The arithmetic of American trade policy has quietly recalibrated. The United States effective tariff rate has fallen from 9.4 to 7.4 percent, as Fitch Ratings confirms the expiration of a temporary global surcharge and its replacement by a more targeted Section 301 framework rooted in forced-labor investigations. The shift rewards importers who source from Vietnam, Taiwan, Mexico, and India while deepening the burden on China and Brazil — and it reveals, perhaps most tellingly, that supply chains do not wait for policy to settle before they begin to move.