Both In-Transit Windows Just Closed: What Cargo Arriving After July 28-29 Owes Now

## Both In-Transit Windows Just Closed: What Cargo Arriving After July 28-29 Owes Now

Two grace periods expired back to back this week, and together they mark the moment the July tariff wave stops being a timing game and becomes the new baseline.

The Section 301 forced-labor tariffs - an additional 10% or 12.5% on imports from roughly 60 economies, effective July 24 - came with narrow transition relief: cargo already loaded and in transit on its final mode of transportation before the effective time escaped the new duty only if it was entered before 12:01 a.m. ET on Monday, July 28. That window is closed.

One day later, the Brazil 25% Section 301 action under HTS 9903.05.01 hit its own cliff: cargo loaded before the July 22 effective date had until 12:01 a.m. ET on Tuesday, July 29 to enter and claim the in-transit exemption. That window closed this morning.

The practical meaning is simple and expensive: as of today, when your cargo was loaded no longer matters. A container that left Santos or Ningbo or Bremerhaven three weeks ago - back when its landed cost was quoted under the old rules - now pays exactly what a container loaded tomorrow pays. Every consumption entry filed from here forward takes the full current stack.

What the Stack Looks Like This Morning

For a consumption entry filed today, the layers are:

- Base MFN rate for the HTS line. - Section 301 forced-labor duty: +10% or +12.5%, depending on the exporting country's tier. The 10% tier applies to countries that maintain or have committed to a qualifying forced-labor import prohibition; the 12.5% tier applies to the rest. Exemptions include goods entered duty-free under USMCA, CAFTA-DR textiles and apparel, articles already subject to Section 232, civil aircraft, pharmaceuticals, informational materials, and certain other categories. - Brazil only - Section 301 discrimination duty: +25% under 9903.05.01, on top of the forced-labor layer unless the line is exempt under Annex I. - Any pre-existing layers - Section 232 metals, AD/CVD, China Section 301 - that already applied.

A Brazilian-origin industrial product at $100,000 entered value with a 3% MFN rate that would have entered at roughly $3,000 in duty three weeks ago can now owe $3,000 + $12,500 + $25,000 = $40,500. Run your own lines through the tariff stacking calculator and the landed cost calculator before you quote another delivered price - and see our tariff stacking guide for how the layers combine and which ones compound.

Getting the country tier and line-level exemptions right is now worth real money on every entry. Importers screening large SKU books against the new Chapter 99 headings (CBP's filing instructions put the forced-labor lines at 9903.05.20 through 9903.06.21) often use classification and landed-cost software such as Zonos to check exposure before their broker files. (Disclosure: this is an affiliate link - FreightFigures may earn a commission if you sign up, at no additional cost to you. See our full affiliate disclosure.)

If Your Container Missed the Window

First, confirm it actually missed. The forced-labor relief turned on two facts - loaded and in transit on the final mode before 12:01 a.m. ET July 24, AND entered before 12:01 a.m. ET July 28. The Brazil exemption required loading before July 22 and entry before July 29. If your broker filed the entry in time and the paperwork supports the load date, the exemption was claimed at entry and you are done. The problem cases are containers that qualified on load date but arrived too late to enter in time - discharged this week, still on the water, or stuck in a congested terminal queue.

For those, there are three honest options:

Option one: enter, pay, and preserve your rights. If the goods are sold or needed in inventory, enter for consumption and pay the stack. Flag the entry with your broker for any available post-summary correction if facts were misreported, and keep the file organized - tariff actions of this size draw legal challenges, and the Section 122 refund process now working through CAPE is a live demonstration that duties paid under a later-invalidated action can come back. Protest deadlines run 180 days from liquidation; a calendared protest costs almost nothing to preserve.

Option two: bonded warehouse entry. Here is the asymmetry worth understanding: before a grace deadline, bonding qualifying cargo is a trap - it defers the entry that locks in the exemption, which is why we told Brazil importers last week not to bond in-transit-eligible containers. After the deadline, the logic flips entirely. With the exemption gone, there is nothing left to forfeit - and duty on warehoused goods is assessed at the rate in effect on the withdrawal date, not the arrival date. That matters because the current stack is mobile in ways that favor waiting: country tiers can move (India legislated its way from the proposed 12.5% down to 10% before the final action), a second forced-labor investigation covering more countries is pending with tiers not yet fixed, and the Brazil 25% is exactly the kind of proclamation-driven duty that a negotiation can reduce or remove. Goods held under a customs bonded warehouse entry can sit for up to five years and withdraw at whatever the stack is on the day you pull them - in portions, as you sell.

Option three: the FTZ route - with a caveat. A foreign-trade zone also defers duty, but recent tariff actions have required covered goods admitted to a zone to take privileged foreign status, locking in their tariff treatment at admission rather than at withdrawal. For the wait-for-a-lower-stack play, that lock-in defeats the purpose. A bonded warehouse preserves withdrawal-date pricing; confirm the status treatment for your specific lines before choosing the zone.

The Decision Rule for Arriving Cargo

For each arriving container, ask two questions. Is the duty stack on this line likely to move within my holding horizon? Tier reassignments, the pending second investigation, and active bilateral negotiations all say yes for many lines. Can I afford to not sell these goods immediately? If both answers are yes, warehouse math is straightforward: bonded storage runs a known monthly cost per pallet, while entering today locks in 10 to 37.5 points of entered value you may not have needed to pay. On high-value cargo the storage cost is a rounding error against the duty spread.

For cargo you enter anyway, tighten the file: verify country of origin (country of export is not origin), verify the tier, verify Annex exemptions line by line, and reconcile what your broker deposited against what the CSMS instructions require - the first weeks of a new Chapter 99 regime are when misfiled entries are made and quietly liquidated wrong.

The Bigger Picture

July 2026 compressed an entire tariff cycle into five weeks: the Section 122 surcharge died on schedule, two new Section 301 layers arrived, Canada took a 50% Section 338 action effective August 19, and both in-transit windows opened and closed. The importers who navigated it well were not the ones who predicted policy - they were the ones who controlled their entry dates. With the windows now shut, entry-date control means one thing: deciding, container by container, whether today's stack is a price you accept or an option you defer.

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