For a year and a half, “CUSMA-compliant” was the magic phrase of this trade war. On August 22, it stopped working.
What changed
In the earlier rounds, trade-agreement compliance mattered enormously: tariffs on goods meeting USMCA/CUSMA rules were indefinitely deferred in the 2025 IEEPA-era measures, which made origin certification the difference between 0% and 25%-plus. The new Section 338 proclamations broke that pattern — by their terms, the 50% tariffs apply to covered Canadian goods even where they qualify under CUSMA, per the proclamations and law-firm analyses from Wiley and White & Case.
Why certification still matters
CUSMA certification is not dead weight. A valid claim still eliminates the underlying MFN duty that would otherwise stack beneath the surtax; it keeps you audit-ready for origin verifications that arrive years later; and if the legally contested Section 338 authority is later struck down — as the Supreme Court struck down IEEPA tariffs in February 2026 — entries with clean origin records are the straightforward ones to unwind and refund.
The practical read
Treat the 50% as a separate layer that certification cannot remove, while keeping certification discipline for everything it still controls. Our tracker follows the litigation angle; our full certification guide is live.
Sources: Presidential proclamations of July 20, 2026; Wiley and White & Case client alerts; Supreme Court of the United States, Learning Resources, Inc. v. Trump (Feb. 20, 2026).
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