Aircraft Section 232 ends without tariffs; Proclamation 11040 orders negotiation track

On 9 July 2026 President Trump signed Proclamation 11040, “Adjusting Imports of Commercial Aircraft, Jet Engines, and Aircraft and Engine Parts Into the United States,” published in the Federal Register on 15 July at 91 FR 43507 — a Section 232 action that imposes no tariffs.¹ The proclamation acts on the Commerce Department’s national- security investigation of commercial-aircraft and jet-engine imports — initiated 1 May 2025 under § 232 of the Trade Expansion Act of 1962, 19 U.S.C. § 1862, with the Secretary’s report transmitted to the President “within the past 90 days” per the proclamation’s recital — by directing the Secretary of Commerce and the United States Trade Representative to “jointly pursue or continue pursuing negotiations” with trading partners addressing the investigation’s findings, to monitor covered imports and to keep the President informed, with one such update due within 180 days; the President states that “[d]epending on the status or outcome of such negotiations, I may consider alternative remedies in the future.”¹²³ The disposition is the second negotiation-track § 232 outcome of the administration’s arc — following the critical-minerals proclamation of 14 January 2026, which likewise imposed no duties and directed Commerce-USTR negotiations with a 180-day report — against the tariff outcomes of the 50 percent metals framework of Proclamations 11021 and 11032 (see Proclamation 11021 consolidates Section 232 metals framework and Proclamation modifies Section 232 metals tariff framework) and the copper regime of Proclamation 10962 (see Proclamation 10962 imposes Section 232 copper tariffs).¹⁴

1. The negotiation-track disposition operates within § 1862(c)‘s menu: on receiving a Commerce report finding a national-security threat, the President may impose duties or other import adjustments under § 1862(c)(1) — or pursue negotiated agreements under § 1862(c)(3)(A), under which, per the proclamation’s rendering of the statute, “if such an agreement is not entered into within 180 days … or is not being carried out or is ineffective,” the President “shall take such other actions” as necessary; the 180-day update is the proclamation’s checkpoint on that pathway.³¹ The sector already carries a tariff exemption precedent: goods covered by the WTO Agreement on Trade in Civil Aircraft were exempted in the US-Japan implementation order of September 2025 (see EO 14345 implements US-Japan Joint Statement tariff framework).⁵

2. For the aerospace supply chain the operative fact is the absence of a new duty layer: aircraft, jet engines and parts continue to enter at existing rates, with the sector’s exposure concentrated instead in the metals inputs already covered by the 50 percent § 232 framework and in any future action should the negotiations the proclamation directs fail — a contingency the proclamation preserves rather than schedules.¹