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 | $1,583 |
| $250,000 | $7,913 |
| $1,000,000 | $31,650 |
Savings scale linearly with volume. Enter your exact figure to model it precisely.
Calculate your exact volume →When candles & home fragrance crosses a US border, where it was made now decides a surprising share of what it costs. India carries roughly 13% in duties and fees against 10% for Germany, a spread worth near $3,165 on $100,000 of annual volume. Origin is one of the few cost levers a US importer controls outright, and it has rarely mattered more. Each component of the two stacks is detailed below, alongside what it means for a real sourcing decision.
The duty layers tell the whole story of the gap. On the India side, Customs applies a 3% Most-Favoured-Nation base duty and a 10% forced-labor Section 301 duty on its candles & home fragrance, an effective 13% once the $49.74 in processing fees are added. Shipped out of Germany, the product is hit with 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. The $49.74 in processing and harbor fees is the same on both sides, leaving the duty layers as the only mover of the gap. Subtract one stack from the other and $316.50 per $10,000 shipment separates the two origins. Across a year that is roughly $791 on a $25,000 purchase order and about $3,165 on a $100,000 program. At order level, $25,000 of goods carries roughly $791 more duty from India than from Germany.
Candles & Home Fragrance (HTS 3406, 3307) covers items such as Scented candles, Pillar candles, Tea lights, Incense sticks, Reed diffusers, Wax melts, and Air fresheners. For candles & home fragrance, where buyers reorder frequently, the duty rate compounds into one of the largest controllable costs on the P&L. Concretely, what counts as candles & home fragrance: candles of all types, incense, air fresheners, reed diffusers, and other home fragrance products for personal and commercial use. A Asia-Pacific supplier, India concentrates its US exports in pharmaceutical ingredients, generic drugs, and clothing garments. India trades under a bilateral arrangement that sets a fixed rate on candles & home fragrance alongside the standard duty layers. Based in Europe, Germany is best known to US importers for passenger vehicles, industrial machinery, and pharmaceuticals. Germany trades under the EU bilateral framework, which shapes the duties on its candles & home fragrance. Spanning Asia-Pacific and Europe, the two lanes differ in freight and transit, so weigh those against the duty saving. Germany 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.
For $100,000 a year of candles & home fragrance, the move from India to Germany is worth about $3,165, scaling to $1,583 at $50,000, $7,913 at $250,000, and $31,650 at $1,000,000. The comparison is generated by running the same inputs through the tariff engine for each origin, which keeps everything but the duty layers equal. 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. Treat the annual saving as the ceiling on switching cost: as long as moving to Germany costs less than that, the change is accretive. Request parallel quotes from your India incumbent and a vetted Germany source, then compare landed cost with the duty gap held constant. Lock the comparison to a quote date; a surcharge added or lifted can change the ranking between negotiation and purchase order. Run your own volume — and a post-Section-122 view — through the interactive Tariff Savings Finder.
At $100,000 of annual import value, switching from India to Germany saves an estimated $3,165 in duties and fees, because the effective tariff rate falls from 13% 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.
Germany-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).
India carries an effective 13% rate versus 10% for Germany. The gap comes from differences in the base, Section 232 and bilateral rates that apply to each origin.
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 .
