Know your real landed cost before you click buy

How a 2026 import duty bill is built

Every United States import bill is built from the same arithmetic, whether it shows up as an "import fees" line at a marketplace checkout or as a courier invoice taped to the box. Once you can name the layers, you can sanity-check any number a platform or courier puts in front of you.

The first layer is the base duty rate. Every product entering the United States is classified under a ten-digit code in the Harmonized Tariff Schedule, and the duty percentage attaches to that code rather than to the product description on the listing. A cotton T-shirt, a lithium battery pack, and a pair of trail sneakers each land in a different chapter of the schedule, and the difference matters. Most apparel chapters carry double-digit base rates, many electronics lines carry low single digits or zero, and footwear can run well past twenty percent. The authoritative place to check a rate is the United States International Trade Commission's own search tool, which publishes the live schedule.

The second layer is Section 301, the China-specific tariff program. If the goods are of Chinese origin (which covers the overwhelming majority of what ships from Temu, Shein, and AliExpress), an additional percentage applies depending on which Section 301 list the product's code sits on. The lists range from seven and a half percent up to twenty-five percent. This layer was not touched by the Supreme Court's February 2026 ruling and remains fully in force.

The third layer is the Section 122 surcharge, and it is the piece most online explanations still get wrong. The country-by-country tariffs signed during 2025 under the International Emergency Economic Powers Act were struck down by the Supreme Court on 20 February 2026, and Customs and Border Protection stopped collecting them four days later. In their place, a flat ten percent surcharge under Section 122 of the Trade Act of 1974 took effect on 24 February 2026. It applies to virtually all origins, sits on top of the base rate and any Section 301 add-on, and runs on a statutory 150-day clock that expires on 24 July 2026 unless Congress acts.

The fourth layer, relevant to a narrower set of goods, is Section 232: product-specific tariffs on steel, aluminium, automobiles, and a list of related categories. Like Section 301, it was unaffected by the ruling.

On top of the tariff stack come the small entry fees (the Merchandise Processing Fee and, for ocean freight, the Harbor Maintenance Fee) plus whatever brokerage fee the courier charges for filing the entry and fronting the duty. For a low-value parcel the brokerage fee can be a bigger line than the duty itself, which is why it deserves a place in any honest landed-cost estimate.

The crucial point is that these three layers — base duty, Section 301, and the Section 122 surcharge — stack on top of one another rather than replacing the base rate, so a China-origin order can carry a combined tariff well above its headline duty percentage before any courier fee is added. The exact figure depends entirely on your declared value, country of origin, and product category. Run your own value, origin, and category through the duty calculator to see the full stack against your real numbers instead of a guess.

Timeline: from an $800 free pass to a flat surcharge

• 2016. The de-minimis threshold is lifted to eight hundred dollars, opening the era of duty-free direct-from-factory parcels.
• 2 May 2025. China-origin shipments lose the exemption under Executive Order 14256.
• 29 August 2025. Executive Order 14324 ends the exemption for all countries. Every package shipped to a US address becomes dutiable regardless of value.
• 20 February 2026. The Supreme Court rules in Learning Resources, Inc. v. Trump that IEEPA does not authorize tariffs, voiding the 2025 country-by-country tariff orders.
• 24 February 2026. Collection of the IEEPA tariffs ceases; the ten percent Section 122 surcharge takes effect the same day. The de-minimis suspension survives on separate legal footing, re-grounded in the Trade Act of 1974 and confirmed by Customs and Border Protection.
• 24 July 2026. The Section 122 surcharge's 150-day statutory window closes. What replaces it, whether an extension, new legislation, or nothing, is the single most important date to watch for cross-border shoppers this year.

Which tool do I need?

Start with the duty calculator if you want one all-in number. You enter the declared value, the country of origin, and a rough product category. It returns the base duty, the tariff add-ons, an estimated courier brokerage fee, and the full landed cost: the figure to compare against the listing price before you commit to checkout.

Use the HTS lookup when the rate itself is the question. Maybe you import the same kind of item repeatedly, or two sellers describe the same product differently and you want the classification that actually drives the percentage. It takes a plain-English product description and walks the schedule to a ten-digit code and its duty rate.

Use the marketplace checker for Temu, Shein, and AliExpress orders specifically. It mirrors how those platforms declare and clear parcels, so the estimate lines up with the "import charges" line you will actually see. It also flags when a platform's number looks materially different from the published stack.

All three tools are free, run entirely in your browser, and ask for no account, no email address, and no payment details.

How this site keeps its numbers honest

Every regulatory fact on this page carries a verification date. The current dataset was checked on 12 June 2026 against the primary sources linked in the answer box above: the Federal Register notice implementing the de-minimis order, the Supreme Court's slip opinion, and Customs and Border Protection's own announcements. The dated values live in one machine-checked file in the site's codebase, locked by automated tests, so a number cannot quietly drift from the source it cites. When more than thirty days pass without a re-check, the site says so instead of pretending freshness. The methodology page documents the full source list and refresh cadence, and the about page explains who runs this site and what it does not promise. None of this is legal or customs advice: Customs and Border Protection makes the final determination on every entry, and for commercial imports above twenty-five hundred dollars or anything in a restricted category the right professional is a licensed customs broker.