Overview
- The Office of Trade and Manufacturing Policy published the report on Thursday that accuses more than 40 countries of helping Chinese exporters reroute, relabel, or minimally process goods to evade U.S. tariffs and places India in a top-tier group of elevated risk.
- The administration’s central estimate values roughly $75 billion of transshipped goods for Feb 2025–Feb 2026 and says annual U.S. tariff revenue losses run about $19 billion to $26 billion based on modelled scenarios.
- Officials outlined stepped-up enforcement measures including a CBP prototype using artificial intelligence to flag high-risk shipments, an executive-order pathway to expand Customs authority, and the insertion of anti-transshipment clauses into new trade agreements with retroactive tariff claims of about one year.
- Independent analysts and the Global Trade Research Initiative say the public case relies on aggregate trade patterns without shipment- or firm-level proof and warn the report may blur lawful manufacturing that uses Chinese inputs with deliberate origin fraud.
- The report traces the problem to shifts after the 2018 Section 301 tariffs, and its release raises diplomatic and commercial stakes for U.S. talks with India and for upcoming U.S.–China engagements while legal, empirical, and bilateral clarifications remain pending.