Crafted In Time | Fine Pre-Owned Luxury Goods

Meta description: The 10% Section 122 surcharge on Swiss watches expired July 24, 2026 — and a new Section 301 duty took its place the same minute. Here's what changed and what didn't.

If you have been following watch pricing in the United States over the past year, you already know the story has had less to do with watchmaking than with customs law. Last week added another chapter, and it is worth understanding clearly — because a lot of the commentary around it is wrong in both directions.

What happened

The 10% global import surcharge imposed under Section 122 of the Trade Act of 1974 expired at 12:01 a.m. Eastern on July 24, 2026. That expiration was never in doubt. Section 122 permits a surcharge for a maximum of 150 days without an act of Congress, the clock started February 24, and no extension legislation ever moved. The President could not extend it unilaterally.

What surprised some people is what happened in the same minute. New Section 301 duties took effect at exactly 12:01 a.m. on July 24, arising from investigations USTR opened in March into whether sixty economies adequately enforce prohibitions on goods made with forced labor. These are not a continuation of Section 122. They are country-specific, they carry no statutory rate ceiling, and — this is the part that matters for planning — they have no expiration date. They remain in force until modified or terminated.

Where Switzerland landed

Switzerland received relatively favorable treatment. Along with Japan, South Korea, the European Union and Taiwan, Swiss goods fall under a combination rate rather than a flat add-on. For Switzerland, the ceiling is 12.5% all-in, meaning the most-favored-nation duty and the Section 301 duty together generally do not exceed that figure. Where the existing MFN rate already meets or exceeds the cap, no additional Section 301 duty applies at all. Most other investigated economies face a flat 12.5% stacked on top of whatever they were already paying.

For a rough sense of scale: a Swiss-assembled mechanical watch was previously carrying the 10% Section 122 surcharge on top of its base HTS duty, which varies by movement type and case material. Under the new structure, the combined figure caps out around 12.5%. That is a modest increase for most references, not a cliff — and a far cry from the 39% rate Swiss goods briefly faced in August 2025.

The past twelve months, compressed

It is worth laying the sequence out, because the whiplash explains a lot of current pricing behavior:

August 2025 — Swiss goods hit with a 39% tariff, among the steepest applied to any developed economy.
November 2025 — A negotiated framework cut the rate to 15%, alongside Swiss commitments to substantial U.S. investment.
February 20, 2026 — The Supreme Court struck down the IEEPA tariffs 6–3.
February 24, 2026 — The administration re-imposed a 10% surcharge under Section 122.
May 2026 — The Court of International Trade found the administration had exceeded its Section 122 authority, but relief applied only to the named plaintiffs; collection continued pending appeal.
July 24, 2026 — Section 122 lapses; Section 301 forced-labor duties begin.

Five different rates in under a year. That volatility is itself a cost, and Swiss trade officials have said as much — their negotiators have publicly emphasized that Swiss companies now care nearly as much about predictability as about the number itself.

What this changes for buyers — and what it doesn't

Here is the part most coverage gets wrong. Tariffs are charged when a watch crosses the border, not when it changes hands afterward.

That has three practical consequences.

First, current retail prices already have the tariff baked in. Rolex raised U.S. prices roughly 7% in January 2026 — gold models by around 9%, steel by about 5.6% — its third increase in a single year. Luxury brands very rarely walk prices back when an underlying cost eases. A modest change in duty rate does not produce a corresponding retail price cut, and nobody in the trade expects one.

Second, the change is small enough that inventory already in the country is unaffected either way. A watch sitting in a U.S. dealer's safe today was imported under whatever regime applied on its entry date. It is finished with import math permanently. Nothing that happened on July 24 touches it.

Third — and this is the structural point — the gap between authorized-dealer retail and domestic pre-owned pricing has been widened by a year of tariff-driven retail increases, and that gap is not closing. Every retail increase since August 2025 has effectively raised the ceiling that pre-owned prices sit beneath. When a reference's list price climbs 7% and the pre-owned market moves 1–2%, the value proposition of buying domestically-held stock improves without anyone having to discount anything.

The caveats worth keeping

A few things remain genuinely unsettled, and anyone telling you otherwise is overselling their read.

The Federal Circuit appeal over Section 122's legality is still running. If it follows the path the IEEPA litigation took, duties collected during that window could become refundable — which would be an importer story rather than a consumer one, but it would ripple.

USTR created no exclusion-request process for the new Section 301 action, and the actual duty owed on any given shipment turns on origin, classification, MFN rate, stacking rules and country-specific exclusions. The announced rate is not automatically the rate an importer pays. If you are importing rather than buying, talk to a customs broker rather than reading a headline.

And Section 232 actions are proceeding in parallel on other sectors. The tariff framework being rebuilt right now is layered by design, not a single clean successor measure.

The short version