Sourcing comparison · Commercial Trucks
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 | $13,188 |
| $250,000 | $65,938 |
| $1,000,000 | $263,750 |
Savings scale linearly with volume. Enter your exact figure to model it precisely.
Calculate your exact volume →For US importers of commercial trucks, country of origin has quietly become the biggest line item you can actually negotiate. Canada's 50% effective rate undercuts China's 75% by enough to free roughly $26,375 a year at $100,000 of 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 gap is easiest to see by walking each origin's tariffs in turn. From China, the entry is assessed a 25% Most-Favoured-Nation base duty, a 25% Section 232 measure, and a 25% Section 301 surcharge on its commercial trucks, an effective 75% once the $49.74 in processing fees are added. Shipped out of Canada, the product is hit with a 25% Most-Favoured-Nation base duty and a 25% Section 232 measure on its commercial trucks, an effective 50% once the $49.74 in processing fees are added. Section 301 does the damage here — 25% levied specifically on China shipments, stacked above the base and special-tariff layers rather than replacing them. A 25% Section 232 measure falls on the product class on both sides here, a fixed weight that shifts the absolute cost more than the comparison. Processing and harbor fees apply identically whichever country ships the goods ($49.74 here), confirming the saving is pure duty, not fee. The arithmetic difference between the stacks is $2,637.50 per $10,000 entry, all of it in the duty layers since the processing fees are origin-blind. A $25,000 order therefore differs by about $6,594, and a $100,000 year by roughly $26,375. On a $25,000 purchase order that is about $6,594 of duty difference — the kind of figure that shows up directly in a quarter's gross margin.
Within HTS 8704, commercial trucks includes Semi-trucks (Class 8), Medium-duty trucks, Pickup trucks (>6000 lb), Dump trucks, Flatbed trucks, and Refrigerated trucks. Commercial Trucks is a high-turnover category where landed-cost discipline separates the importers who hold margin from those who don't. On the pricing side, the 25% 'chicken tax' on light trucks has long protected US pickup truck manufacturers; imported commercial trucks carry substantial baseline duty costs. From Asia-Pacific, China's top US-bound categories include consumer electronics, computers servers, and clothing garments. With no preferential deal in force, China commercial trucks faces the standard rates plus any applicable surcharge. A North America supplier, Canada concentrates its US exports in crude oil petroleum, passenger vehicles, and lumber wood products. Through USMCA, qualifying Canada commercial trucks can get the USMCA rate in place of MFN, yet the 25% Section 232 duty survives the claim, because the tariff schedule collects it in addition to any special rate. Spanning Asia-Pacific and North America, the two lanes differ in freight and transit, so weigh those against the duty saving. Canada clears this category at a structurally lower rate than China, an edge that persists across order cycles rather than a spot-price blip. US tariff policy in 2026 is unusually fluid, with effective rates on many categories changing several times a year — a reason to treat any origin comparison as a live calculation rather than a fixed sheet.
The headline is $26,375 at $100,000; because the rate gap is fixed, larger programs scale cleanly — $13,188, $65,938, and $263,750 at $50,000, $250,000, and $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. Subtract any per-unit premium Canada charges from the duty saving to get the true net benefit before deciding. A quick checklist for the Canada 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 commercial trucks 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 China to Canada saves an estimated $26,375 in duties and fees, because the effective tariff rate falls from 75% to 50%. 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.
Canada-origin commercial trucks is assessed a 25% Most-Favoured-Nation base duty and a 25% Section 232 measure, for an effective 50% duty rate before the Merchandise Processing Fee ($36.55) and Harbor Maintenance Fee ($13.19).
China carries an effective 75% rate versus 50% for Canada. 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 .
