Who pays tariffs on imports?

The question behind every 2026 price increase

Who pays tariffs on imports? Exactly one party pays them to US Customs and Border Protection: the importer of record named on the entry. Not the exporter, not the factory, not the foreign government, and not the buyer who ends up with the goods — unless the buyer is also the importer.

Everything else people mean when they ask who pays for tariffs is about what happens to that cost afterwards: whether the seller lowers the price to absorb it, whether the importer passes it on, whether a refund ever comes back. Those are commercial questions. The legal one has a one-line answer, and it decides all the rest.

Who pays at the border

The importer of record makes the entry and is liable for the duty. The statute puts the obligation to make entry on the “importer of record” (19 U.S.C. § 1484), and the regulation is blunter about what that means:

The liability for duties, both regular and additional, attaching on importation, constitutes a personal debt due from the importer to the United States…19 CFR § 141.1(b)(1)

“Additional” is doing a lot of work in that sentence. It covers every layer stacked on top of the ordinary rate — the Section 301 duties, the Section 232 duties, anti-dumping and countervailing duties where they apply. All of it is the importer’s debt, and it is due whether or not the importer has been paid by anyone downstream. Who the importer of record is, and what they carry goes through the position in full.

Does the exporter ever pay?

Not to CBP. An overseas seller can agree to sell you the goods cheaper so that, after the duty, you are where you were before — that is a price negotiation, and it happens. What the seller cannot do is take the debt off the entry. If the seller offers to handle the duty by quoting “DDP”, they are offering to be the importer of record themselves, and a non-resident company usually cannot: it needs a resident agent, a bond written by a US surety, and — since Executive Order 14411 — a tightening set of asset and validation requirements. What often happens instead is that a US party ends up named on the entry without having decided to be.

So the honest version of “the exporter pays the tariff” is: the exporter may lower the price by some of it. The importer still pays all of it.

Who pays tariffs — the importer or the customer?

The importer pays CBP. Whether the customer pays the importer is a question about the price, and it is answered differently on every order: some importers absorb the duty, some pass it through as a surcharge, most do something in between and change their minds when the rate changes. The one thing a buyer can be sure of is that a price quoted “plus duty at cost” is a price they do not yet know.

On an order from us the answer is fixed before you agree to anything: the goods are ours when they are entered, the duty is our debt, and it is already inside the one delivered price on the quote. If the rate goes up between the quote and the entry, the price you accepted is still the price.

Tariffs on Chinese imports, as of September 2026

This is the part that changes, so it is dated and it is checked. These are the layers that can apply to goods from China, and the one that no longer does.

• The ordinary duty. The rate for the ten-digit classification of your product, from the Harmonized Tariff Schedule. It can be zero, and it can be high; it is the one layer that depends entirely on what the product is. We do not print rates on this site, for the reasons given on the landed-cost guide.
• Section 301 duties. The China-specific duties in force since 2018–19, at rates that vary by product list. On top of them, from 24 July 2026, an additional 12.5% applies to goods from China under the new Section 301 action on forced-labour import bans (60 economies; 10% or 12.5% depending on the economy; 91 FR 47318, 28 July 2026). That action took effect the day the temporary Section 122 surcharge of 10% expired, and it excludes goods already subject to Section 232.
• Section 232 duties. On steel, aluminium, copper and their derivative articles, and on other sectors covered by their own proclamations. Product-specific; they apply by what the article is, not where it comes from.
• Anti-dumping and countervailing duties. Orders on particular products from particular countries, sometimes from particular producers — and on some goods from China they come to more than every other layer combined. None of it shows in a country’s headline tariff rate, which is why this is the layer to check before a product is bought rather than after it lands.
• What no longer applies. The tariffs imposed under the International Emergency Economic Powers Act — the “reciprocal” rates of April 2025 and the earlier China, Canada and Mexico duties — were struck down by the Supreme Court on 20 February 2026 (Learning Resources, Inc. v. Trump) and are not collected. Refunds of what was paid run through the Court of International Trade and CBP, and they go to the importers of record who paid them.

Two smaller lines are fees rather than tariffs and apply on every entry regardless: the Merchandise Processing Fee and the Harbor Maintenance Fee, both calculated on value. And the $800 de minimis exemption that used to let small shipments in without any of this remains suspended.

Who gets the refund when a tariff is struck down?

The party that paid it: the importer of record, through the entry it was paid on. A buyer who paid a delivered price that had the tariff inside it has no claim against CBP, because the buyer never paid CBP anything. That cuts both ways. If you were the importer, the refund is yours to claim and yours to wait for. If you bought delivered goods at a fixed price, the price was the price — the duty was never your debt, and neither is the refund.

What it means for a small order

A first order used to slip in under the $800 exemption and never meet any of this. It now meets all of it: an entry, a bond, the classification decision, the duty stack above, and the two fees — on a shipment that may be worth a few thousand dollars. The arithmetic is on the landed-cost guide; the liability is on the importer-of-record guide; and the way to have neither is below.

Questions people ask

Checked 19 U.S.C. 1484, 19 CFR 141.1, 91 FR 47318 (Section 301 action effective 24 July 2026), and Learning Resources, Inc. v. Trump (Supreme Court, 20 February 2026) verified on September 22, 2026. Due for review by November 6, 2026.