President Donald Trump signed a proclamation on Friday, October 23, 2026, that rewrites the list of Canadian goods facing an additional 50% duty under Section 338 of the Tariff Act of 1930. Some wood, paper and machinery products come off the list; engineered wood flooring, fiberboard, carpets, valves and paints go on. The changes take effect October 30, 2026.
What comes off, and what goes on
According to the forest-industry outlet Lesprom, the products dropped from the list include thin hardwood plywood of 6 mm or less with birch, walnut or other hardwood face plies; plastic-coated bleached paperboard; corrugated cartons and boxes; paper sacks and bags; molded pulp articles; plastic packaging; refrigeration and packaging machinery; and produce-sorting machines.
Added in their place: thin MDF of 5 mm or less and hardboard, wood moldings and continuously shaped coniferous wood, multilayer engineered wood flooring with a face ply up to 6 mm, wooden packing boxes, bamboo joinery, wooden skewers and ice-cream sticks, unbleached kraft paper, coated printing paper, composite paperboard, large paper sacks, self-adhesive paper and labels, vinyl flooring, carpets, valves and paints.
Softwood lumber stays outside this particular list, because it is already covered by tariffs imposed under Section 232 of the Trade Expansion Act of 1962.
The trade at stake
In the categories it touches, the swap is slightly larger on the way in than on the way out. The United States imported $119.4 million of the newly exempted thin hardwood plywood from Canada in 2025, Lesprom reported, against $227.5 million of the newly covered wood products — mostly flooring, MDF, hardboard, boxes and moldings.
The overall scope barely moves. A Wall Street Journal estimate cited by Lesprom puts the Canadian goods still facing the 50% duty at roughly $20 billion, about 5% of Canada's exports to the United States. That is the figure worth watching: the announcement reads as relief for some importers, but the total exposure is close to where it was.
The White House's reasoning
The administration's fact sheet frames the move as a response to Ottawa. It says Canada walked away from a near-final trade agreement and imposed retaliatory tariffs on about $20 billion of American exports, and that Section 338 lets the president amend an earlier proclamation when the public interest requires it. The stated purpose is to offset the burden Canadian measures place on U.S. commerce and to protect American farmers, manufacturers and workers.
Two details matter for importers. The duties apply whether or not a good qualifies for duty-free treatment under the USMCA, the North American trade agreement, and they stack on top of Section 232 tariffs rather than replacing them.
The same fact sheet lists investment figures the White House credits to its trade policy, among them more than $6 billion from General Motors in U.S. manufacturing — $4 billion of it at the Orion Assembly plant in Michigan — a $2 billion UCB facility in Georgia, and $21 billion from Japan for two chip factories in New York to be operated by GlobalFoundries. It also says U.S. manufacturing activity expanded for a ninth consecutive month in September 2026.
Reporting from the White House and Lesprom.
