A 50% duty hits a list of Canadian goods August 19 — alcohol, and also wooden kitchenware, paperboard, and hockey sticks. In Checks you write one plain-English rule and it flags every exposed shipment before it clears. If the rule changes, gets paused, or gets pulled, you edit one sentence. Not a report. Not a ticket.
No HTS lookups. No formulas. No IT project. Just tell it what to watch for.
Start with a spreadsheet and an email. Live in minutes, not a quarter.
You know the pattern by now. A tariff lands. You scramble a report or open an IT ticket to catch the exposed shipments. Then it gets challenged, amended, paused, or replaced, and you do the whole thing again. And again.
The exhausting part was never reading the rule. It was rebuilding your systems every single time the rule moved.
That is the part Checks fixes. The rule is a sentence you type. When it changes, you change the sentence. The safety net updates in seconds, not in a sprint.
The situation, this time
On July 20, the White House signed three separate Section 338 proclamations in one day — one for alcoholic beverages, one for dairy, and one scoped as "motor vehicles." Each carries its own 50% duty and its own Annex of covered HTS codes. The third one is misleadingly named: its Annex reaches far beyond automobiles into honey, cut flowers, plastics, textiles, electronics, furniture, and fine art. This page walks through the alcoholic beverages proclamation in detail below, then shows the same rule pattern applied to the other two.
Start with the alcoholic beverages proclamation. Everyone read the headline: beer, wine, and spirits. HTS chapters 2203 through 2208. But the same list keeps going past the bar — densified wood and wooden tableware, marquetry and furniture, bamboo skewers, several grades of kraft paper and paperboard, basketwork, and ice- and field-hockey equipment. It takes effect August 19, 2026.
| Category | HTS codes |
|---|---|
| Alcohol | 2203–2208 |
| Wood & wooden tableware | 3301, 4413, 4419, 4420, 4421 |
| Basketwork | 4602 |
| Paper & paperboard | 4804, 4806, 4810, 4811 |
| Sporting goods (hockey) | 9506 |
A forwarder scanning a file for "wine" and "spirits" ships the maple cutting boards straight through. And between today and August 19, any of it could shift. That is two problems at once: finding what the rule touches, and keeping up when it moves.
Both are data problems. Both are what Checks does.
You do not need to memorize the Annex. You describe the exposure in plain English — and the same pattern carries across all three proclamations.
Alcoholic beverages proclamation
"Flag any Canada-origin shipment where the HTS code starts with 2203–2208 (alcohol), 3301, 4413, 4419, 4420, 4421 (wood), 4602 (basketwork), 4804, 4806, 4810, 4811 (paper), or 9506 (sporting goods), arriving on or after August 19, 2026. If there's no code, match the product description instead."
Dairy proclamation
"Flag any Canada-origin shipment where the HTS code starts with 0402 or 0404 (milk, cream, and whey), 3501, 3502, or 3504 (casein and milk-protein derivatives), 1702 or 1703 (dairy-adjacent sugars, syrups, and molasses), 1901.20.35 (butterfat bakers' mixes), 2202.91 (nonalcoholic beer), 1210.20 or 1301.90.91 (hops and lactose), 0506.90 (bones and horn-cores), or 3301.24 (peppermint essential oils), arriving on or after August 19, 2026. If there's no code, match the product description instead."
"Motor vehicles" proclamation
This is the odd one. Its Annex is scoped as motor vehicles, but the actual HTS list runs to roughly 165 different four-digit chapters — almost none of them cars. This is exactly the kind of list a human filter misses and a plain-English rule catches:
"Flag any Canada-origin shipment where the HTS code starts with any of the following chapters, arriving on or after August 19, 2026. If there's no code, match the product description instead:"
0409, 0505, 0506, 0507, 0510, 0511, 0601, 0602, 0603, 0604, 1209, 1210, 1211, 1212, 1301, 1302, 1401, 1404, 1901, 2208, 2501, 2523, 2905, 2940, 3208, 3214, 3215, 3301, 3302, 3303, 3304, 3305, 3406, 3502, 3503, 3504, 3505, 3811, 3823, 3824, 3907, 3918, 3919, 3920, 3921, 3923, 3924, 3926, 4016, 4101, 4103, 4201, 4202, 4203, 4205, 4301, 4303, 4401, 4402, 4407, 4408, 4409, 4410, 4411, 4412, 4414, 4418, 4420, 4421, 4702, 4802, 4803, 4810, 4811, 4813, 4814, 4817, 4818, 4819, 4820, 4821, 4823, 4908, 4911, 5002, 5003, 5101, 5103, 5201, 5202, 5407, 5511, 5512, 5603, 5607, 5703, 5806, 5903, 5907, 5911, 6006, 6104, 6109, 6110, 6116, 6201, 6202, 6203, 6204, 6210, 6211, 6303, 6305, 6306, 6307, 6403, 6505, 6506, 6704, 6809, 6810, 7010, 7013, 7102, 7106, 7113, 7117, 7118, 7203, 7801, 8113, 8201, 8202, 8203, 8204, 8205, 8206, 8209, 8212, 8301, 8303, 8306, 8410, 8414, 8418, 8419, 8421, 8422, 8424, 8426, 8433, 8438, 8440, 8442, 8443, 8479, 8508, 8517, 8521, 8523, 8525, 8526, 8528, 8529, 8534, 8537, 8543, 8544, 8711, 8905, 8906, 8907, 9031, 9401, 9403, 9405, 9503, 9504, 9505, 9506, 9507, 9701, 9702, 9703, 9704, 9705, 9706
Yes, that list includes honey, cut flowers, plastics packaging, textiles, consumer electronics, furniture, and antique sculpture. We didn't trim it down — that's what the government published under this proclamation's Annex I.
Checks reads your shipment data, maps your columns, and surfaces the shipments that match. You review those. Everything else stays out of your way.
If the effective date moves, you change the date. If a category gets carved out, you strike it from the sentence. If the whole thing gets paused, you switch the rule off. Each of those is a ten-second edit, not a change request.
This is the one that matters right now. A custom report or a spreadsheet macro is a build. When the tariff shifts, someone has to rebuild it. A Check is a sentence, so a change is an edit. You keep pace with the news instead of chasing it.
A manual filter finds what you thought to search for. Checks flags the whole exposed set, including the wood and paper lines nobody remembers are on the list.
Your origin field might say "CA," "Canada," or "CAN." Your product column might be a description, not a code. Checks interprets what your columns mean instead of forcing an exact match.
Upload tomorrow's file and you see the shipments that newly qualify, not all 500 rows again.
Checks does not replace your customs broker. It backs them up. Your broker classifies the goods, calculates the duty, and files the entry. Checks is the extra set of eyes that catches the exposed shipment before it gets that far, so nothing slips through while everyone is busy. It does not calculate landed cost, classify HTS codes, or file entries. It flags what needs a look and hands it to the people who make the call.
Upload a sample file, write the rule, and watch the exposed shipments surface.
We built this from the primary documents, not the news coverage. Read them for yourself:
All three Section 338 proclamations were signed July 20, 2026, and each 50% duty takes effect for goods entered on or after 12:01 a.m. ET, August 19, 2026 — for alcoholic beverages, dairy, and the much broader list of goods scoped as "motor vehicles."
Checks is a safety net that flags shipments for human review. It is not legal or customs advice. For classification and entry decisions, work with your customs broker.
Try Checks with your own spreadsheet. AI finds the issues—you decide what matters.