Sourcing comparison · Candles & Home Fragrance
Tariff & fee savings only, assuming equal product cost — your actual landed cost also depends on price and freight, which vary by supplier.
| Annual import value | Estimated duty & fee savings / year |
|---|---|
| $50,000 | $16,089 |
| $250,000 | $80,444 |
| $1,000,000 | $321,775 |
Savings scale linearly with volume. Enter your exact figure to model it precisely.
Calculate your exact volume →Buyers comparing China and Taiwan for candles & home fragrance are really comparing two very different duty stacks. At 40.5%, China sits well above Taiwan's 10%; on $100,000 of annual buying that difference is around $32,177. Two suppliers can quote the same factory price and still land at very different costs once Customs is done. The breakdown below itemises both duty stacks so the figure is auditable, not asserted.
Start with the two duty stacks side by side. Sourced from China, the goods face a 3% Most-Favoured-Nation base duty, a 25% Section 301 surcharge, and a 12.5% forced-labor Section 301 duty on its candles & home fragrance, an effective 40.5% once the $49.74 in processing fees are added. Taiwan-made goods carry a 3% Most-Favoured-Nation base duty and a 7% forced-labor Section 301 duty on its candles & home fragrance, an effective 10% once the $49.74 in processing fees are added. Because Section 301 adds 25% to China entries and nothing to Taiwan, that single measure accounts for most of the gap between the two stacks. Because the MPF and HMF ($49.74 combined) track customs value rather than origin, they wash out of the comparison entirely. That leaves a $3,217.75 gap on every $10,000 of goods, driven entirely by the 30.5% spread in effective duty rate. A $25,000 order therefore differs by about $8,044, and a $100,000 year by roughly $32,177. At order level, $25,000 of goods carries roughly $8,044 more duty from China than from Taiwan.
candles & home fragrance — Scented candles, Pillar candles, Tea lights, Incense sticks, Reed diffusers, Wax melts, and Air fresheners and similar goods — falls under HTS 3406, 3307. Demand for candles & home fragrance is broad and price-sensitive, which is exactly why a duty wedge of this size reshapes who can supply the US market competitively. In practical terms, candles of all types, incense, air fresheners, reed diffusers, and other home fragrance products for personal and commercial use. China's trade profile leans toward consumer electronics, computers servers, and clothing garments, and it sits in Asia-Pacific. China has no agreement to soften the stack, so its candles & home fragrance carries the full column-1 plus surcharge load. Taiwan (Asia-Pacific) sends the United States largely semiconductors chips, computers servers, and consumer electronics. Taiwan's bilateral deal sets a fixed rate on candles & home fragrance, a structurally different stack from origins without one. With both origins in Asia-Pacific, freight lanes and transit times are broadly similar, so duty is the cleanest variable to compare. Taiwan is surfaced as a credible alternative, not just the cheapest line — it is among the origins a US buyer of candles & home fragrance could realistically qualify. The figures here reflect the rules in force today; in a year of frequent revisions, the value is in re-running them as policy moves, which this site is built to do.
Anchor your own volume to these tiers: $16,089 at $50,000, $80,444 at $250,000, $321,775 at $1,000,000, and about $32,177 at $100,000. These are engine-computed stacks, not estimates: identical inputs on both sides except country of origin, so the gap is purely a duty result. These figures reflect tariff and fee savings only, assuming equal product cost — your actual landed cost also depends on price and freight, which vary by supplier. Read the $32,177 as a transition budget — if re-sourcing to Taiwan costs less than the annual saving, it pays back inside a year. Diligence on Taiwan is commercial, not regulatory: supplier capacity, MOQ, tooling and re-qualification cost — the duty advantage itself is already settled above. Because rates move, treat this as a point-in-time read and re-check before committing — new proclamations and bilateral deals can shift the stack with little notice. Use the Tariff Savings Finder to test your real numbers and see alternatives beyond Taiwan.
At $100,000 of annual import value, switching from China to Taiwan saves an estimated $32,177 in duties and fees, because the effective tariff rate falls from 40.5% to 10%. The saving scales linearly with volume. These figures reflect tariff and fee savings only, assuming equal product cost — your actual landed cost also depends on price and freight, which vary by supplier.
Taiwan-origin candles & home fragrance is assessed a 3% Most-Favoured-Nation base duty and a 7% forced-labor Section 301 duty, for an effective 10% duty rate before the Merchandise Processing Fee ($36.55) and Harbor Maintenance Fee ($13.19).
China carries an effective 40.5% rate versus 10% for Taiwan. The gap is driven mainly by the 25% Section 301 surcharge that applies to Chinese-origin goods and stacks on top of every other layer.
Tariff rates from Tax Foundation, USITC, and Penn Wharton Budget Model; retaliatory and industry data from the ITA Foreign Retaliations Database and U.S. Census Bureau (NAICS). Last verified .
