Following the expiry of a temporary 10% tariff, the United States has introduced new tariffs of either 10% or 12.5% on more than 60 trading partners, applied under Section 301 authority and tied to forced-labor supply chain assessments. The change is estimated to touch close to 99% of US imports in some form.

Australia has been placed in the 12.5% tier, alongside a large group of other trading partners. As with previous rounds of US tariff activity, the criteria and tier assignments have not always tracked neatly with existing trade relationships, which has made the changes harder for some importers to plan around.

For businesses importing into the US, or exporting from an affected country into the US market, the immediate task is confirming exactly which tariff tier applies to specific product lines and countries of origin — the classification detail matters more than the headline rate.

Beyond the immediate compliance question, it's worth watching how affected trading partners respond. Retaliatory tariffs or renegotiated trade terms have followed similar announcements in the past, and businesses with concentrated exposure to any single market may want to at least map out alternative sourcing or export options, even if they aren't ready to act on them yet.

Given how frequently US tariff policy has shifted over the past few years, treating any given rate as fixed for planning purposes is risky. Building a degree of contractual and sourcing flexibility around tariff exposure is generally a more resilient approach than optimising tightly around today's rules.

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