US President Donald Trump’s fresh imposition of 10% import duties has thrown India off its track toward a tariff exemption for diamonds and appears to have stripped Belgium of its 0% rate.
The White House introduced the global levy last Friday, replacing the previous tariff regime after the US Supreme Court struck it down.
However, industry leaders say the exceptions that were in place under the old system do not appear to have automatically continued to the new one.
For India, that means it’s unclear whether the country is still on course for 0% duties on diamond imports into the US, a benefit it had achieved as part the US-India trade deal earlier this month. This exemption is based on diamonds being on Annex III, a list of products for which the US is willing to lift tariffs because the goods in question are not sufficiently produced in America.
The Supreme Court, by six against three, ruled against the tariffs on February 20, arguing that the International Emergency Economic Powers Act (IEEPA) did not give Trump the power to impose his policy of reciprocal tariffs.
The same day, he issued an executive order under Section 122 of the 1974 Trade Act removing the levies and another one declaring a “temporary import surcharge” of 10% on almost all imports, valid for up to 150 days. The few exceptions to this include “natural resources and fertilizers that cannot be grown, mined, or otherwise produced in the US, or grown, mined, or otherwise produced in sufficient quantities to meet domestic demand.”
Whether diamonds fall into this category is undetermined, even though they were included in Annex III of the old regime, according to Sara Yood, CEO and general counsel of the Jewelers Vigilance Committee (JVC), which guides the industry on legal matters.
“There is still limited clarity regarding the final tariff treatment for natural diamonds and certain other product categories,” India’s Gem & Jewellery Export Promotion Council (GJEPC) said in a statement to Rapaport News on Wednesday. “The council continues to maintain that natural diamonds should attract 0% duty, considering their status as a raw material” not produced in the US.
The new tariffs went into effect on Tuesday. As a result, US duties on polished diamonds, colored gemstones and semiprecious stones, well as for lab-grown diamonds and synthetic stones, have now dropped to 10% from the previous rate of 25%, according to an opinion the GJEPC distributed to members. For jewelry, the rate is 15.5% to 16%, because of an additional “most-favored nation” rate of 5% to 5.5% that existed even before Trump introduced his reciprocal tariffs in April 2025, according to the GJEPC.
“While public statements have indicated that the surcharge may be increased to 15%, no formal proclamation or Federal Register notification implementing 15% has been issued,” the document continued, referring to Trump’s reference to such a rate in a Truth Social post.
Details about potential refunds remain unclear, the council said.
Some Indian diamond suppliers tried to capitalize on the Supreme Court decision by shipping goods to the US from Sunday, said Sabyasachi Ray, executive director of the GJEPC. They expected that tariffs would become 0% immediately, but US Customs and Border Protection (CBP) ended up collecting the higher tariffs under the IEEPA through to February 24, according to a note from the enforcement agency on Sunday. This meant companies trying to target an anticipated tariff-free window actually missed out, Ray noted.
The executive order had called for the old tariffs to cease being collecting “as soon as practicable,” but not necessarily immediately.
Meanwhile, tariffs on goods made in the EU are also 10% in the new wave, despite the bloc having reached a trade deal with the US last year that included exemptions for certain products, including diamonds.
“As a sector federation, we…continue to hope that the existing trade deal will be respected unchanged — after all, a trade agreement is a trade agreement,” the Antwerp World Diamond Centre (AWDC) said in a statement Wednesday. “We have confidence in the ongoing negotiations between Europe and the US and trust that this economic logic will continue to prevail today. At the same time, based on the information currently available to us — information that is particularly unclear and contradictory — we note that diamonds once again appear to be subject to a 10% import tariff.”
The basic reason for exempting natural diamonds — that the US doesn’t mine or process them — remains valid, the statement added. “Import tariffs on diamonds therefore do not protect any American industry, but instead directly impact the American consumer,” the group pointed out.
One possible advantage of the new policy in Washington, DC, is the consistency across the globe. “Any differential tariff structure that places competing centers… at a lower or zero duty could impact India’s competitiveness in the diamond supply chain,” said the GJEPC.
Image: An Indian flag covered by tape featuring US flags. (Shutterstock)
