How to Import from China to USA: Steps, Costs & Customs

How to import from China to USA? You need four things: an importer number, a correct 10-digit HTS classification, a customs entry filed on your behalf, and enough budget for duty that no longer stops at the $800 mark. Everything else is logistics.

The hard part is not the shipping. It is that the duty rules moved twice in 2026. Get the classification and the duty stack wrong, and a profitable order turns into a break-even one after the goods have already sailed.

What follows is the sequence we walk clients through, with the current fee schedule, the entry thresholds, and a line-by-line landed cost example you can copy.

How to Import From China to USA: 8 Steps

Importing from China runs in eight steps, and the two that decide your margin both happen before anything ships: how your product is classified, and which Incoterm your quote is written on.

Everything downstream is execution. Below is the sequence, who actually performs each step, and what you should hold in your hand when it is done.

Can You Import Directly From China?

Yes on the supplier side, no on the freight side, and the word “directly” usually means one of those two things.

Buying directly from a factory instead of a trading company is normal and often cheaper. The price is a higher minimum order quantity, slower English communication, and the fact that a factory sells you what it already makes rather than sourcing around its own catalogue. If your order sits below the factory’s minimum order quantity, a trading company or an agent is not a middleman tax, it is the only way the order runs at all.

Freight is different. Ocean carriers do not book, consolidate, collect, or clear small cargo themselves; they hand all of it to forwarders. Direct carrier contracts exist, but they are written for shippers with steady container volume and committed annual minimums, which is not where a first order sits. For anything below that, the question is which forwarder, not whether.

What You Need to Import Legally

There is no general import licence in the United States. What you need is an importer number, and for some goods a permit from an agency other than CBP.

CBP’s guidance for new importers is explicit that the entry form asks for an importer number, which is either your IRS business registration number or your social security number, with CBP Form 5106 available if you have neither. That covers your identity as the importer. Whether your particular goods may enter is a separate test, run by whichever agency regulates them, and CBP’s own guidance also flags that state or local business licences can apply.

Do You Need a License to Import From China?

No general import licence exists, which is not the same as saying your product needs no permit. Nothing licenses you as an importer; plenty of product categories license the goods. Once that is settled, the question usually turns into a different one: what does the paperwork actually cost.

A customs broker charges per entry, not per year. A customs bond is required on formal entries and is priced by a surety against your duty exposure, which means a single-entry bond on a small first order costs very little and a continuous bond makes sense once you are filing regularly. Brokers publish single-entry bonds in the $50 to $500 range and continuous bonds around $400 to $750 a year (broker-published pricing, not a CBP-set fee), and the crossover point is usually four or five entries.

The one that surprises people is the fee schedule itself, because it is fixed by regulation and does not scale with how simple your shipment is.

Those first three lines come straight from the CBP user fee table, which is worth checking before you accept anyone’s landed cost estimate.

What Documents Do You Need for Customs Clearance?

Three core documents travel with every shipment, and the rest attach only under specific conditions. They exist to answer five questions CBP has about your shipment: what is it, what is it worth, where did it come from, who is responsible for it, and is it allowed in.

The ISF line is the one that gets generalised incorrectly, in two directions. CBP’s rule states that ISF applies to import cargo arriving by vessel, so an order arriving by air or courier has no ISF to file at all.

And the deadline is not a single one. Under the filing timetable in 19 CFR 149.2:

• Eight elements, including manufacturer, ship-to party, country of origin, and the HTS number, are due no later than 24 hours before the cargo is laden aboard the vessel at the foreign port.
• Container stuffing location and consolidator are due as early as possible, and no later than 24 hours before arrival in a U.S. port.

Practically that means your supplier has to hand your broker the classification and origin data while the container is still being packed, not when it sails.

You are also allowed to file your own entry. Most people do not, and the reason is worth knowing: using a broker does not move the legal responsibility. CBP holds the importer of record accountable for the accuracy of the declaration and the duty owed, whoever pressed the button.

Which makes choosing one a decision rather than a formality. Four service providers sit between you and your first delivery, and each is checkable before you commit. Note that a factory audit and a pre-shipment inspection are different jobs: the audit looks at whether a supplier can make your product properly, the inspection looks at whether one finished batch matches your spec.

For brokers there is an official starting point. CBP publishes a list of permitted customs brokers by filer code, name and location, which lets you confirm a licence and find candidates near your port of entry. It records who is permitted, nothing more. It carries no ordering, no view on who handles China cargo well, and no signal about product-category experience, so treat it as a shortlist source and put the questions above to whoever you find on it.

A provider who will not give you a licence number, or who quotes a single all-in figure with no breakdown, has told you something useful.

What Can’t You Import From China?

Fewer things than you would guess, but the categories that bite are consistent: goods regulated by another federal agency, and goods that infringe someone’s trademark.

Counterfeit and infringing goods are seized outright, and this is the single most common way a first order is destroyed rather than delayed. The rest is agency clearance rather than prohibition:

• FDA: food, cosmetics, drugs, medical devices, and food-contact items
• FCC: anything that emits radio frequency, which covers most consumer electronics
• CPSC: children’s products, toys, and goods subject to lead or phthalate limits
• EPA: pesticides, refrigerants, and certain chemicals and engines

Rather than memorising a prohibited list, check two places for your specific product before you pay a deposit: the agency that regulates the category, and the tariff chapter notes for the code you plan to use.

Some categories carry requirements heavy enough that the general process above is only your starting point. If your product is on this list, budget for a separate compliance review before you order.

What Happens if U.S. Customs Inspects Your Shipment?

A hold is not an accusation, and the cost depends entirely on which of three exams you draw.

You pay for the exam regardless of the outcome, which is why the cheap prevention is worth more than the insurance. Vague product descriptions, a declared value that does not match the market, and inconsistent data across the invoice, packing list, and entry are the three things that most often flag a shipment. CBP may also send a formal request for information on Form CF28, which is a request rather than a penalty, and answering it quickly usually ends the matter.

How to Find and Check Chinese Suppliers

The platforms are the easy part. Getting a list takes an afternoon; the filtering happens after the quotes arrive. What separates the platforms is who is selling on them and at what minimum.

Where the platforms are weak is telling you who is behind the storefront. A useful second source is U.S. import records: services built on CBP bill-of-lading data let you look up which factories a competing brand actually receives containers from, which is a harder signal to fake than a verified badge. If you want the platform-by-platform version of this, we have written it up separately in our guide to sourcing products from China and a direct comparison of 1688 and Alibaba.

How Do You Check a Chinese Supplier Is Legitimate?

Verification is worth paying for because the alternative is a lawsuit in a Chinese court. U.S. judgments are not enforced in mainland China, so a dispute means hiring Chinese counsel and suing where the supplier is registered. That asymmetry is the whole argument for spending money before the wire, not after.

Four checks catch most of it:

• Read the business licence, not just the badge. The registered business scope tells you whether you are talking to a factory or a trading company. A scope that says trading is not the factory it claims to be.
• Match the invoice name to the bank account name. A request to pay a third party or a personal account is a stop signal, not a formality.
• Order the sample off the production line, not off the sample shelf. Ask for photos of it being made.
• Treat a quote 20% to 30% below the field as a warning. In our experience that gap is almost always a specification change nobody mentioned.

Payment structure is the other half of that protection. The standard terms on a first order are 30% by bank transfer as a deposit and 70% before the goods ship or against a copy of the bill of lading, which keeps most of your money on your side of the table until there is something to inspect. Above roughly $50,000 a letter of credit is worth the bank fee. Paying 100% up front to a supplier you have not worked with removes every lever you have, and no discount is worth that.

We have covered the platform-specific version of this in a longer piece on whether Alibaba is safe to buy from, including what the verification badges do and do not cover.

Is Your Supplier Licensed to Export From China?

Your supplier needs export rights on the Chinese side, and a factory without them ships through somebody else’s licence.

That arrangement is legal and common, and it has two consequences you carry rather than they do. If a shipment is held on the China side, the entity that can release it is the export agent, not the supplier you have a contract with. And the value declared on the Chinese export document is filed by that agent, so it can differ from the invoice you hand CBP, which is one of the mismatches that draws a U.S. exam.

Ask two questions before the deposit: whose name goes on the export declaration, and what value will be declared there. Get both in writing alongside the commercial terms.

Do You Need a Pre-Shipment Inspection?

On a first order with a new supplier, yes. It is the last point at which a problem costs you a conversation instead of an ocean freight bill.

A third-party pre-shipment inspection runs roughly $250 to $500 per man-day, checks a random sample against your written specification, and happens when production is substantially complete but before the balance payment is released. That sequencing is the entire value: once the container sails, your leverage is gone and your options are a discount you have to negotiate from 12,000 kilometres away or a return shipment that costs more than the goods.

What to inspect should be decided before production starts, not at the factory gate. Our quality control checklist covers what to specify and how to write it so an inspector can actually test it.

Shipping From China to the USA

Freight is priced on volume for ocean and on volumetric weight for air, and knowing which basis applies to your cargo tells you more than any rate quote.

Ocean less-than-container-load is billed per cubic metre, so light bulky goods are expensive per unit of value. Air freight is billed on whichever is greater, actual weight or volumetric weight calculated from the dimensions, which is why dense heavy goods rarely fly. Full container load stops being a stretch and starts being cheaper somewhere between 10 and 15 cubic metres, and the exact crossover moves with the density of your cargo and your destination port.

The cost gap between ocean and air is not a percentage you can memorise, because the two modes bill on different units. Run one shipment through both and the reason becomes obvious. Take 20 cartons, 3 CBM total, 500 kg actual weight, Ningbo to Los Angeles.

The two rates in that table are assumptions for the arithmetic, not market quotes, and rates move week to week. What does not move is the structure: the same box that costs you 3 chargeable units by sea costs you 500 by air, so the gap widens with volume and narrows with density. Substitute your own quoted rates and the comparison holds.

To get quotes you can actually compare, send every forwarder the same nine fields: product and material, carton count, total CBM, gross weight, carton dimensions, pickup address in China, destination ZIP, whether the goods contain batteries, magnets or liquids, and your Incoterm. Ask for the quote to state its expiry date and whether it is port to port or door to door. Quotes that answer different questions cannot be compared, and that is the most common reason a cheap number turns out not to be cheap.

Which Incoterm Should You Use When Buying From China?

Pick FOB if you have your own forwarder, CIF if you do not, and avoid DDP if you want to see what the duty actually costs.

The reason is what each quote contains. FOB covers the goods, inland transport to the Chinese port, and Chinese export clearance. CIF adds ocean freight and insurance to that. DDP wraps everything including U.S. duty into one number, which is convenient and also the reason you cannot tell whether the duty line is accurate or padded.

The decision variable is simple: do you have a forwarder and broker you trust? If yes, FOB gives you control over the leg where most of the cost variation lives. If no, CIF gets the goods to a U.S. port without you having to arrange the ocean leg on your first order. We have written a fuller comparison of FOB and CIF for anyone weighing the two.

How Long Does It Take to Import From China?

Six to twelve weeks from purchase order to your warehouse on an ocean shipment with production running normally. Air compresses it to roughly three to six weeks, because only the transit leg changes.

Those stages are not purely additive. Booking usually overlaps the tail of production, and inspection happens inside the production window rather than after it. Hit the long end of every line with no overlap and a West Coast ocean order runs past sixteen weeks, which is what a first order with a new supplier and a failed inspection actually looks like.

The schedule breaks around Chinese New Year. Factories stop for two to four weeks, staff turnover after the holiday slows the restart, and everyone books freight in the same fortnight beforehand. Place orders that need to land in the first quarter at least three months ahead. Our breakdown of how long shipping from China takes goes into the transit variables in more detail.

Import Tax and Duties From China to the USA

Commercial goods from China are assessed for duty at any value now, which is the change. Whether the assessment produces a bill above zero still depends on your tariff code and the exclusion annexes, and it is a separate question again from which entry route you file.

CBP’s e-commerce guidance confirms the suspension of the de minimis exemption covers merchandise valued at $800 or less arriving via all modes, including postal, for all countries. Bona fide gifts and personal articles accompanying travellers are separate exemptions and are unchanged. Neither of those covers goods you bought to resell.

The part most rate guides collapse into one is the entry route, which follows value rather than duty liability.

One change is scheduled rather than current: from October 22, 2026, merchandise subject to duties under Chapter 98 or Chapter 99 of the tariff schedule is excluded from the new mail informal entry process. Section 301 duties live in Chapter 99, so goods from China arriving by mail lose that route on that date.

How Much Is the Import Tax From China to the USA?

There is no single China rate. Your total is the base rate for your product plus every additional layer that attaches to Chinese origin, and the layers changed on July 24, 2026.

Two of those lines deserve a note. The Section 122 surcharge was a proclamation imposing a temporary 10% ad valorem surcharge for a period of 150 days from February 24, 2026, and it ran through 12:01 a.m. on July 24, 2026. Any landed cost estimate still carrying that 10% is overstating your duty.

At the same moment it lapsed, a different action started. The Trade Representative’s notice determined to impose 12.5% tariffs on products of China, effective for goods entered for consumption on or after 12:01 a.m. eastern time on July 24, 2026, with exemptions listed in the notice annexes. The older China Section 301 lists, which USTR maintains on its Section 301 tariff actions pages, sit on top of that.

How to Calculate Import Duty From China to the USA

Four steps, and the first two are where nearly all the error lives.

1. Find the 10-digit HTS code. Look up your product in the Harmonized Tariff Schedule. The six-digit code your supplier gives you is the international portion; the last four digits are U.S. specific and can change the rate. If the product could plausibly sit in two headings, request a binding ruling from CBP rather than guessing.
2. Read the base rate, then check Chapter 99. Column 1 General gives you the MFN rate. The additional China duties are not there; they sit in Chapter 99 headings that cross-reference your code. Check three things about each heading you land on: what it adds, whether it is currently in force, and which other headings it excepts. A heading can be suspended and later reinstated, and the rate that counts is the one in force on your entry date.
3. Check for antidumping and countervailing duty. These are product and producer specific and are the only layer that can run past 100%. They are also the layer a supplier is least likely to volunteer.
4. Apply the rates to entered value, then add fees. Duty is calculated on the customs value of the goods, which for most China purchases is the FOB price. International freight and insurance are not part of that figure, which is why a CIF quote is not your duty base.

Worked on two real codes, because the comparison is where the lesson is. Say you are importing plastic tableware. Two lines sit in the same subheading, and they behave differently at both layers.

Read the base rates alone and the second code looks like the cheaper one. Read the Chapter 99 line and it carries a heading with double the additional duty, which happens to be suspended right now. A suspended provision is not a repealed one, and the rate that applies is the one in force on the day your goods are entered.

That is the part worth taking away: finding your code and finding one Chapter 99 heading is not the end of the check. You also have to confirm whether that heading is in force, and whether it carves your product out. Heading 9903.88.15 opens by excepting a list of other headings, so a product that falls under one of those is treated differently again.

The calculation below uses 3924.10.20.00 at its 6.5% base rate on a $20,000 FOB ocean shipment, with the 7.5% from 9903.88.15 on top.

Run the same shipment against a code carrying a 25% Section 301 heading instead and the total moves to $8,894.28, an effective 44.5%. One classification decision, $3,500 of difference. That is why step 1 is worth a broker’s time rather than a guess.

What Items Are Exempt From Tariffs From China?

Very few, and the exemptions that survive are narrow. The value-based route most people are looking for is the one that closed.

What remains: bona fide gifts and personal articles accompanying a traveller, which are statutory exemptions unrelated to commercial imports; products carved out in the annexes of the forced-labor notice; and any product-specific exclusion USTR has granted under the older Section 301 lists. Foreign trade zones and bonded warehouses defer duty rather than remove it, and goods subject to the new additional duty may only be admitted to a zone in privileged foreign status, which locks in the rate rather than avoiding it.

Duty drawback is the one genuine refund route. If you import a component, incorporate it, and export the finished item, you can reclaim a portion of the duty paid. It requires records most first-time importers do not keep, so decide early whether it applies to you.

Legal Ways to Reduce Your Import Duty

Four routes work, and the one most often suggested to first-time importers is the one that rarely does.

• Reclassify correctly, not creatively. Products often fit more than one heading legitimately, and a binding ruling gives you a defensible answer with a rate attached.
• Check the exclusion annexes. Both the forced-labor notice and the older Section 301 lists carry product exclusions. This takes twenty minutes and either finds you money or does not.
• First sale valuation. Where goods pass through a middleman before export, duty can sometimes be assessed on the first sale price rather than the price you paid. It needs documented, arms-length transactions and is worth the accounting work only at volume.
• Duty drawback, if you re-export what you import.

The route to be careful with is moving production out of China. It is real, and for high-tariff categories it can pay. It also carries costs the tariff comparison leaves out: Vietnamese and Indonesian factories quote 60 to 90 day lead times on tooling that a Chinese factory turns in 25, component supply chains often still run back through China, and your quality baseline resets to zero. Below roughly a container a month, the tariff saving rarely covers the transition. And under-declaring value is not on this list because it is fraud, and the penalty structure is built around the fact that it is the obvious thing to try.

If you would like a second opinion on the duty position for a specific product before you commit to an order, that is the kind of question we answer during a first call.

Talk to us about your product

What It Actually Costs to Import From China to the USA

There is no reliable multiple to apply to an FOB price, because the duty layers move the total more than the freight does. The worked example below lands at 41.1% above FOB. Change one classification and the same shipment lands at 58.6%.

Here is that shipment as a full landed cost, with the lines first-time importers most often leave out marked.

Freight, broker fees, bond, and inspection are estimates that move with your route and provider; the duty and CBP fee lines are calculated from published rates. The three shaded lines are the ones missing from most first-order budgets, and together they are $665, or about 3.3% of goods value.

Now change one thing. Keep every other line identical and move the goods from List 4A to a List 3 code, so the $1,500 line becomes $5,000. Total landed cost goes to $31,729.28, which is 58.6% above FOB rather than 41.1%. One classification decision moved the landed cost by more than the entire ocean freight bill.

That is why a rule of thumb does not work here, and why the useful thing is your own version of this table. Build it against your real HTS code, your quoted freight, and your own margin requirement before you place the order. Whether 41% or 59% is survivable is a question about your selling price, not about importing.

Frequently Asked Questions

Do I still have to pay duty on a $100 order from China?

It is assessed, and whether the bill is above zero depends on your tariff code. The $800 exemption is suspended for all countries and all modes, so value no longer decides. How it arrives still matters: a $100 courier shipment goes through informal entry with a merchandise processing fee of $2.69 to $12.09, while ordinary international mail is exempt from MPF altogether, with Inbound EMS the exception.

Can I have my supplier or carrier pay the duty for me?

They can advance the money, but they cannot take on the liability. The importer of record is responsible for the declaration and the duty owed, and that stays with you whoever writes the cheque. Be cautious with a carrier who asks you to wire duty to an account in China. Legitimate DDP arrangements exist, but you lose visibility of what was actually declared to CBP in your name.

Do I pay duty if the goods are for personal use, not resale?

Usually yes. The exemptions that survived the de minimis suspension are bona fide gifts and personal articles accompanying a traveller, neither of which covers goods you bought online and had shipped to yourself. CBP also decides what counts as personal use, and quantity is the test. A single item reads as personal; ten identical ones read as commercial.

How do I ship samples from China now that the $800 exemption is gone?

Samples move by courier and are now assessed like anything else, at whatever rate your tariff code carries, which may be zero. For a $150 sample that usually means a modest duty plus an informal entry fee rather than nothing. The practical change is that consolidating samples into one shipment saves more than it used to, since each separate parcel now carries its own processing fee. Ask suppliers to send samples to one address and forward them together.

Can I import from China as an individual, without a company?

Yes. CBP accepts a social security number as your importer number if you are not registered as a business, and Form 5106 covers you if you have neither an SSN nor an EIN. The practical limits are elsewhere: suppliers often ask for a company for larger orders, and you will want a business entity before you carry inventory and liability. Nothing in the customs process requires one.

My supplier offered to declare a lower value to cut my duty. Is that a problem?

It is your problem, not theirs. The declaration is filed in your name, so an undervalued invoice is your misstatement to CBP even when the supplier wrote it. Penalties are assessed against the importer of record, and the shipment that triggers a valuation review is usually the one whose declared price sits well below comparable entries. If a supplier volunteers this, treat it as information about how they handle documents generally.

Final Thoughts

Hope this walkthrough helps you plan your first shipment from China to the USA with a number you can actually trust. If you have questions about the duty position on a specific product, feel free to reach out.

We are HiSourcing, a China sourcing company based in Yiwu, helping small and medium businesses source, customise, inspect, and ship products from China.

If you want a landed cost estimate for a specific product before you commit to an order, send us the product link, your target price, and your monthly volume. You will get back a feasibility read and a cost breakdown with the duty lines itemised.

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