On the evening of June 1st, Eastern Time, a presidential proclamation was issued. This move disturbed countless foreign trade merchants deeply involved in the US market.
What opportunities and traps are hidden in this tariff adjustment across the entire industrial chain of steel, aluminum, and copper?
In recent years, the United States has been vigorously promoting the reshoring of manufacturing, and has previously issued multiple rounds of metal-related tariff regulations.
A round of strict taxation rules was finalized in early April 2026, and the rules were drastically revised two months later.
The first purpose is to support the local metallurgical and processing industries, and the second is to alleviate the high cost of purchasing raw materials for the domestic agricultural machinery and HVAC industries. At the same time, with local elections approaching, stabilizing the public sentiment in the central and western agricultural production areas is also one of the considerations.
As the saying goes, “Businessmen are frightened when policies change.” For bosses doing cross-border business, changes in the decimal point of tariffs often directly affect the profit and loss of the entire year.
This new policy was officially implemented on June 8. It is a phased temporary regulation. The preferential window period is until December 31, 2027. It is very likely that relevant categories will return to high tax rates in 2028, leaving insufficient time for merchants to adjust their layout.
Many products that were previously subject to a 25% tax rate will benefit from the burden reduction, such as tractors, combine harvesters and other farm machinery that are needed in the field, as well as central air conditioners and supporting spare parts necessary for home decoration, the tariff will be directly reduced to 15%; bulldozers, forklifts and other mobile heavy industry machinery that are common on construction sites can also enjoy the same discounts if they meet certain conditions.
But there are also details in the rules. Countries that originally signed a free trade agreement with the United States and had goods tariffs lower than 15% now have their tax rates uniformly raised to 15 percentage points. Categories that were originally taxed above this line will no longer be taxed. This has caused many merchants who purchase goods from countries with low tax rates to increase their expenses.
The most eye-catching change in the new regulations is the lowering of the standards for domestic metal materials in the United States. Originally, products had to be mixed with 95% domestically smelted steel, aluminum, and copper in the United States to enjoy preferential treatment. Now the threshold has been relaxed to 85%. A large number of processing plants that mix American-produced metals into parts are eligible to enter the low-tariff category.
However, supervision has also been tightened simultaneously. Aluminum printed sheets and steel shelves for storage have been added to the control list of metal derivatives. The method of splitting the product structure and changing product names to avoid tariffs is no longer feasible.
After the policy was implemented, the foreign trade circle showed a situation of ice and fire.
Merchants mainly engaged in the export of agricultural machinery, HVAC, and construction machinery have lowered import taxes and fees due to lower tax rates, more competitive product pricing, and greater confidence in accepting orders; while the vast majority of cross-border sellers have a more difficult time.
Nowadays, tariff declaration details are detailed, product metal components are traced, and origin data are strictly reviewed. Compiling compliance documents consumes a lot of manpower and financial resources, and compliance costs are increased invisibly.
In the past, many small and medium-sized sellers used domestic direct shipping and air and sea direct mail to sell to the U.S. market. When the policy changed, goods were stranded at the port, resulting in huge demurrage fees, and there were many cases of losses.
It has become an industry consensus to prepare overseas warehouses in advance.
Take Postman Pony Overseas Warehouse as an example. It has self-operated warehousing outlets in many places in the East, West, South and Southeast United States. The warehouse network covers the United States. It provides large-scale foreign trade merchants with full-chain services such as warehousing custody, dropshipping, FBA cargo transfer, and terminal delivery. It also guarantees 24-hour rapid delivery.
Storing goods in U.S. warehouses in advance can avoid customs clearance obstructions caused by tariff changes, and the delivery time is also greatly improved. It can not only stabilize customer reputation, but also maintain profits when tax rates fluctuate.
Through this fine-tuning of tariffs, it can be seen that U.S. trade policy is no longer simply raising or lowering taxes, but using tiered tax rates to guide the global supply chain closer to local metal raw materials, which not only relaxes the downstream manufacturing industry, but also consolidates the foundation of the local metallurgical industry chain.
Chinese foreign trade practitioners should not passively respond to policy changes, but should take advantage of the trend to optimize their own supply chain layout.
The short-lived tax rate concession is only temporary. Only by building a strong moat for warehousing and supply chain can we survive the wave of international trade steadily and turn a passive situation into an opportunity for proactive gold mining.
