A Table Is a Table: The New U.S. Tariffs and the Line Between Art and Object
Two crates come off the same flight from Milan. One holds a painting. The other holds a low bronze-and-glass table, unique, by a designer whose work hangs in three museums. Same consignor, same insured value, same broker, same afternoon at JFK.
The painting clears free. The table owes 12.5 percent.
Nothing about the objects explains this. The difference is a single word in a tariff provision, and whether U.S. Customs thinks your object answers to it.
What changed on July 24
On July 23, the U.S. Trade Representative issued an action under Section 301, citing the failure of sixty economies to enforce prohibitions on goods made with forced labor. Duties attached at 12:01 the following morning, the same day a temporary measure expired. The legal theory is forced labor. The practical effect is a surcharge on nearly everything imported into the United States.
Ten percent applies to seventeen economies, among them Canada, Mexico, the United Kingdom, India and Indonesia. Twelve and a half applies to the rest, including China, Brazil, Japan and Vietnam. The European Union is treated as one bloc, so a consignment from Milan, one from Paris and one from Berlin all fall under the same provision.
For the art trade the announcement was read as good news, and broadly it was. But the good news is narrower than the headlines suggested, and the place where it runs out is exactly where the money is.
The exemption is one word, and there is no list
There is no art and antiques carve-out in the regulation. What exists is a single tariff line, 9903.05.92, described in the Harmonized Tariff Schedule as covering “informational materials, including but not limited to publications, films, posters, phonograph records, photographs, microfilms, microfiche, tapes, compact disks, CD ROMs, artworks and news wire feeds.”
Every country’s tariff line opens with an exception for it. China’s reads: “Except for products described in headings 9903.05.85–9903.05.92, articles the product of China, as provided for in U.S. note 52 to this subchapter.”
Read that list again and notice what is doing the work. Not Chapter 97. Not heading 9701. One word — artworks — inside a formula written decades ago for books and newsreels, now load-bearing for a market that moves billions of dollars a year through American ports.
There is no schedule of exempt tariff codes anywhere in the regulation. The exemption is a description, and descriptions are argued rather than looked up.
What art actually owes at the border
Here is the part that surprises people who have spent years assuming tariffs are the problem. Every rate below was read from the U.S. Harmonized Tariff Schedule on September 1, 2026.
| Shipment | Code | Base duty | New surcharge |
|---|---|---|---|
| Paintings, drawings, pastels | 9701 | Free | Exempt |
| Original prints and lithographs | 9702 | Free | Exempt |
| Original sculpture | 9703 | Free | Exempt |
| Stamps and collections | 9704, 9705 | Free | Exempt |
| Antiques over 100 years, non-art | 9706 | Free | Unconfirmed |
| Photographs and art prints | 4911.91 | Free | Exempt |
| Furniture, including design pieces | 9403 | Free | 10 to 12.5% |
| Lighting and fixtures | 9405 | 3.9 to 7.6% | 10 to 12.5% |
| Statuettes in base metal | 8306 | Free | 10 to 12.5% |
The base-duty column is almost entirely zero. Lighting is the only category in this market that carries a real tariff-schedule duty, and it is small.
So the question was never what rate applies to art. The tariff schedule has been letting art in free for a very long time. The question is whether the surcharge attaches, and that is decided by classification — which is decided, in turn, by what an object does.
There is no American VAT
European consignors ask about this on nearly every shipment, and the answer is worth stating flatly: the United States does not levy value-added tax on imports. There is no equivalent of the twenty percent charged in Britain or France. There never has been.
Two fees apply instead. The Merchandise Processing Fee runs 0.3464 percent of declared value, a rate set by 19 CFR 24.23, with a floor of $33.58 and a ceiling of $651.50 per entry through September 30, 2026. Those limits come from CBP’s annual inflation adjustment, published as CBP Dec. 25-10. The Harbor Maintenance Fee adds 0.125 percent, ocean freight only; air, truck and rail are exempt.
The ceiling is the number that calms a nervous collector. A three-million-dollar painting flown into New York owes $651.50 in total federal charges. Not a percentage of anything. A flat cap, and a modest one.
Twelve castings, and the other numbers that decide
Customs classifies by function. Not by who made an object, how few exist, or what it sold for.
A unique piece by a celebrated designer, produced in an edition of five, bought for a collector’s living room, will be classified as a table if it can be used as one. It leaves Chapter 97, lands in Chapter 94, and takes the surcharge. Intent is not a category. Display is not a category. Use is.
Underneath that principle sit four rules that are more specific than most dealers realize, and each one has cost somebody money.
Sculpture stops at twelve
Heading 9703 covers the artist’s original, plus the first twelve castings. The thirteenth is classified by material. This is written into 19 CFR 10.48, a fixed number rather than a judgment, and it means the edition number is not a nicety on the invoice. It is the classification.
Prints have no edition limit at all
An edition of one hundred qualifies. So does five hundred. What disqualifies a print is process, not quantity. Chapter 97 Note 2 defines an original print as an impression from plates “wholly executed by hand by the artist,” and excludes “any mechanical or photomechanical process.”
Hand-pulled etchings, lithographs and woodcuts qualify. Giclées and digital pigment prints do not. Neither, and this catches people, do photogravures and collotypes, which look like traditional printmaking and are photomechanical by definition.
Photographs are not art, and it does not matter
Photography is photomechanical, so the same note excludes it regardless of the photographer’s standing. Customs has applied this directly: in ruling NY 879029, artistic photographs from France, of the kind exhibited in galleries and museums, were classified in Chapter 49 rather than as works of art.
This costs nothing. Heading 4911.91 is duty-free, and the exemption names photographs outright. A Gursky is simply not art as the tariff schedule uses the word, and the tariff schedule does not care what anyone thinks about that.
Age never moves a painting
A chapter note provides that heading 9706 does not apply to articles of the preceding headings. A two-hundred-year-old canvas is 9701, not 9706. Filing an antique declaration on an old master accomplishes nothing except moving the piece into the one category where the exemption is unconfirmed.
Frames run the other way, in your favor. Under Chapter 97 Note 5, a frame “of a kind and of a value normal to” the work it holds is classified with that work. A frame that is not of normal kind or value is classified separately, on its own merits — worth knowing before an important period frame crosses on the same invoice as the canvas.
The invoice is the classification
No crate is examined by an art historian. It is cleared from a document, by someone reading a line of text.
Every shipment should carry the artist or maker, title, medium and year, dimensions and materials, country of origin, value, and the edition number together with the edition size. That last field is the one most often left blank, and it is the one that decides sculpture and prints.
Sculpture and original prints need more than a good invoice. Under 19 CFR 10.48, free entry depends on a declaration by the artist, seller, shipper or importer stating that the piece is the original or one of the first twelve castings. For prints, the declaration must confirm they were printed by hand from hand-etched, hand-drawn or hand-engraved plates, stones or blocks. Artist’s proofs should carry the artist’s signature or mark. This is a named regulatory document, and it is the one most often missing when a shipment sits.
Then describe the object by what it is. “Bronze sculptural form, edition 3 of 8” survives scrutiny. “Bronze coffee table” does not, and no supporting file rescues an invoice that has already told Customs the piece is furniture.
For work that genuinely sits between art and object, an artist statement, a certificate with edition detail, exhibition history and published references all help. Where the value justifies the wait, Customs will issue a binding classification ruling in advance through its eRulings portal. One condition is firm: it cannot be requested for goods already sitting in an entry. File before the shipment moves, not after it is held.
Temporary entry, and why it rarely helps
Three routes let goods in without duty on the promise they leave again: Temporary Importation under Bond, exhibition entry for institutions, and the ATA Carnet. All three prohibit sale, and the prohibition is explicit — the entry carries a declaration that the articles are not imported for sale or sale on approval.
That condition rules the route out for most commercial shipping. A gallery bringing work to a fair, sending a piece on approval, or placing it on consignment cannot use it, because the entire point is that the work might sell. Bonds run at 110 percent of estimated duties for samples and professional equipment, double for other categories, with two one-year extensions available if applied for before expiry.
What happens when a piece sells anyway is more nuanced than the flat prohibition suggests, and it is worth understanding before anyone panics. The claim for failure to export is double the duties plus the processing fee. But CBP’s own mitigation guidelines distinguish sharply by what happened next. Sold and then exported inside the bond period, relief is one times the duty. Sold and exported late, one and a half. Sold and never exported, no relief at all — and the guidelines specifically deny relief where an entry is amended to consumption status after release. Paying the duty is not an alternative to shipping the work back out.
The quiet implication for this market is that duty is often zero. Where merchandise would have entered free anyway, the guidelines mitigate to the processing fee alone. A breach on a duty-free artwork is therefore a paperwork problem rather than a financial one. None of which makes temporary entry a sales channel — the declaration you signed says the work is not imported for sale, and signing it falsely is its own issue. It means the failure mode is survivable if the work still leaves on time.
What changed this year is worth noting for museums and foundations. Temporary entry used to be beside the point for artwork, which already entered free — there was nothing to defer. But temporary entries sit outside the new surcharge, which makes them genuinely valuable for objects that are not art: a design piece, a lighting work, a furniture-form sculpture travelling to an exhibition rather than a sales floor.
What no one can tell you yet
Whether antique furniture, silver, clocks and rugs ride under the artwork exemption is not confirmed in writing anywhere. Trade associations argued for it during the consultation and the outcome suggests they were heard, but a suggestion is not a classification. Budget as though the surcharge applies until a ruling settles it.
Separate metal and wood tariffs sit alongside the new duty, and the codes they cover expand three times a year. A piece that falls out of Chapter 97 needs its classification checked against the current list rather than last quarter’s. A further 50 percent measure on a defined list of Canadian products took effect on August 19; whether a given piece is on that list is a question to settle before booking.
Anyone who tells you all of this is settled has not read the notice.
How we handle it
We classify before the crate moves. That means asking the questions that decide an entry while the work is still with the consignor: what the printing process was, which number in the edition, whether the object has a use. It means writing invoices that describe form and authorship rather than function. And when a piece genuinely sits between categories, it means saying so early and seeking a ruling, rather than hoping an officer sees it the way we do.
The July announcement did not change what we ship. It changed what a badly written invoice costs.
If you are moving art, design or antiques into the United States and want the landed cost before you commit, talk to us before you book.
Sources
Every rate and provision here was read from the primary source on September 1, 2026. Quoted regulatory language is reproduced from U.S. government publications, which carry no copyright.
- Tariff rates and Chapter 99 provisions: U.S. Harmonized Tariff Schedule, USITC
- The tariff action: Federal Register notice 2026-15181
- USTR announcement: Section 301 forced labor fact sheet
- Implementation and exemption subheadings: CBP guidance CSMS #69326983
- Declarations for sculpture and prints: 19 CFR 10.48
- Temporary importation: 19 CFR 10.31, 10.37, 10.39
- Ruling requests: 19 CFR 177.2
- Fees: 19 CFR 24.23 and CBP Dec. 25-10
- Photograph classification: CBP ruling NY 879029
General information, not customs advice. Confirm classification with a licensed customs broker before entry.