The counter-tariff gap

Until 26 August 2026, chapter 3 - fish and seafood, all nine of its headings - was the single largest block on this list: 254 tariff items, every one at 25%, with no carve-outs and no split bands anywhere in it. That was 28% of the 893 items the list then held. The version the Department of Finance published on 26 August, still effective 8 September, does not contain chapter 3 at all. Not one of its 648 tariff items is a fish.

Nothing else of substance moved in the same republication. It removed those 254 items, added nine - wood charcoal, printed pictures, plaster board, glass packing containers and four lines of copper wire - and re-rated nothing. The page carries no changelog and no note that anything came off; it reads only List updated as of August 26, 2026. Dairy is now what is left of food on the list, and prepared fish - heading 16.04, where the canned tuna and the fish stick sit - was never on it.

Personal care was named as a targeted sector and reported that way widely. The list reaches almost none of it. Chapter 34, which contains soap in its entirety, is untouched. So are toothpaste and deodorant. What the list does take is cosmetics proper - item 3304.10.00, at the top band.

The cleanest illustration of the gap. Complete household dishwashers - item 8422.11 - are absent from the list. Dishwasher parts are on it at 25%, including the door assembly and the water containment chamber as named lines. A US-built replacement door gets more expensive; the machine it belongs to does not.

Furniture appears on the list prominently and at rates up to 50%. Mattresses, duvets, pillows and quilts sit in heading 9404 - a different heading, and one the list never reaches. Same store, same delivery truck, opposite answer.

A floor is one decision to a renovator and four different chapters to the list. Vinyl is not a flooring line at all - it is chapter 39, the plastics chapter, at subheading 3918.10, and both of its tariff items are 50%, the top band. Linoleum is heading 59.04 and is not on the list. Sheet vinyl and linoleum are sold off adjacent rolls, cut with the same knife, and a shopper cannot tell them apart by looking. Every other common floor is absent too: solid hardwood, engineered panels, laminate, ceramic and porcelain tile. Carpet runs the other way - chapter 57 was taken close to whole, mostly at 25%, with machine-tufted carpet of man-made fibres other than nylon at 50%. One caution, because the subfloor does not follow the finish floor: plywood is heading 44.12 and all thirteen of its items are 50%, as in the finding above. An untariffed hardwood floor can be nailed to a tariffed sheet of plywood.

Heading 39.24 - household articles of plastics - has two tariff items and both are at the top band. 3924.10.00 is food containers, cutting boards and picnic ware; 3924.90.00 is the "other" line that catches storage bins, totes, laundry baskets and buckets. What makes this one useful is that the substitute is a material rather than a brand: glassware, ceramic and porcelain tableware are not on the list, and neither is 39.26, the enormous residual heading for other articles of plastics. The general catch-all for plastic goods was left alone while the two specific household lines above it were taken at 50%. Bags are the same shape. Out of all of heading 39.23, exactly one tariff item was taken - 3923.21.90, sacks and bags of polyethylene, the garbage bag and the freezer bag - while plastic bottles and lids are absent. Steel cans and drums were taken whole at 50%; the aluminium can was not taken at all. That last pair is a business-to-business purchase, and what a surtax on an empty can does to the price of a full one is not something we can check - it is context, not a finding.

The distinguishing feature is a tuner. Reception apparatus - a television - sits at 8528.72 and is absent. A monitor without a tuner falls to 8528.59.90 and carries the top band. Two panels of the same size and the same panel supplier can differ by 50% on the strength of a component most buyers never use.

Plywood was taken comprehensively - all thirteen tariff items in heading 4412, at the top band, including laminated veneer lumber and blockboard. Oriented strand board is a different heading, 4410, and the list does not touch it. Nor does it touch fibreboard or MDF at 4411. For sheathing and subfloor these are direct substitutes sold in the same aisle.

A window's tariff treatment is decided by what its frame is made of, not by what it is. Steel and aluminium frames are at the top band. Wood and vinyl frames are absent from the list entirely. The glass inside all four is absent too - neither float glass nor safety glass appears anywhere on it.

Heading 83.01 - padlocks and locks of every kind, including the line whose own breakouts are dead bolt locks and locksets, plus keys sold separately - is absent in its entirety. Fasteners sit two chapters away in the iron and steel chapter, which was taken close to whole. Hinges, in chapter 83, are 25%. One assembly, three answers.

The hand-tool aisle was not surtaxed as an aisle. It was surtaxed one tariff item at a time, and the items taken do not add up to anything a shopper would recognise as a group. Heading 82.05, other hand tools, is where the 50% sits - and it sits on 8205.59, the residual "other" line, all three items of it. A residual line catches whatever the more specific subheadings above it did not, and the more specific subheadings are the ones with familiar names: hammers at 8205.20, screwdrivers at 8205.40, planes and chisels at 8205.30. None of them are on the list. The named tools are absent and the unnamed remainder is 50%. Vices and clamps, the rest of the same heading, are 25% - half the rate of the tool hanging next to them. Around that, whole headings were left alone, including 82.04, spanners, wrenches and sockets, which is the single most recognisable hand tool there is. The only 15% band anywhere on the list is also here, and it never reaches a consumer: dies and press tooling for a factory floor. Drill bits, in the same heading, are absent.

Two more cases where a category people assume is covered is not, and its close neighbour is. Bicycles and bicycle parts do not appear. Neither does heading 9503 - the toy heading, covering ride-on toys, dolls and puzzles. Video game consoles, one heading over at 9504.50.00, are at the top band.