CaratFifty percent for Canada: the wall reaches the diamond counter
A 50% tariff on Canadian goods takes effect August 19 and names six jewelry HTS codes, loose polished diamonds among them. Rough is exempt, USMCA offers no shelter, and the duty stacks on top of everything already in force.
§1Six codes, thirty days.
The tariff wall that has been rising around American jewelry counters all summer just gained its most surprising section: the northern one. A 50% tariff on Canadian imports, enacted under Section 338 of the Tariff Act of 1930, takes effect August 19, thirty days after signing. The order names six Harmonized Tariff Schedule codes that land squarely on the trade: loose polished diamonds (7102.39.00), semi-manufactured .995 silver including gold- and platinum-plated forms (7106.92.10), silver jewelry valued over $18 per dozen pieces (7113.11.50), gold necklaces and neck chains excluding rope and mixed-link (7113.19.29), precious-metal jewelry including plated goods (7113.19.50), and base-metal jewelry (7117.19.90).
§2No shelter in the USMCA.
Two details make the order harsher than its headline. First, the Jewelers Vigilance Committee notes the tariffs apply to the listed products even where they would qualify for duty-free treatment under the USMCA, the free-trade agreement Washington itself negotiated with Ottawa in the first Trump term. Second, the new duty applies on top of existing tariffs rather than replacing them. A category that already carried a rate now carries that rate plus fifty points.
The order effectively taxes the value Canada adds and waves through the value it exports raw.
The exemption is as pointed as the inclusion. Rough diamonds are excluded, which means Canadian rough that leaves the Northwest Territories for cutting elsewhere enters the United States under the cutting country's rate, not Canada's. What pays the 50% is the small, premium trade in stones actually polished in Canada, the traceable, mine-to-market goods sold for two decades under a maple-leaf promise. The order effectively taxes the value Canada adds and waves through the value it exports raw.
§3From repeal to carve-outs.
The industry's response has settled into weary procedure. Jewelers of America president David Bonaparte, who has spent the season filing exemption requests for diamond, gemstone and pearl codes, framed the situation plainly: "President Trump has stated that tariffs are here to stay". The lobbying goal has shrunk accordingly, from repeal to carve-outs, code by code. Canada joins Brazil, whose 25% duty on loose polished colored stones is now in force, and the roughly 46 countries facing a proposed 12.5% rate on colored gemstones and pearls by month-end.
The maple-leaf premium just became a maple-leaf surcharge. Canadian-cut stones were the ethical-sourcing story American retail told its most careful customers, and at plus-fifty they will be nearly unsellable against identical goods cut in Surat from the same Canadian rough. A tariff that exempts the ore and taxes the craftsmanship does not protect anyone; it simply moves the cutting wheel offshore.
The counters have four weeks to land goods, and the desk expects August's import data to show one of the strangest pull-forwards on record.
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