U.S. restrictions on a range of Canadian goods, covering large motorcycles, dairy products and direct-to-consumer alcohol, officially took effect on September 29, according to Flexport's Global Logistics Update.

Entries filed under the affected Harmonized Tariff Schedule (HTS) codes are now rejected outright, with U.S. Customs and Border Protection's system returning the message "HTS Not Allowed for Country of Origin," per Flexport's trade compliance team. The restricted list includes motorcycles over 800cc displacement (HTS 8711.50.00), along with whey, molasses, non-alcoholic beer, and canned, bottled and kegged beer, wine, brandy and rum sold direct to consumer. Bulk alcohol in large vats and casks remains exempt. Flexport said its Tariff Simulator has been updated to reflect the current code list, so importers and brokers can confirm classification before filing rather than finding out at the border.

Separately, U.S. Trade Representative Jamieson Greer confirmed this week that planned rate cuts covering 77 Chinese import categories classified as non-sensitive cannot move forward until the agency works through Section 301's required public input process. The list under consideration leans heavily toward everyday consumer goods, including small kitchen and household appliances, home textiles, children's products such as high chairs, infant walkers and play yards, and a long tail of sporting goods, games, holiday decor and novelty items. A recent White House release pairs the U.S. import list with a parallel list of U.S. products China would consider for reciprocal, reduced tariff treatment, though neither government has published a timeline or specified what the new rates would be. Flexport's trade compliance team sees echoes of the Section 301 exclusion process from the first Trump administration, where comment periods routinely stretched on before any rates changed, meaning importers with exposure in these categories should not expect near-term relief.

A new multilateral effort aims to close a longstanding gap in how steel's origin gets verified. Major steel importing economies, representing 55% of the world's steel trade, will start requiring exporters to identify the country where each shipment's steel was actually melted and poured, instead of simply citing wherever it was last processed or finished. The United States, Canada, Mexico, Japan, South Korea, Turkey, Australia, Argentina, Brazil, South Africa and sixteen European countries are among the participants. Finishing steel briefly in a third country to mask its true origin and dodge origin-specific duties is a familiar workaround, and melt-and-pour disclosure is designed to close that gap. The move adds to a broader multilateral push against transshipment that CBP and the Department of Commerce have both pressed in recent months. Companies importing steel should plan for new documentation requirements and start checking now whether they can trace melt-and-pour data through their own supply chains.