What this means for sourcing decisions
None of this means diversifying away from China was a mistake. It was a reasonable response to the risk that was visible at the time, and it still protects against risks that have nothing to do with trade policy. Those decisions haven't aged badly.
What's changed is the shape of the risk they were built to solve. A tariff tied to one country can be avoided by sourcing from a different one. A tariff regime that names several sourcing destinations in the same investigation doesn't leave that option open the same way. The plans built for the first kind of risk aren't wrong. They're just answering a narrower question than the one now on the table.
What teams can actually do about it
Trying to predict which economy gets targeted next isn't a realistic strategy right now. The two open Section 301 investigations haven't produced final tariffs, and negotiations are actively reshaping the outcome for several countries. Nobody, including the trade lawyers tracking this closely, has a reliable way to call it in advance.
What is predictable is that this won't be the last time a tariff regime shifts faster than a sourcing strategy built around it. Policy moves faster than most teams' review cycles can absorb.
That points to where the real advantage sits. Not with the team that guesses right about the next investigation, but with the team that can act quickly once something actually changes: re-pricing a supplier, qualifying a new one, or moving volume, without that process itself becoming the bottleneck. That's the capability Didero's agentic systems are built to support, carrying out the sourcing, onboarding, and purchase order work that turns a sourcing decision into a completed change in days rather than weeks.
