What It Really Costs to Import From China: How to Compute Your True Landed Cost
The number your supplier put in the chat window is the first line of the math, not the answer. Here is every line that stacks on top of it, and how you compute the real cost per unit yourself with your own current rates.
How do you calculate your true landed cost when importing from China?
Start from the FOB price and add every line the quote hides: import duty (Section 301 for US importers, or your own country's duty and VAT/GST), ocean or air freight, insurance, port and customs fees, and brokerage. The factory price is rarely more than half your real cost per unit, so run the full stack before you commit to an order.
The FOB quote is not your cost
A supplier sends you a price and it looks clean. Three dollars a unit, FOB Ningbo. You do the math in your head, you compare it to what you sell for, and you feel good. Stop there and you will get hurt.
FOB means one thing. The goods become yours the moment they are loaded onto the ship at the Chinese port. That price covers the product and getting it to the rail. It covers nothing that happens after the water. It does not carry the U.S. import duty. It does not carry the tariff you have to look up for your own product. It does not carry ocean freight, marine insurance, the two Customs fees, the port charges, or your broker. All of that lands on your side of the ocean, and all of it is your money.
I have watched people sign orders on the FOB number and discover the truth only when the goods are already on the water and the invoices arrive. By then you cannot renegotiate and you cannot walk away. So we do the full math before you commit, not after. That is the whole point of this page.
The stack: every line that becomes landed cost
Landed cost is the total delivered cost of your goods at your door, divided by the number of units. Nothing hidden. Here is the full stack, top to bottom.
FOB price of the goods. This is your starting line, the supplier's quote for the product loaded at the export port.
Import duty. Your goods value times the duty rate that belongs to your product's HTS classification.
Any additional tariff. On top of the base duty rate, additional duties can apply to a specific product. You look up the current figure for your exact HTS code, because these change and they are yours to verify.
Merchandise Processing Fee (MPF). A Customs fee on the value of your goods.
Harbor Maintenance Fee (HMF). A Customs fee that applies when your goods arrive by ocean vessel.
Ocean or air freight. The cost to move the container or the pallets across the water or the sky.
Marine insurance. Coverage on the cargo while it travels.
Customs and brokerage. Your customs broker's fee to clear the entry, plus your customs bond, plus destination port and handling charges.
Add every line, divide by your unit count, and that is your true landed cost per unit. That is the number you compare to your selling price. Not the FOB quote.
How U.S. import duty actually works
Import duty is not a mystery number. It runs on two things: what your product is, and what it is worth to Customs.
What it is comes from the HTS code, the ten-digit Harmonized Tariff Schedule classification that tells Customs exactly what you are bringing in. Every code carries a duty rate. Get the classification wrong and every number downstream is wrong, so this is worth confirming with a licensed broker if you are not certain.
What it is worth, for U.S. duty, is the FOB value of the goods. This matters and people miss it. The United States assesses ad valorem duty on the goods value and excludes your international freight and insurance from that figure. Many other countries duty the full CIF value, freight included. The U.S. does not. So your duty is the goods value times your rate, and your freight is a separate line you add later, not something you pay duty on.
The calculation itself is plain: dutiable value times the ad valorem rate for your HTS code. If additional tariffs apply to your product, they stack on the same value. You look up your current rates, you put them in, and the math falls out. I will not hand you one rate as a fixed fact, because rates change and a stale number is how an order gets underpriced.
MPF and HMF: the two Customs fees people forget
There are two federal fees that ride along on almost every ocean import, and they are small enough to forget and real enough to matter on your margin.
The Merchandise Processing Fee. For fiscal year 2026 it is 0.3464% of your goods value, and it does not move with inflation the way the caps do. It has a floor and a ceiling: not less than $33.58 and not more than $651.50 per entry. Read what that means. On a small order the fee is effectively the $33.58 minimum, which is a heavy percentage of a tiny shipment. On a large order it caps at $651.50, so past a certain value it stops growing. That shape changes your per-unit cost depending on order size, so it belongs in the math, not in your head.
The Harbor Maintenance Fee. This is 0.125% of your cargo value, with no minimum and no maximum, and it applies only to commercial cargo that comes in by vessel through a U.S. port. Ship by ocean and you pay it. Fly your goods in and you do not, because it is a harbor fee. Neither of these is large on its own. Together, on thin margins, they are the difference between a deal that works and one that does not.
Freight, insurance, and clearing the goods
The last block of the stack is what it costs to move your goods and get them released, and this is where the market, not a formula, sets the number.
Ocean or air freight is a live price. It moves with the season, with fuel, with how full the ships are that month. The quote you get today is not the quote you get in six weeks, so you put your current, real quote into the math, not last year's figure or a friend's number for a different lane. Air costs far more per kilo and makes sense only for light, urgent, or high-value goods.
Marine insurance covers the cargo while it travels, priced as a small percentage of the goods value. It is cheap next to the cost of losing a container, and skipping it to save a little is a bad trade.
Then there is clearing the goods. Your customs broker charges a fee to file the entry and get your shipment released. You carry a customs bond, which for regular importing is usually an annual continuous bond. And at the destination port there are terminal handling, documentation, and delivery charges to get the container from the ship to your door. None of these are huge on their own. All of them are real, and all of them belong on the invoice you model before you order, not after.
Do the math with your own numbers
Here is the whole thing in order, and every input is yours to fill with a current figure.
Start with your FOB goods value, your quantity times the unit price.
Add import duty: goods value times the duty rate for your HTS code, plus any additional tariff that applies to your product at the rate you looked up today.
Add MPF: 0.3464% of goods value, but not below $33.58 and not above $651.50.
Add HMF if you ship by ocean: 0.125% of goods value.
Add your current freight quote for your actual lane.
Add marine insurance.
Add customs brokerage, your bond, and destination port and delivery charges.
Sum every line. That is your total landed cost. Divide by your unit count and you have the real cost per unit. Set that number next to your selling price and now you know the truth about the deal.
I built the calculator so you do not do this on a napkin. You put in your FOB price, your HTS duty rate, and your live freight quote, and it stacks the fees and returns the delivered cost per unit. Your rates, your product, your math.
Why I run this before you wire money
I do this on the ground in China so you do not have to fly here. Twenty-five years on factory floors around the world, and now here, checking the things a chat window will never show you. Landed cost is the first of them, because the FOB price a supplier gives you is designed to look attractive and it is only one line of your real cost.
But getting the math right is only half the job. The other half is making sure your money reaches the company that actually makes your product. Before you pay, I check that the bank account name matches the real company, because payment fraud is the most expensive mistake in this trade, and this one check alone can save your whole order. I find out who really makes the product, I check the papers, and I give you a written report: go or no go, every red flag, every document, every number backed by something I saw or a paper I held. No guessed figures, ever.
I am not the factory's man. Only you pay me, so my only job is to protect you. Get the landed cost right and get the money to the right hands, and you import from a position of knowing instead of hoping.
The FOB quote your supplier sent you is not your cost. Before you commit an order, run your own numbers through the Tariff and Landed-Cost Calculator at /tariff-landed-cost-calculator, where you input your FOB price, your HTS duty rate, and your current freight quote and see the true delivered cost per unit. If you want a fast first pass, the free lite version lives at /tariff-calculator. And if you want me to walk your specific product through it and tell you where the real money hides, book a call and I will do it with you on the line.
Or book a call with me →Questions buyers ask me
Does my supplier's FOB price include the tariff?
No. FOB means the goods are yours once they cross the ship's rail at the export port in China. It covers the product and getting it loaded. It does not include U.S. import duty, it does not include the tariff you look up for your HTS code, it does not include ocean freight, insurance, port fees, or your customs broker. Every one of those lands on your side of the water. The FOB number is the start of the math, not the end of it.
What value does U.S. Customs charge duty on, the goods or the whole shipment?
The United States charges ad valorem duty on the FOB value of the goods themselves, and excludes your international freight and insurance from that figure. This is different from many other countries that duty the full CIF value including freight. So your duty is your goods value times your HTS rate. Your freight is a separate line you add on top of the delivered cost, not something you pay duty on.
What are MPF and HMF, and do I pay both?
The Merchandise Processing Fee is a Customs charge on formal entries, set for FY2026 at 0.3464% of your goods value, with a floor of $33.58 and a ceiling of $651.50 per entry. The Harbor Maintenance Fee is 0.125% of your cargo value and applies only when your goods come in by ocean vessel. If you ship by sea you pay both. If you fly your goods in, you pay MPF but not HMF, because HMF is a harbor fee.
How do I find the tariff rate for my own product?
You find your product's HTS code, the ten-digit classification that tells Customs exactly what it is, and that code carries its base duty rate. On top of that base rate, additional duties or tariffs can apply to a given product, and those change. I do not hand you a single rate as gospel, because a wrong classification or an out-of-date number is how people underprice an order by thousands. You look up the current rate for your exact code, or you have a licensed broker confirm the classification, and you put that number into your own math.
Why can't I just guess landed cost as FOB plus twenty percent?
Because the pieces do not move together. Duty is a percentage of your goods value and swings with the HTS rate. Freight is a dollar figure driven by the market and can move hard between the day you quote and the day you book. MPF has a floor and a ceiling, so on a small order it is a fixed minimum and on a large order it caps out. A flat markup hides all of that. On a low-value, high-freight product a twenty percent guess is far too low. On a high-value, low-freight product it can be too high and you walk away from a good deal. Real numbers, not a rule of thumb.
What is the single most expensive mistake in this whole process?
Paying the wrong bank account. Landed cost tells you whether the deal makes money. It does you no good if the money never reaches the real factory. Before you wire a dime I check that the bank account name matches the real company, because payment fraud is the most expensive mistake in this trade and this one check alone can save your whole order. Get the math right and get the money to the right hands. You need both.
Sources — every number on this page
- For FY2026 the U.S. Merchandise Processing Fee on formal entries is an ad valorem 0.3464% of the goods value, with a minimum of $33.58 and a maximum of $651.50 per entry, effective October 1, 2025. — Buckland (CBP FY2026 User Fee adjustment)
- The MPF ad valorem rate held at 0.3464% for FY2026; only the inflation-adjusted minimum ($32.71 to $33.58) and maximum ($634.62 to $651.50) changed. — FreightAmigo MPF 2026 Guide
- The Harbor Maintenance Fee is 0.125% of cargo value, applies only to commercial cargo moved by vessel through covered U.S. ports, and has no minimum or maximum. — FreightAmigo HMF 2026 Guide
- The United States assesses ad valorem import duty on the FOB value of the goods, excluding international freight and insurance, unlike countries that duty the CIF value. — FreightAmigo U.S. Import Tax Guide 2026
- U.S. import duty is calculated by multiplying the dutiable value of the product by the ad valorem duty rate assigned to its HTS classification. — Camtom U.S. Import Duties & Tariffs Guide 2026
What to get next
The buyers who get the most from this pair it with the tools below — each one protects the next step.