‘We are in uncharted territory’: Trump’s tariffs scramble art trade

‘We are in uncharted territory’: Trump’s tariffs scramble art trade

By Daniel Grant, 7 April 2025

There is widespread confusion about whether or not new US tariffs—and those imposed by trading partners in retaliation—apply to art and antiques

US President Donald Trump’s recently announced tariff regime has brought confusion and turmoil to the international art and antiques trade, with dealers around the world scrambling to find out if their merchandise is exempt from these taxes when they sell or exhibit in the US and what the actual amount of tax would be.

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The US government’s Harmonised Tariff Schedule, as written, exempts certain commodities, including art, defined as paintings, drawings, pastels, original engravings, print and lithographs, original sculptures, objects of archaeological, ethnographic or historical interest and antiques of an age exceeding 100 years. “Ordinarily, paintings and sculptures are exempt from customs duties,” says Nicholas M. O’Donnell, a partner in the Boston law firm Sullivan & Worcester, but “under the recently announced tariff it gets a little more complicated”, because President Trump announced this set of import duties under a rarely used emergency powers statute, the International Emergency Economic Powers Act of 1977.

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... Pierre Valentin, a former in-house legal counsel at Sotheby’s and currently the joint head of the art law group at Fieldfisher London, says that Trump’s new tariff regime specifically excludes informational materials, which include art. That exception, he claims, “intends to respect US constitutional protections for freedom of speech. Therefore, it would be congruent with that intent to interpret the language as applying to all cultural goods. The general view seems to be that whilst the term ‘artworks’ is not defined, it must be interpreted broadly to include traditional forms (eg paintings, sculptures) and modern mediums, such as digital art, but also cultural artefacts.”

The London-based International League of Antiquarian Booksellers released a statement on 25 March noting that, “While we recognise the attraction of tariffs when applied to newly manufactured materials, we believe their application to goods of some age is inappropriate and disproportional. We also deplore the impact these tariffs would have on the international advance of education, learning and scholarship.”

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ILAB is monitoring the situation closely and will communicate further details shortly.