Welcome to this week’s Sourcing Spotlight.
In this week’s edition, we will be looking at the latest announcements on IEEPA tariff refunds after a 15 December 2025 US Court of International Trade update, India’s November export rebound and what it changes in US tariff negotiations, and China’s Hainan free trade port upgrade including expanded zero tariff coverage and the 30 percent value added route for duty free entry into mainland China, creating new options for SME sourcing and market entry.
Feature Story
IEEPA Tariff Refunds Update
The US Court of International Trade issued a useful update on 15 December 2025 for anyone paying IEEPA tariffs and waiting on the Supreme Court. In plain terms, the court signalled that importers may not need to panic file protests or lawsuits just to preserve refund rights, because if the tariffs are later ruled unlawful the court can still order reliquidation and refunds. For small businesses, the action is simple: keep a clean tracker of which entries were hit with IEEPA duties, save your broker paperwork and proof of payment, and watch the conservative two year timing from tariff publication dates (7 Feb 2025 and 7 Apr 2025).
India’s November export rebound boosts leverage in US tariff talks
India’s November export rebound is doing two jobs at once. It is a solid economic signal, and it is a negotiating tool. Despite US tariffs that can reach around 50 percent on many Indian goods, exports rose strongly in November, suggesting exporters have adapted through pricing, product mix, and focusing on segments where US buyers have fewer alternatives. That resilience matters because tariff relief is now tied to Russia energy diplomacy, with Washington linking any rollback to India trimming Russian crude imports. For sourcing teams, the key point is optionality. If tariffs ease towards 25 percent, India becomes far more workable again for engineering goods, electronics assembly, pharma and select manufactured inputs. If not, the cost pressure stays, but November shows trade flows may remain stickier than the headlines imply.
China’s 113 billion dollar free trade port experiment
China is upgrading Hainan into an island wide free trade port with far broader zero tariff coverage and simpler entry for overseas goods. The big catch is that Hainan is walled off from mainland China in customs terms, so shipments into the mainland are treated as imports unless firms do real processing on the island. The headline incentive is the 30 percent value added rule: import inputs duty free into Hainan, add enough local value in an encouraged industry, then enter the mainland with import duty exempt. Net net, this is built more to pull global inputs into China via Hainan than to supercharge China’s exports, but it gives SMEs a new staging ground to test the China market, refine compliance, and build a light assembly or finishing model with clearer duty logic.
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That’s it for this weeks Sourcing Spotlight.
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Until next time,
Quiet sourcing. Loud impact.
