Written for people who are not importers
Almost everything published about how to import from China to the USA is written by companies that move freight. That gives you excellent explanations of what happens to a container and very little about what happens to you — the bond in your name, the debt that attaches on arrival, the money you wired to a company you have never met.
These pages cover the second thing. Every regulatory claim on them is sourced to CBP, the Federal Register or the Code of Federal Regulations, carries the date it was checked, and has a date by which it gets checked again.
Read this first
None of it lands on you if you buy through us
Fair question to ask before reading a set of pages about things that go wrong: if Ocean Transport USA handles the whole process, why are we telling you about all this?
Because every row in the left column below is real, and it is what you take on the moment you decide to import rather than buy. You should know what you are handing over. The right column is what actually reaches you.
| If you import it yourself | If you buy it from us | |
|---|---|---|
| Importer of record | You. The duty is a personal debt in your name and a broker does not absorb it | Us. You are buying goods from a Florida company |
| Customs bond | Yours to apply for, be underwritten for, and pay for. $50,000 minimum on a continuous bond | Ours. You never speak to a surety |
| Classification | Yours to get right, under a legal standard of reasonable care, and yours to defend if CBP disagrees | Ours — and ours to be wrong about |
| The ISF deadline | 24 hours before loading, overseas. $5,000 per violation with no published cap | Ours, filed against our bond |
| Choosing an Incoterm | Yours, and getting it wrong moves risk an ocean away from where you thought it was | Not a question you are asked. One delivered price |
| FCL or LCL | Your call, your arithmetic, and your problem when a stranger’s cargo holds the container | Ours to work out. You order a quantity, not a container |
| Duty and the federal fees | A separate bill, at a rate you may not know until the entry is filed | Inside the price we quoted you. One number, agreed before you commit |
| Paying the factory | Your money, wired overseas, before you have seen anything | Our money. You pay a US company on a US invoice |
| Goods not as agreed | Your argument to have, in a foreign jurisdiction, having already paid | Our problem. We check before loading; wrong or damaged on arrival gets replaced |
| Loss or damage at sea | Yours. The carrier’s liability is capped at $500 per package | Ours. The goods belong to us until they reach your door |
| Demurrage and detention | Yours, accruing daily, on a clock nobody tells you has started | Ours. It is our container sitting there |
| What you actually do | All of the above | Approve a price. Take delivery. |
That is the entire product. Not freight — freight is a line item inside it. What you are buying is the removal of every row in the middle column, and a Florida company standing behind the result.
The guides
What the middle column actually involves
Each one explains a single thing properly, then ends with what it looks like when it is ours instead of yours.
Who the importer of record is, and what they carry
The legal position at the centre of every commercial import. Why the duty is a personal debt, why a customs broker does not absorb it, and why a “DDP” price from an overseas supplier is worth less than it sounds.
Importer of record vs customs broker vs sourcing agent
Who owns the goods, who owes the duty, who you pay and who you can hold to it — the four roles between you and a factory in Asia, side by side, and which one a first order actually needs.
The $800 de minimis rule is gone
The de minimis exemption is suspended indefinitely. What now applies to the small shipments that used to enter free, and why the change falls hardest on the smallest buyers.
Do you need a customs bond?
What a bond actually guarantees — which is not you — the difference between single and continuous, the current CBP formula, and the three cases where a small shipment still needs one.
If a Chinese supplier takes your money and doesn’t ship
Why recovery across jurisdictions rarely pays for itself, what Trade Assurance and staged payment are really worth, and the failure that is far more common than outright theft.
Landed cost: what it costs to land a container
Every line in the stack, the formula with a worked example, the two federal fees stated exactly, demurrage and detention explained properly — and two traps that are pure arithmetic.
Who pays tariffs on imports?
The importer of record, as a personal debt — not the exporter and not the buyer. What a China tariff is made of as of September 2026, who gets the refund when one is struck down, and why none of it reaches you on our orders.
Incoterms explained, without the jargon
EXW, FOB, CIF and DDP — where risk really passes, why FOB does not fit containers, and the reason a US buyer reads “FOB” wrong more often than anyone else.
FCL or LCL — which does your order need?
The crossover is arithmetic, not a rule. How LCL is really priced, the hostage problem nobody warns you about, and the road weight limit that makes a container’s rating 60% higher than what you can legally truck.
Three ways to buy from Asia
Direct, through a forwarder, or buying delivered goods from a US company — including the cases where we are the wrong choice.
Questions people ask
How do I import from China to the USA?
As the importer of record you classify the goods, file an Importer Security Filing 24 hours before an ocean shipment is loaded, file the entry — with a customs bond for any formal entry — and pay the duty and the federal fees, and the duty is a personal debt in your name. The alternative is to buy the goods from a US company that imports them under its own name, which is what Ocean Transport USA does.
How much does it cost to import from China?
The goods, plus origin charges, ocean freight, insurance, duty at your product’s classification rate, the Merchandise Processing Fee and Harbor Maintenance Fee, broker and bond costs, and delivery. The landed-cost guide goes through every line, with a worked example.
Do I need a customs bond to import from China?
For any formal entry, yes — generally any shipment valued at $2,500 or more — and on ocean freight an Importer Security Filing is required whatever the value. When you buy from Ocean Transport USA the bond and the filings are ours.
None of this is legal or customs advice, and classification in particular is a job for a licensed customs broker who can see your actual product. What these pages are for is knowing which questions matter before you are the one being asked them.