The 100% pharmaceutical tariff: what importers need to know before September 29

Last verified against U.S. regulations as of August 3, 2026. Rates below are pulled live from our data. See our live status page for current coverage.

Proclamation 11020 imposes a Section 232 duty on patented pharmaceutical articles and their ingredients — active pharmaceutical ingredients and key starting materials — across 149 provisions in HTS chapters 29 and 30 (72 in chapter 29, 77 in chapter 30). The duties are set out in U.S. note 40 to subchapter III of chapter 99, under headings 9903.04.60 through 9903.04.69.

Two dates matter. Companies named in Annex III of the proclamation have been subject since July 31, 2026. Everyone else is subject from September 29, 2026.

The headline number is 100%. Most lines will not pay it. This guide covers who pays what, the two arithmetic rules that are easy to get backwards, and the one exemption that no amount of HTS analysis will resolve for you.

The rate depends on where the goods are from

There is no single pharmaceutical tariff. The proclamation splits origins across three charging headings, and which one applies is a fact about country of origin, not about the product:

Origin	Chapter 99	Rate	Arithmetic
Everyone not listed below	9903.04.60	100%	All-in (combined total)
EU-27, Japan, Korea, Switzerland, Liechtenstein	9903.04.62	15%	All-in (combined total)
United Kingdom	9903.04.63	0%	Additive

Three further headings charge less than the default if you qualify, and the schedule spells them out: 9903.04.64 adds 20% on top of your Column 1 rate for articles under a qualifying onshoring plan, while 9903.04.65 (an onshoring plan plus a Most-Favored-Nation pricing agreement) and 9903.04.66 (drugs for certain specified uses) add nothing. Qualifying for any of them is a fact about your company and your product, not about the classification, so we do not assign them for you — see the section on conditional lanes below.

The UK figure is current, not a typo. It was set at plus 10% by the proclamation and reduced to 0% by Commerce effective July 31, 2026 (FR Doc. 2026-15799, announced in CBP CSMS #69415934) — the same moment the action’s earliest lane opened, so UK-origin goods never actually owed the 10%. The heading is still reportable on the entry even though it charges nothing.

The arithmetic trap: all-in versus additive

This is the part that costs money, and it runs in opposite directions depending on the heading.

All-in means the stated rate is the total, including your Column 1 duty. Note 40(d) and (f) spell it out: the sum of the Column 1 rate and the additional duty equals the heading rate. Where Column 1 already exceeds it, no additional duty is due.

Additive means the stated rate is added on top of Column 1. Proclamation clause (7) states the combined-rate rule and its final sentence carves the United Kingdom out by name, which is why .63 behaves differently from .60 and .62.

Take a covered ingredient, 2942.00.05.00, with a Column 1 general rate of 6.5%:

Origin	Chapter 99	Total on Sept 29, 2026
India	9903.04.60	100%
Germany	9903.04.62	15%
United Kingdom	9903.04.63	6.5%

Germany is 15%, not 21.5%. The 15% is the combined total, so the Chapter 99 component is 15% minus the 6.5% base, not 15% on top of it. Model that additively and you over-quote every dutiable EU line by the full Column 1 amount.

If you build your own duty calculator, this is the single assumption worth testing first.

Between July 31 and September 28, most importers pay nothing

For the interval between the two effective dates, the schedule provides heading 9903.04.61, a 0% lane. Only companies named in Annex III are charged during that window.

We resolve on HTS code, origin and date. We cannot see which company is importing, so we do not guess: within the window the API returns 9903.04.61 as a zero-rate advisory rather than charging you. If you are an Annex III company, the duty applies to you now, and your entries should reflect that.

Inside the window, on August 15, a covered line from India resolves to 6.5% — the base rate alone. The same line on September 29 resolves to 100%.

The exemption you cannot determine from an HTS code

This is the most important limitation in the whole program, and it is a limitation of the tariff schedule, not of any particular data source.

Note 40(c) draws the line at patented pharmaceutical articles. Generic pharmaceuticals are relieved under 9903.04.67: FDA-approved articles not covered by a valid, unexpired U.S. patent and off exclusivity, approved under an ANDA, a therapeutically-equivalent 505(b)(2) NDA, a 351(k) biosimilar application, or as an authorized generic imported by a generic or biosimilar manufacturer.

None of that is visible in an HTS code. Patent status, Orange Book and Purple Book listing, the FDA application pathway, and whether the importer is a generic manufacturer are all facts about the product and the importer, not about the classification. Two shipments under an identical 10-digit code can land on opposite sides of this line.

So the honest answer for any covered code is conditional. We serve the duty as the worst case and return 9903.04.67 as an available exemption on the measure, so you can see the claim exists and evaluate it, rather than discovering it at entry.

Generics are not the only alternative lane. Six headings replace the 100% default when their condition is met:

Heading	You pay	If
9903.04.64	base + 20%	Articles under a qualifying onshoring plan
9903.04.65	base only	Onshoring plan and an MFN pricing agreement
9903.04.66	base only	Drugs for the specific uses in note 40(h)(iii)
9903.04.67	base only	Generic pharmaceutical articles
9903.04.68	base only	Active ingredient in dosage form that is a product of the United States
9903.04.69	base only	Articles under a listed code that are not pharmaceutical articles

Every one of those conditions is a fact about your company, your product or its patent status — none is visible in an HTS code, so no classification lookup can assign them and we do not guess. Today we surface only the generics lane on the measure. If you qualify under any of the others, the difference against a 100% default is large enough to be worth confirming with your broker before September 29.

If your product is generic, the relief is real and it is worth documenting. It just is not something a classification lookup can decide for you.

What to check now

1. Pull your covered lines. The scope is enumerated at ten digits, not by chapter or by six-digit heading. A sibling code under the same eight digits can be out of scope, so check the actual ten-digit numbers you import rather than assuming a family is in or out.
2. Check origin against the table above, and note that origin here is the country of origin, not the country you buy from.
3. Test your arithmetic on one dutiable EU or Japanese line. If your system produces base plus 15%, it is wrong.
4. Separate your patented and generic volumes now, before September 29. The relief is claim-conditional and documented at entry; it is not applied automatically.
5. Watch for further Commerce notices. The UK rate moved once already, within a day of the regime taking effect. The onshoring and pricing-agreement lanes are published with their rates, but qualifying under them depends on determinations that are made company by company, so watch for anything that names your own.

How we handle it

Our API resolves these lanes on (hts, origin, as_of). Covered lines return program: section_232 with program_detail: pharmaceuticals, the applicable Chapter 99 heading, and — where relief exists that we cannot evaluate for you — an available_exemption naming the heading you would claim under. Zero-rate lanes that remain reportable, like the UK heading and the Annex III window, come back in advisory_measures rather than as a charge, so they never inflate a total but are still visible for declaration.

We do not classify products into HTS codes. If you already know your codes, we will tell you what they cost.

Related: how tariff stacking works, our Section 232 reference, and the data change log for every rate movement in this program.