Sourcing comparison · Coffee & Tea
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 | $1,319 |
| $250,000 | $6,594 |
| $1,000,000 | $26,375 |
Savings scale linearly with volume. Enter your exact figure to model it precisely.
Calculate your exact volume →For US importers of coffee & tea, country of origin has quietly become the biggest line item you can actually negotiate. Vietnam carries roughly 12.5% in duties and fees against 10% for India, a spread worth near $2,638 on $100,000 of annual volume. Where a competitor's margin erodes on the same tariff, a buyer who re-sources keeps the difference. Read on for the full stack comparison, the policy reasons behind the gap, and a scaling table for your own volume.
The duty layers tell the whole story of the gap. On the Vietnam side, Customs applies a 12.5% forced-labor Section 301 duty on its coffee & tea, an effective 12.5% once the $49.74 in processing fees are added. Sourced from India, the goods face a 10% forced-labor Section 301 duty on its coffee & tea, 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. That leaves a $263.75 gap on every $10,000 of goods, driven entirely by the 2.5% spread in effective duty rate. Multiply across your volume and it is near $659 for $25,000 and about $2,638 for $100,000 a year. A buyer placing $25,000 orders sees about $659 of avoidable duty on each one.
Coffee & Tea (HTS 0901, 0902) covers items such as Green coffee beans, Roasted coffee, Instant coffee, Black tea, Green tea, Herbal tea, and Coffee pods. Demand for coffee & tea is broad and price-sensitive, which is exactly why a duty wedge of this size reshapes who can supply the US market competitively. On the pricing side, coffee and tea are duty-free at MFN, and Section 122 lapsed to 0% on July 24, 2026 and adds nothing regardless of origin; US coffee prices are primarily driven by commodity markets and logistics costs. A Asia-Pacific supplier, Vietnam concentrates its US exports in consumer electronics, clothing garments, and footwear. For Vietnam, a negotiated bilateral rate applies on coffee & tea entries alongside the base and Section 232/301 layers, now that Section 122 has lapsed to 0%. Based in Asia-Pacific, India is best known to US importers for pharmaceutical ingredients, generic drugs, and clothing garments. India's bilateral deal sets a fixed rate on coffee & tea, a structurally different stack from origins without one. Because both sit in Asia-Pacific, a switch barely changes the freight picture and mostly changes the duty bill. The recommendation is filtered to feasible suppliers, so India appears because it plausibly makes coffee & tea, not merely because its rate is low. With the US running its highest average tariff in decades, concentrated exposure to one high-duty origin is now a measurable annual cost rather than an abstract risk.
The headline is $2,638 at $100,000; because the rate gap is fixed, larger programs scale cleanly — $1,319, $6,594, and $26,375 at $50,000, $250,000, and $1,000,000. Every figure is produced by the same tariff engine behind the site's calculators, holding FOB value, freight and insurance constant so only the duty effect of origin shows through. 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. Subtract any per-unit premium India charges from the duty saving to get the true net benefit before deciding. A quick checklist for the India option: match the HTS classification, get a quote that itemises duty apart from freight, and check for any antidumping or countervailing order on your item. Re-run the figures close to your decision: the duty landscape for coffee & tea has shifted repeatedly through the year. Model your exact volume and compare further origins in the interactive Tariff Savings Finder.
At $100,000 of annual import value, switching from Vietnam to India saves an estimated $2,638 in duties and fees, because the effective tariff rate falls from 12.5% 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.
India-origin coffee & tea is assessed a 10% forced-labor Section 301 duty, for an effective 10% duty rate before the Merchandise Processing Fee ($36.55) and Harbor Maintenance Fee ($13.19).
Vietnam carries an effective 12.5% rate versus 10% for India. 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 .
