Ever since the $800 duty-free tariff exemption between China and the U.S. was removed, shipping between the two countries has become noticeably more expensive for all kinds of products. Over the past few months, we’ve seen all kinds of crazy bills while sending product samples to our U.S. Clients. One shipment was just a $25 sample, but the tax came out to $29.59, which means a 118% tax rate.
Even more surprising, when you ship from China to the U.S., send the same product, using the same courier and same declared value, yet the taxes can end up different. One of our supplier friends was about to send a $6,000 trial order to the U.S. He asked several freight forwarders for a quote, and almost all of them said the same thing:
“We can’t give you an exact number right now. The tax rate depends on how customs clears it in the end.”
We looked into it and found that every package shipped from China to the U.S. now has to go through formal customs clearance, no matter its value. The U.S. clearance process basically runs through three systems: Customs (CBP), State tax systems, and Courier Service such as FedEx, UPS, or DHL.
And each of them looks at your shipment differently. The customs system focuses on HS code, declared value, entry type, and country of origin. The state tax system looks at whether the receiver is a personal consumer or a registered business, which decides if state tax applies. And the courier or clearance service now relies heavily on automation, using AI or keyword scanning to read your invoice and product description for declaration purposes.
That’s where things get messy. Let’s say you’re sending an AI voice-control keyboard as a sample. If you declare it as “hardware sample,” the system might read it as steel hardware and charge a 25% tariff. If you call it “computer part,” it could be treated as a whole-unit accessory, adding state tax on top. If you write “voice keyboard,” the system might not even find a match, so it drops you into a catch-all category like “other electronic gadget” with a temporary 15% rate. The AI doesn’t know you’re sending a sample. It just sees something that looks electronic, so it taxes it like one.
And since the duty-free threshold is gone, couriers now have to file a full customs entry for every single parcel. That means added work, data, and system costs for them. So the same shipment ends up being judged by three different system standards, each with its own logic. By the time the package arrives and you see the final invoice, what you’re really paying is actually the result of all those overlapping calculations.
It’s not only expensive when shipping from China to the U.S. The same thing happens the other way around too. Last week, one of our supplier friends told us that his U.S. customer shipped a $20 PCB component to China. When the parcel cleared customs, the total cost was over ￥2,000 (about $392.48). The shipping fee was only ￥156.26 (around $21.93). The rest went to taxes and clearance charges.
To be honest, there’s no real shortcut to avoiding extra taxes right now. The rules have changed, the systems are still in transition, and the future remains uncertain. The only smart move is to plan ahead. Over the past few months, we’ve learned a few tough cases ourselves and hearing many from clients and supplier friends. Based on all that, here are three practical approaches that work best in today’s situation:
- Ship DDP (Delivered Duty Paid): let the sender handle all duties and customs paperwork, so the buyer faces no risk. Just make sure to confirm with your supplier how these costs are included in your quote, since under DDP all import duties and clearance fees are paid upfront by the sender during customs processing.
- Combine sample shipments: merge multiple samples into one declaration to spread out fixed clearance fees.
- Use a business consignee (EIN): declare under a company name so the system won’t treat the parcel as a personal shipment.
We’ll also keep a close eye on how things develop. If there are new policies, courier algorithms, or changes in fee structures, we’ll organize them clearly and share what’s working best in real time.
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