Where things stand (August 19, 2026): the deadline held right up until it did not. The 50% duties on Canadian goods were set to hit at 12:01 a.m. ET on August 19 — the 30-day fuse on the three proclamations Trump signed July 20 — and with under two hours to go he posted on Truth Social that he had paused them for three days "based on the fact that Canada and the U.S.A., subject to the finalization of documents, have a DEAL!" Prime Minister Mark Carney's read was noticeably cooler: "Substantial progress has been made, although there is important work still to be done." He had earlier described the talks as "very delicate and intense" (CP24, NBC News, CNBC, August 18-19, 2026). * Two things are worth separating here, because the coverage mostly did not. There is a pause, which is documented and dated — it expires at the end of Friday, August 21, 2026. And there is a "DEAL", which exists so far as a claim in a social media post and, per a White House document, a Canadian "commitment" to address US concerns on alcohol, autos and dairy. A commitment to address concerns is not a signed agreement, and the difference between those two things is the entire reason there is a three-day clock at all. Nobody has published terms. * What was actually at stake is the same US$20 billion in Canadian imports as before: motor vehicles, alcoholic beverages and dairy on the label, with the motor-vehicle proclamation quietly reaching agricultural goods, textiles, wood products, cement, furniture, machinery and electrical equipment — the hockey sticks that made every headline are real, and they are a rounding error next to the industrial list underneath. Energy, potash, fish, critical minerals and goods already covered by Section 232 stay carved out. The extra 50% applies regardless of USMCA eligibility, which is the detail that makes this a bigger deal than the dollar figure suggests: a continental trade agreement is in force and does not protect you. * Ottawa's posture has not changed either. Canada still has not named a retaliation list, which is exactly the position Carney set out in Charlottetown on July 23 — no counter-strike until the tariffs actually land. Three days from now we find out whether that patience bought a deal or just a later start date. * Where things stand (August 6, 2026): no new tariff action and no court ruling since the states sued on August 3. What is on the calendar is Canada. The three Section 338 proclamations Trump signed on July 20, 2026 carry a 30-day fuse, which burns out on August 19 — at which point an additional 50% duty lands on Canadian motor vehicles, alcoholic beverages, dairy and cheese, and a long tail of goods from cement to hockey sticks. Energy, potash, fish, critical minerals and anything already covered by Section 232 are carved out. * The thing to watch is that Ottawa has not hit back. After meeting the provincial premiers in Charlottetown, Prince Edward Island on July 23, 2026, Prime Minister Mark Carney said "everything's on the table" and that "if these tariffs, or other measures come into force, there's a full range of things that we can do" — but that retaliating immediately would be "counterproductive" while negotiations continue (AP, July 23, 2026). That is a government treating the 30-day window as what it plainly is: a deadline designed to extract concessions, with the tariff as the price of failure. * The premiers are less patient than the prime minister. Ontario Premier Doug Ford argued Canada should "be on offense" and keep everything on the table, including a surcharge on the electricity Ontario exports to US states. That split — a federal government negotiating, provinces holding the leverage that actually bites — is the part worth watching between now and August 19, because Canada's hardest retaliation options are not all Ottawa's to pull. * Everything else is waiting on judges. The July 24 Section 301 regime now faces three live challenges — Learning Resources, the Burlap & Barrel proposed class action, and the 25-state suit filed August 3 — and none has produced a ruling. The tariffs remain in force and importers keep paying while the Court of International Trade works. * Previously (August 3, 2026): the replacement tariffs now have a third lawsuit, and this one is filed by states. Twenty-five of them, co-led by the attorneys general of Arizona, California and Oregon, went to the US Court of International Trade to challenge the Section 301 forced-labor tariffs that took effect on July 24. Their argument is not a technicality about paperwork. It is that the forced-labor rationale is a wrapper: that the administration lost the IEEPA tariffs at the Supreme Court in February and rebuilt substantially the same tariff wall out of a different statute. The states want the tariffs declared unlawful, blocked, and the money already collected refunded (CNBC; CBS News, August 3, 2026). * That makes three live challenges to the same July 24 regime — the Learning Resources case, the Burlap & Barrel proposed class action, and now the states. Nothing has been struck down, and nothing is suspended: the rates below are what importers are paying today. But if you are trying to work out how durable this tariff structure is, the answer is that the entire replacement layer is now in court, filed by plaintiffs who have already beaten these tariffs once. * If you buy, sell, or ship anything that crosses a US border, this page keeps the whole US tariff picture in one place — what's actually in force today, what died, and what's being lined up next. We update it as the picture changes; the "Updated" date at the top tells you how fresh it is. * Newest layer (July 31, 2026): drugs. A Section 232 proclamation signed on April 2, 2026 put a 100% ad valorem tariff on patented pharmaceuticals and pharmaceutical ingredients, and the first tranche — the companies listed in Annex III of the proclamation — started paying it on July 31, 2026. Everybody else follows on September 29, 2026. * Read the exemption list and the policy tells on itself. Generics and biosimilars are at 0%. So are US-origin pharmaceutical products, orphan drugs, nuclear medicines, plasma-derived therapies, fertility treatments and cell and gene therapies. That is most of the volume of what Americans actually swallow. The 100% rate is aimed squarely at patented brand-name medicine — the part where the price is set by a company, not by competition. * And the rate is negotiable in a very specific way. Get an onshoring plan approved by the Commerce Secretary and 100% becomes 20% (until April 2, 2030, when it snaps back). Get an onshoring plan AND a most-favored-nation drug-pricing agreement with the Department of Health and Human Services and you pay 0% until January 20, 2029. Allies get their own tiers: 15% for Japan, the EU, South Korea and Switzerland/Liechtenstein, 10% for the United Kingdom with a path to zero if a trade deal is signed. * Strip out the trade language and the structure is plain enough. This is not really a border tax on medicine, it is a lever: build here and cut your US prices, and the tariff goes away. Whether the cost of the transition lands on manufacturers or on people at a pharmacy counter is the part nobody in the proclamation commits to. * How we got here, in fast-forward: on February 20, 2026, the Supreme Court ruled in Learning Resources v. Trump that IEEPA — the emergency-powers law behind the sweeping 2025 tariffs — does not let a president impose tariffs at all. The White House switched laws the same day, invoking Section 122 of the Trade Act of 1974 to slap a 10% surcharge on imports from nearly every country, effective February 24, 2026. * Section 122 came with a catch no executive order can lawyer around: a hard 150-day limit written into the statute. Day 150 is July 24, 2026. At 12:01 a.m. EDT that morning, the 10% global tariff terminates by operation of law. Only Congress can extend it — and Congress has shown no appetite; the trade bill with actual momentum, the Reclaim Trade Powers Act, pulls in the opposite direction. By the time it lapses, the surcharge will have collected $31.06 billion, according to US Customs and Border Protection. * What's actually in effect right now (as of July 31, 2026): - Most countries: the Section 301 forced-labor tariff, live since 12:01 a.m. EDT on July 24, 2026 — 10% for 17 named economies, 12.5% for the rest, with a mixed 10%/12.5% net-of-MFN treatment plus product exemptions for the EU, Taiwan, Japan, Korea and Switzerland. It has no rate cap and no expiration date. The 10% Section 122 surcharge it replaced is gone. - Brazil: 25% under a new Section 301 tariff on nearly all imports, imposed July 15, 2026 — a separate legal authority with no expiration date, and the first concrete piece of the post–Section 122 regime. - European Union: 15% on most goods under the US–EU trade deal, with EU autos capped at 15% instead of the 25% everyone else pays. - China: roughly 35% in combined duties above the normal MFN rate on most goods, and well over 100% on certain strategic products — legacy Section 301 duties that survive July 24 untouched. - Canada: still under USMCA preferential rates today, but a new 50% Section 338 tariff signed July 20, 2026 lands 30 days later on motor vehicles, alcohol, dairy and a long tail of other goods. Autos and auto parts already pay the 25% Section 232 tariff. - Mexico: goods that qualify under USMCA rules of origin keep preferential (often zero) rates — autos and auto parts pay the 25% Section 232 tariff regardless. - Steel, aluminum, copper: 25–50% under Section 232, with no expiration date. * Then came Canada. On July 20, 2026, President Trump signed three proclamations under Section 338 of the Tariff Act of 1930 — a Depression-era provision that lets a president hit back at countries deemed to discriminate against US commerce, and which had sat effectively unused for most of a century. Each proclamation covers a different basket of Canadian goods, all at an additional 50%: motor vehicles, alcoholic beverages, dairy and cheese, plus items from cement to hockey sticks. Energy, potash, fish, critical minerals and products already covered by Section 232 are carved out. The duties take effect 30 days after the July 20 signing. * The White House justification is a discrimination argument rather than an emergency one: it says Canadian imports of US motor vehicles fell 22%, or $5.6 billion, year-over-year; that US alcoholic beverage exports to Canada dropped 81%, or $582 million, under provincial liquor-board restrictions; and that Canada's dairy quotas treat US cheese worse than EU cheese. USTR's Ambassador Greer framed it as holding Canada accountable for retaliation and discrimination. Note the legal design: like Section 301 and unlike Section 122, Section 338 carries no 150-day clock — so this one does not die on a calendar date, and it lands three weeks after the global surcharge disappears. * The broader replacement is no longer hypothetical either. USTR already fired the first shot on July 15, 2026, hitting nearly all Brazilian imports with a 25% tariff under Section 301 of the Trade Act of 1974 — the same authority behind the China duties, and one with no rate cap and no built-in expiry. It is the clearest signal yet of how Washington intends to keep tariff pressure on after Section 122 lapses: swap the expiring, capped 10% surcharge for open-ended, country-by-country Section 301 actions. USTR is also finalizing a broader round of Section 301 duties tied to forced-labor enforcement, following its findings against 60 economies and hearings held July 7–9. The proposed structure, which reporting frames as replacement duties on roughly 46 countries, splits the rate: 10% for economies that already prohibit or have committed to prohibit forced-labor imports, and 12.5% for everyone else. The statutory completion deadline for that determination was July 20, 2026 — days before Section 122 dies. As of July 21, USTR's press office had published no final forced-labor determination; the only tariff action it announced on the deadline day was the Canada Section 338 package (USTR press releases; Covington; Sheppard Mullin). * There's also a court fight running underneath all of this — separate from the statutory expiration, and it's not resolving on the same timeline. The US Court of International Trade struck down the Section 122 tariffs on May 7, 2026, but the Federal Circuit stayed that ruling on June 11, pending the government's appeal — meaning the duties have kept being collected without interruption the entire time. The government's opening appellate brief is due in July, and trade lawyers tracking the case say it is unlikely to be resolved before Section 122 expires on its own on July 24 — so the tariff could disappear by statute before the courts ever settle whether it was lawful to begin with. Meanwhile, importers are chasing refunds on the IEEPA tariffs the Supreme Court already killed. * What happens if July 24 arrives and the broader Section 301 replacement isn't ready? Imports from most countries — Brazil now excepted — revert to plain MFN rates plus the surviving sector tariffs, which would make many imported goods modestly cheaper on paper, at least until the next proclamation drops. That's the scenario every importer, and every White House trade lawyer, is now racing against. * Update, July 21, 2026 — the replacement is still not on paper. Speaking publicly on Tuesday, US Trade Representative Jamieson Greer was asked directly about the Financial Times report that tariffs on dozens of countries were imminent. He would not give a date: "We expect to see some action soon," he said, adding, "I can't really specify a timeline right now" and noting he had to brief Congress and other stakeholders first. He did confirm the scale — the proposed Section 301 forced-labor duties would cover "about 99% of our trade." Bloomberg reported the same day that the US was set to impose new duties by Friday as the stopgap expires. So the position going into the final 48 hours is this: the legal authority to replace Section 122 exists, the investigation supporting it is finished, the statutory deadline for the determination has already passed — and the actual proclamation has not been signed. Importers are being asked to plan around a tariff regime that does not yet legally exist. * Update, July 24, 2026 — it landed with hours to spare. On July 23, President Trump signed a Memorandum directing USTR to impose the forced-labor Section 301 tariffs, and they took effect at 12:01 a.m. EDT on July 24 — the exact moment Section 122 died. So there was no gap and no six-point tariff cliff: the expiring 10% capped surcharge was swapped for open-ended, uncapped Section 301 duties covering about 60 economies. The rate splits by conduct: 10% for 17 economies that already prohibit forced-labor imports or have committed to, 10%/12.5% net of MFN with product exemptions for five more (the EU, Taiwan, Japan, Korea, Switzerland), and 12.5% for everyone else investigated. Stacked on top of everything already in force (the Brazil 25% Section 301 action, the Canada 50% Section 338 package hitting around August 19, China's legacy 301 duties, and the steel/aluminum/copper/auto sector tariffs), the practical result is that landed costs for most importers did not fall at all on July 24 — the label on the authority changed, the pressure did not (USTR; White House, July 23–24, 2026). * Update, July 31, 2026 — the fight moved to the courthouse, fast. The forced-labor tariffs took effect at 12:01 a.m. EDT on July 24, and importers filed suit at the US Court of International Trade the same day. One case comes from Learning Resources — the toy company whose name is already on the Supreme Court decision that killed the IEEPA tariffs in February — joined by hand2mind and several HMTX-related companies. The other is a proposed class action from spice importer Burlap & Barrel and watch retailer Collective Horology. The legal theory in both is narrower than it sounds: not that Section 301 is unconstitutional, but that USTR did not do the statutory homework — it never adequately established, economy by economy, that the conduct was unreasonable or discriminatory, that it burdened US commerce, and that tariffs could correct it. Doing sixty investigations at once is exactly what makes that argument available. The Peterson Institute for International Economics (PIIE) published an analysis on the same point, arguing the tariffs are unlikely to survive a court challenge. Meanwhile the duties are being collected in full while the case runs — the same pattern as Section 122, where the trade court ruled against the tariffs on May 7 and importers kept paying anyway for another eleven weeks. The lesson importers keep re-learning: winning eventually and paying now are entirely compatible (FreightWaves; Bloomberg; PIIE, July 24–26, 2026).