Olive oil exporters selling into the United States have spent 2026 navigating a moving target on tariffs, and the picture is still unsettled.
How we got here
Tariffs on olive oil imports (HTS code 1509.10) rose sharply in 2025, at one point reaching 20% versus a pre-2025 baseline of 5%, with a differentiated structure that reportedly applied around 20% to EU producers, roughly 10% to many non-EU competitors, and as high as 28% to Tunisia at points during the year. Those measures were then challenged in court — the US Supreme Court ruled against the legality of the Trump administration’s tariff approach, prompting cautious optimism among Spanish exporters in particular. In their place, the administration introduced a 10% global tariff under Section 122 of the Trade Act of 1974, a mechanism with a legal cap that put it on track to expire around July 24, 2026.
What’s still unclear
What replaces the Section 122 tariff after its expiry — a new rate, a return to pre-2025 levels, or another legal challenge — was not yet settled as of this writing. For exporters, that uncertainty is itself a cost: pricing and contracts into the US market are harder to plan around a tariff regime that has changed direction multiple times in a single year.
FAQ
Does this affect Tunisian olive oil specifically? Yes — Tunisia was reportedly assigned a higher differentiated rate than the EU-wide figure at points in 2026, making US-bound pricing especially sensitive to how the situation resolves.
Should buyers expect price changes because of tariffs? Tariffs are typically absorbed somewhere in the supply chain — by the exporter, importer, or end buyer — so they can affect landed cost even when the producer price hasn’t moved.
Source: TariffTax, Euro Weekly News