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Scan for outdated or missing drivers - takes under a minuteDriver Scan →Repair Windows errors before they cause bigger problemsFix Now →On April 9, 2025, President Trump announced a 90-day suspension of most heightened country-specific reciprocal tariffs, effective April 10, and kept a 10% additional tariff in place for those countries. China was the exception. Its reciprocal rate was raised to 125% over the same period. Both parts of that announcement are now historical: the China rate was cut and then suspended later in 2025, and a February 2026 executive order directed the end of the reciprocal duties themselves.
What the April 9 announcement actually did
The announcement combined two different moves, and most confusion comes from treating them as one. The first was a pause. The second was an escalation aimed at China. Understanding the difference matters for reading any tariff figure from that period.
The pause for most countries
The April 2, 2025 executive order, Executive Order 14257, had already set an additional 10% ad valorem duty as a baseline on imports from trading partners. That baseline took effect on April 5. The order also scheduled higher, country-specific reciprocal rates for partners listed in its Annex I, with those higher rates beginning April 9.
On April 9, after the higher rates had started to apply, the President announced a 90-day pause on most of them. The Congressional Research Service dates the pause from April 10. During the pause, most countries returned to the 10% baseline. In his remarks, as quoted by the Associated Press on April 9, 2025, Trump said: “I have authorized a 90 day PAUSE, and a substantially lowered Reciprocal Tariff during this period, of 10%, also effective immediately.”
The China exception
China was excluded from the pause. Its China-specific reciprocal rate was raised to 125%, effective April 10, 2025. The Associated Press reported the same day that the S&P 500 rose 9.5% after the announcement. That is a reported market move on a single day, not an estimate of the policy’s economic effect, and the sources do not support a causal estimate of consumer-price or employment effects from this announcement.
Timeline: from the April 2025 order to October 2026
The table below lists the dates that matter for reading the 125% figure. Where a later action changed an earlier one, the table shows the later action rather than repeating the earlier rate as if it still applied.
| Date | Action | Effect on reciprocal tariffs |
|---|---|---|
| April 2, 2025 | Executive Order 14257 signed | Sets a 10% additional baseline and schedules country-specific rates for Annex I partners. |
| April 5, 2025 | 10% baseline takes effect | Applies to imports from trading partners, subject to the order’s exceptions. |
| April 9, 2025 | Higher country-specific rates take effect; 90-day pause announced | Most heightened rates are paused; China is excluded from the pause. |
| April 10, 2025 | Pause begins for most countries; China rate raised to 125% | Most countries remain at the 10% baseline; China’s reciprocal rate is 125%. |
| May 12, 2025 | Executive Order 14298 issued | Official order tied to the later U.S.-China reduction. |
| May 14, 2025 | Additional reciprocal rate on China reduced to 10% | Heightened China rate is reduced and suspended in favor of a 10% additional rate for an initial 90 days. |
| November 4, 2025 | Executive Order 14358 issued | Continues the suspension of heightened China rates through November 10, 2026. |
| February 20, 2026 | Executive Order 14389 signed | Directs agencies to end the specified IEEPA duties, including the reciprocal duties under Executive Order 14257 as amended, “as soon as practicable.” |
What the 125% figure does and does not mean
The 125% number was the heightened reciprocal rate in the announcement. It was not automatically the total duty on every Chinese-origin product. Several separate issues determine what a particular import actually pays.
- Exclusions from the reciprocal framework. The original order excluded listed categories, including certain national-security goods, and products covered by Section 232 duties such as steel, aluminum, and autos and parts. Its Annex II also listed items including copper, pharmaceuticals, semiconductors, lumber, certain critical minerals, and energy.
- Other tariff authorities. Section 232 and Section 301 duties operate under their own legal bases. They were not replaced by the reciprocal tariffs and were preserved by the February 2026 order.
- Product-level classification. The rate that applies depends on how a product is classified, not on the country label alone.
For a household reader, the practical point is that “125%” describes a policy setting from one period. It does not tell you what any single item cost to import.
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How the China rate changed after April 2025
The U.S. and China agreed to a reduction in May 2025. The additional reciprocal rate on China was reduced to 10% from May 14, and the heightened China rate was suspended for an initial 90 days. The suspension was later extended through November 10, 2026.
The February 20, 2026 order, Executive Order 14389, went further. It states that the additional ad valorem duties imposed under IEEPA through a list of executive orders, including Executive Order 14257 as amended, “shall no longer be in effect and, as soon as practicable, shall no longer be collected.” The order directs agencies to end collection but does not establish a precise customs implementation date. If you need the exact date a duty stopped being collected on a given entry, check the implementing guidance from U.S. Customs and Border Protection rather than relying on the order’s date.
Current status as of October 8, 2026
The 125% China rate is not the current rate. It was a rate in effect from April 10, 2025 until it was reduced and then suspended. The reciprocal duties themselves were directed to end under the February 2026 order. Duties under Section 232 and Section 301 were expressly preserved, so an import may still carry tariffs even though the reciprocal layer has been ended.
Independent reader supportYour contribution helps us test, update, and keep practical guides available for everyone.Reading the April 2025 announcement correctly
- “Paused for 90 days” applied to most heightened country-specific reciprocal rates, not to every tariff on every product.
- The 10% baseline stayed in place during the pause for most countries.
- China was excluded from the pause and moved in the opposite direction.
- The 90-day figure and the 125% figure are both historical. Neither describes the tariff regime in October 2026.
- The 75-country figure in some coverage is Trump’s stated number of countries that had reached out for trade talks, as reported by the Associated Press. It was not an independently verified count.
When comparing treatment across countries from this period, the useful questions are whether a country was excepted from the 90-day suspension, whether the 10% baseline or a higher country-specific rate applied, the effective date and entry conditions, and whether the product was excluded or covered by a separate authority. A simple “tariff or no tariff” framing hides most of the differences that affect cost.
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The official texts establish the rates, dates, exclusions, and the later orders described above. They do not establish how the April 2025 tariffs changed consumer prices, wages, or employment. Any article or budget assumption that attributes a specific price or job effect to this announcement is going beyond the evidence. The 9.5% market move is a single-day reaction reported at the time, not a measure of lasting economic impact.
The clearest sources for following this topic are the White House fact sheet on the April 2, 2025 reciprocal tariffs, the text of Executive Orders 14257, 14298, 14358, and 14389, and the Congressional Research Service’s timeline of presidential tariff actions. Those documents will show the current legal status of any specific duty more reliably than summaries, including this one.
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Written by The Finance Base editorial team.
Written by The Finance Base editorial team.
Written by The Finance Base editorial team.
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