About
ETRX is an independent, rules-based index of the effective US tariff rate. It exists because the number importers actually pay was being estimated, modeled and argued about — but not measured on a schedule anyone could rely on.
What it is
A monthly measurement, not a forecast: calculated duties as a share of the customs value of US imports for consumption, by country of origin and HS chapter, from official US Census Bureau data. The methodology is public, the calculation is deterministic, and every published value can be reproduced by anyone from the same public data.
Independence
The administrator holds no positions referencing the index, accepts no sponsorship, and has no affiliation with any exchange, dealer, trade association or government body. Input data is official statistics the administrator cannot influence. The index is computed whole or not at all — never from partial data — and the first published value for any month is never restated.
Who
ETRX is maintained by an independent administrator based in Montréal. Contact: press@etrxindex.com.
Governance
Methodology changes require a new rulebook version with a full print cycle of notice and are never applied to settled values. See the methodology for the fallback policy, revision policy and IOSCO alignment statement, the audit log for every verification and decision on the record, and the revisions log for what later Census vintages would have said.