Tesla's Texas Megapack plant becomes a foreign-trade zone, tariffs still apply

Tesla's Megapack factory in Brookshire, Texas, is now officially a foreign-trade zone, a US customs program that lets manufacturers defer duties on imported parts. The FTZ Board's approval, published in the Federal Register on Monday, runs for 14 months. It is not a tariff pass for the Chinese LFP cells inside the Megapacks: Tesla's own application says parts hit by Section 301, 232 or 122 tariffs still pay them, Electrek reports. The plant started Megapack 3 production in August with a planned capacity of 50 GWh a year. The application lists about 80 imported components, with duties of up to 6.5%. Building energy storage in America and still paying the tariffs: that is playing by the rules, not dodging them.