The S122 Annex II carries over the consolidated IEEPA exclusion list with minimal changes: 11 drone codes were added, 19 semiconductor codes were reclassified from the aircraft list to the general list, and 16 printed-matter codes were removed. The commercial reality of what enters the United States exempt from the surcharge did not change.
Johannes Fritz
23 Feb 2026
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The product exemptions underpinning President Trump's new Section 122 surcharge are nearly identical to those under the IEEPA regime it replaces. The S122 Annex II carries over the consolidated IEEPA exclusion list with minimal changes: 11 drone codes were added, 19 semiconductor codes were reclassified from the aircraft list to the general list, and 16 printed-matter codes were removed. The commercial reality of what enters the United States exempt from the surcharge did not change.
The S122 proclamation defines the surcharge and its exemptions through eleven HTS entries in Annex I (9903.03.01 through 9903.03.11). The first establishes the 15 per cent surcharge itself. The remaining ten carve out exceptions:
Each channel has an IEEPA precedent. The S232, USMCA, donation, and informational materials channels carried over without substantive change. The rest of this piece focuses on the Annex II product list and on CAFTA-DR textiles, where the detail is code-enumerated and the comparison can be made precisely.
The IEEPA reciprocal tariffs, established by Executive Order 14257 on 2 April 2025, excluded products listed in Annex II from the surcharge. That annex was amended five times over the following ten months. By 19 February 2026, the day before the Supreme Court ruling, it contained 1,692 codes with scope markers distinguishing general exemptions from those limited to civil aircraft use.
Section 122 preserves this structure. The proclamation of 20 February 2026 defines exemptions through a single Annex II of 1,655 entries. Each entry includes a “Scope Limitations” column: 1,098 entries carry no limitation and are exempt from the surcharge, 546 are marked “Aircraft” and exempt only when entered as civil aircraft parts and components, and 11 are marked “Ex” and limited by product description. The proclamation raised the surcharge to 15 per cent on 22 February.
The general section of Annex II contains 1,098 codes with no scope limitation. Under IEEPA, the equivalent section contained 1,084 codes. The net increase of 14 reflects two offsetting changes.
All 57 IEEPA semiconductor codes moved into the general section. Under IEEPA, a Presidential Memorandum in April 2025 specified them separately. Under S122, they appear in the main product list without special designation. Of the 57, 41 were new to the general section, and 16 already appeared there. This accounts for the 41 added codes.
Sixteen codes were removed, all printed matter from HS chapters 48 and 49: exercise books, newspapers, children’s colouring books, music scores, and maps. These products remain covered by the informational materials exemption (HTS entry 9903.03.11), which replaced IEEPA’s enumerated statutory list with a descriptive provision for printed matter, films, recordings, and artworks.
Under IEEPA, 554 product codes were exempt when entered as civil aircraft parts and components. Under S122, the aircraft-scoped section contains 546 entries. Two offsetting changes account for the difference.
Nineteen codes moved from the aircraft-scoped section to the general section, where they are now exempt regardless of end use. However, 18 of the 19 were already on the IEEPA semiconductor list and therefore already exempt without aircraft-use restrictions. These are IT products: computers, smartphones, network equipment, storage devices, and monitors. Together they accounted for $192 billion in 2024 US imports. Only one code (titanium waste and scrap) was genuinely aircraft-only. The reclassification is an administrative simplification, not a new commercial exemption.
Eleven codes were added to the aircraft-scoped section, all from HS heading 8806: unmanned aircraft. One covers passenger-carrying drones. The remaining ten cover non-passenger drones, split by flight mode (remote-controlled only versus autonomous) and by maximum take-off weight, from under 250 grams to over 150 kilograms. These codes did not exist under IEEPA and are the only genuinely new product exemptions in the Section 122 regime.
The CAFTA-DR textile provision (HTS entry 9903.03.09) covers 1,610 apparel product codes when imported from six member states: Costa Rica, the Dominican Republic, El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, and Nicaragua. This formalises the preferences as a consolidated, code-enumerated provision. Under IEEPA, preferences for individual CAFTA members existed in the deals with El Salvador and Guatemala but lacked codification. The 1,610 codes exempt from S122 derive from the WTO Agreement on Textiles and Clothing Annex, mapped from HS-92 nomenclature to current HTS-8 codes via UN concordance tables.
USMCA preferences for Canada and Mexico remain unchanged. Products already subject to Section 232 tariffs (steel and aluminium, copper, lumber, and automobiles) remain excluded from the surcharge. As under IEEPA, the Section 232 exemption only applies partially for derivatives of the material investigations (aluminium, steel, copper, lumber). A provision for religious and tropical items covers 11 entries. A donation exemption covers articles for disaster relief.
