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Commerce defines U.S. content for Canada-Mexico metal tariffs

New BIS guidance tells CBP how to measure U.S. content in USMCA-qualifying goods so the 25% duty can apply only to non-U.S. content, with a 15% floor.

Motion Media News Staff

Oct 14, 2026

3 minutes

Exterior of the Herbert C. Hoover Building, U.S. Department of Commerce headquarters in Washington, D.C.

Photo: Tony Webster, CC BY 2.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0), via Wikimedia Commons (source)

The Bureau of Industry and Security published Federal Register notice 2026-20938 on Wednesday, Oct. 14, instructing Customs and Border Protection on how to calculate "U.S. content" when Canadian and Mexican metal goods claim USMCA preferential rates. The instructions carry out clause (2)(d) of Presidential Proclamation 11032 of June 1, 2026, which revised Section 232 duty regimes for aluminum, steel and copper.

The notice says the guidance applies to products "entered for consumption, or withdrawn from warehouse for consumption, on or after 12:01 a.m. Eastern Time on October 14, 2026." The Commerce secretary assigned the drafting role to the deputy assistant secretary for technology security; Jessica Curyto signed for BIS. Docket No. 260918-0056 and XRIN 0694-XC163 appear on the filing.

What counts as U.S. content

Commerce defines "U.S. content," for clause (2)(d), as:

Value tied to parts wholly obtained, entirely produced, or substantially transformed in the United States; and
Where not already covered above, value tied to steel melted and poured in the United States, aluminum smelted and cast in the United States, and/or copper smelted and cast in the United States.

That second prong ties the tariff calculation directly to domestic melt, pour, smelt and cast operations — the production steps the proclamation is meant to favor. Product-specific application questions are to go to CBP, the notice says.

How Proclamation 11032 frames the duty

Proclamation 11032, printed in the Federal Register on June 4, 2026 (91 FR 34085), changed earlier Section 232 metal tariffs. It imposed a 50 percent ad valorem duty on products made of those metals, 25 percent on many derivative products, and a temporarily reduced 15 percent rate on a subset of derivatives such as fixed industrial machinery and power equipment, according to the proclamation text.

For USMCA-qualifying goods from Canada and Mexico, a 25 percent duty applies only to the non-U.S. share of the product. That share equals total value minus value attributable to parts produced in the United States. The proclamation sets a floor: the total effective duty under that subclause is not to fall below 15 percent ad valorem, as detailed in Annex IV. It also directed Commerce to give CBP rules for measuring U.S. content, and said CBP is to impose penalties permitted by law if an importer commits fraud or deliberately misleads the government about that content.

Wednesday's BIS notice is the promised measuring stick. It does not change the underlying duty rates; it tells CBP how to split a shipment's value between U.S. and non-U.S. content when the 25 percent non-U.S. rule and 15 percent floor apply.

What's next

Importers of covered Canadian and Mexican metal products and derivative goods are to use the new definition on entries dated Oct. 14 or later. Specific-product questions continue to go to CBP. The notice appears at 91 FR 65162. Further Section 232 proclamations or annex updates would appear separately in the Federal Register.