Once again, import fees for USA buyers of Japanese equipment post August 29, 2025

[GregY]

May I please suggest adding the following:

6. Plus any tariff-/customs-related handling fees imposed by shipping companies, customs officials, and/or import agents.

Absolutely..... the handling fees are often substantial

 

[Milpool]

Also any penalties associated with the country of origin. The sender has to pay that upfront was well.

Duty, if necessary, is paid by the recipient on arrival. The new American tariffs must be paid before the item is accepted for being sent from the seller. As Milpool has said, this means that, in our case, Canada Post must, through its agents, take the tariff money before it accepts the package. If the US agent that receives the item judges the item is labelled wrongly then it refuses the package and the Canadian agent (Canada Post) must store it safely it until the problem is solved, which it has no facilities to do.
Therefor the tariff charge must be the highest possible to avoid refusal at the US border.
You don't seem to go beyond the dictionary definition of duty and tariffs without appreciating the practical difference, particularly since the US has decided, uniquely, that the tariffs must be collected in the sending country before the item enters the postal system, regardless of the duty rate. Nor do the documents you quote in any way address the Tariff rates which are independent of duty rates

 

[Alan Edward Klein]

Boy, it's absolute madness to post results from AI. At least as dopey as Wikipedia is there's some attempt at human editing (many times, most of the time) to slant the text to support a position.

I am only buying things from the big sellers who include the costs of these insane, shoot from the hip, tariffs in the sale price.

It's utter madness now. Probably will be for some time. Extraordinarily sad.

The AI topic really needs to be addressed in forum posts. Long gone are the days of PE who spoke with authority, he didn't go on Wikipedia to decide what to post.

We need a AI detector (or as we used to joke, a BS detector)

This is going to make the moderators duties all the more important.

All AI assisted content should be in RED

Before AI, posters used cherry-picked search results from Google. Not much different.

 

[mshchem]

Right now it's not too difficult to pick out the fly shit from the pepper, but not for long. As IT gets smarter and we get dumber, the results are clear.

 

[abruzzi]

I recently bought some used Arca Swiss parts. Despite the name, Arca Swiss has been manufactured in France since 1999. Fron my research France (or more specifically, the EU) has a tariff rate of 15% when imported to the USA. Items made in Switzerland seems to have a 39% tariff when imported to the USA. There does seem to be a deal in the works to drop the rate of Swiss goods to 15% but I can't find any confirmation that that drop has actually happened.

I don't know how accurate it is but this page summarizes, coutry by country the USA tariff rates:

Trump 2.0 tariff tracker

According to President Trump, “Tariff is the most beautiful word in the dictionary.” Throughout his presidential campaign, Trump promised to use tariffs

www.tradecomplianceresourcehub.com

My biggest frustration is simply that there is not a simple clear page from the US federal government, explaining clearly what to expect. My read on how the above link specifies the EU rate is that the 15% is a baseline, but if the HTS rate is higher than the EU base rate, they are not added together. in other words if the HTS rate is 30%, the total tariff will still be 30%, but if the HTS rate is 10%, the total tariff will be 15%.

We'll see when the Arca parts arrive.

 

[djdister]

I recently bought some used Arca Swiss parts. Despite the name, Arca Swiss has been manufactured in France since 1999. Fron my research France (or more specifically, the EU) has a tariff rate of 15% when imported to the USA. Items made in Switzerland seems to have a 39% tariff when imported to the USA. There does seem to be a deal in the works to drop the rate of Swiss goods to 15% but I can't find any confirmation that that drop has actually happened.

I don't know how accurate it is but this page summarizes, coutry by country the USA tariff rates:

Trump 2.0 tariff tracker

According to President Trump, “Tariff is the most beautiful word in the dictionary.” Throughout his presidential campaign, Trump promised to use tariffs

www.tradecomplianceresourcehub.com

My biggest frustration is simply that there is not a simple clear page from the US federal government, explaining clearly what to expect. My read on how the above link specifies the EU rate is that the 15% is a baseline, but if the HTS rate is higher than the EU base rate, they are not added together. in other words if the HTS rate is 30%, the total tariff will still be 30%, but if the HTS rate is 10%, the total tariff will be 15%.

We'll see when the Arca parts arrive.

Try not to be surprised at the "brokerage" fees that are added onto whatever duty and tariff rates are randomly calculated on your purchase.

 

[Alan Edward Klein]

The US Supreme Court is currently reviewing the constitutionality of these tariffs. I suspect some will remain and many will disappear as not being legal. So you might want to wait.

 

[BrianShaw]

My biggest frustration is simply that there is not a simple clear page from the US federal government, explaining clearly what to expect.

It's really complicated as the information is published in various places. Looking at primary sources rather than media reports, etc might be worthwhile.

Reading the United States Federal Register, the EU agreement linked earlier, cameras (HTS code 9006) is not listed as included and lenses (HTS code 9002) is listed for aircraft only. That seems to clearly indicate that photographic cameras and lenses for photographic purposes are not included. Other camera related products are lsited elsewhere and I did not look.

Here is an interesting .gov site that helps put the HTS schedule into better perspective (or not). For the few HTS codes I verified it seems complete and current:

DataWeb

dataweb.usitc.gov

Interesting, though, is that interrogation of the 9006 subsections, cameras valued > $10 are listed as duty free whereas cameras with value < $10 have an associated tariff rate. Seems like ensuring that both correct HTS rate and value on the documentation is important.

So putting 1 and 1 together hopefully is correct. Please let us know how it works out for your purchase.

 

[loccdor]

To summarize again:

EU->US or Japan->US country rates are currently 15%
Most camera rates are 0% but it could be something like 20% for things related to cameras, like camera bags (carefully check the Harmonized Tariff Schedule for your item)
You're likely to pay a 3-10% fee to the carrier

Add them together and budget something like 25% for a camera and 35% for a camera bag. 15% will be your best case scenario.

Or just buy the item "duties included".

 

[abruzzi]

To summarize again:

EU->US or Japan->US country rates are currently 15%
Most camera rates are 0% but it could be something like 20% for things related to cameras, like camera bags (carefully check the Harmonized Tariff Schedule for your item)
You're likely to pay a 3-10% fee to the carrier

Add them together and budget something like 25% for a camera and 35% for a camera bag. 15% will be your best case scenario.

Or just buy the item "duties included".

This is my understanding as well from reading info on whitehouse.gov and congress.gov, but some people on this thread are making the point that the HTS is the only part of the tariffs. I don't believe that is the case from what I've read, but we'll see.

 

[abruzzi]

I don't have enough details yet, but I just got a bill from UPS for my "import": $85.76. The purchase price was $500. The items were Arca-Swiss parts. I checked ahead of time, and despite the name "Arca-Swiss" their camera parts have been made in France, i.e. EU, since 1999. I researched and EU showed a 15% reciprocal tariff and Switzerland showed a 39% tariff. So I asked Kumar to make sure that the item showed an origin of EU. (To be clear this was accurate and appropriate. If I had asked him to show Japan--where the items were shipped from--as the country of origin, that would have been fraud since country of manufacture is where the tariff rate should reflect.)

The breakdown showed $68.76 for the tariff, and $17 for the UPS borkerage fee. $68.76 / $500 = 13.752%. I don't know the HSTS code used--hopefully when it is delivered I'll be able to see the import paperwork for more details, and I'll report these. So its not clear why that specific percentage?

 

[abruzzi]

D'oh!

Stupid me--I forgot, when Kumar lists things here he shows an approximate USD cost, but the payment is in Japanese Yen. In this case I paid ¥72,000. Today ¥72,000 shows as $464, and 15% of $464 is $69.60. But since exchange rates fluctuate, $68.76 was probably 15% at the time it crossed the border.

I don't have enough details yet, but I just got a bill from UPS for my "import": $85.76. The purchase price was $500. The items were Arca-Swiss parts. I checked ahead of time, and despite the name "Arca-Swiss" their camera parts have been made in France, i.e. EU, since 1999. I researched and EU showed a 15% reciprocal tariff and Switzerland showed a 39% tariff. So I asked Kumar to make sure that the item showed an origin of EU. (To be clear this was accurate and appropriate. If I had asked him to show Japan--where the items were shipped from--as the country of origin, that would have been fraud since country of manufacture is where the tariff rate should reflect.)

The breakdown showed $68.76 for the tariff, and $17 for the UPS borkerage fee. $68.76 / $500 = 13.752%. I don't know the HSTS code used--hopefully when it is delivered I'll be able to see the import paperwork for more details, and I'll report these. So its not clear why that specific percentage?

View attachment 413192

 

[BrianShaw]

Interesting… real experience data! It’s a pity that the “government charges” weren’t reported in detail. A breakdown would really explain the situation on your purchase. Perhaps that will be on the paperwork upon delivery.

 

[loccdor]

Well, here's an update on that $500 lens with $150 shipping that came to me from Japan almost a month ago.

This was the banner that appeared on the original item's eBay listing:

Yesterday, I received a bill from FedEx through the seller for $79.50.

I contacted the seller yesterday with no response in 24 hours. Tried to talk to someone at eBay but with the magic of AI they've made it nearly impossible to reach a human there. Typing "talk to agent" prompts the AI assistant to respond with "something has gone wrong." Searching "eBay customer support phone number" loops back to said chat bot and the cycle repeats.

So I opened up a duty dispute through FedEx, filled out their form, gave the relevant information. Received an automated response to please allow 15-20 business days for processing.

But, it's really not FedEx's problem if they received inaccurate information, and I doubt they're going to be able to handle it.

 

[BrianShaw]

Forgive the nitpicking, but I think you mean, "Tried to talk to someone at eBay but with the magic of AI they've made it nearly impossible to reach a human there."

Hope you get this worked out to your satisfaction!