Under the first sale rule, the dutiable value of a qualifying transaction may be based on the purchase price between the middleman/vor and the manufacturer rather than the price paid by the importer to the middleman/vor, resulting in a lower duty bill. First sale has long been useful to industries subject to high U.S. tariffs, such as apparel and footwear, which use it to save millions of dollars in import duties each year. However, its utilization has increased dramatically over the past few years as companies seek to lessen the impact of the Section 301 tariffs on imports from China; Section 201 and 232 tariffs on steel, aluminum, and other products; and tariffs on European Union goods imposed in a long-running World Trade Organization dispute on aircraft subsidies. Additional tariffs also remain a possibility on imports from EU countries (due to their proposed digital services taxes) and automobiles and auto parts from many countries (following a Section 232 national security investigation).
