Sourcing comparison · LED & Lighting Equipment
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 | $2,638 |
| $250,000 | $13,188 |
| $1,000,000 | $52,750 |
Savings scale linearly with volume. Enter your exact figure to model it precisely.
Calculate your exact volume →The cheapest factory for led & lighting equipment is no longer always the cheapest landed cost — tariffs have reshuffled the math. Germany's 14% effective rate undercuts Taiwan's 19% by enough to free roughly $5,275 a year at $100,000 of 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.
Both stacks share the same customs valuation, so the comparison is apples to apples. On the Taiwan side, Customs applies a 4% Most-Favoured-Nation base duty and a 15% negotiated bilateral rate on its led & lighting equipment, an effective 19% once the $49.74 in processing fees are added. Sourced from Germany, the goods face a 4% Most-Favoured-Nation base duty and a 10% Section 122 reciprocal surcharge on its led & lighting equipment, an effective 14% once the $49.74 in processing fees are added. Section 122 adds a reciprocal duty that one origin escapes via a bilateral deal — a meaningful but expiring factor in the current gap. The Merchandise Processing Fee and Harbor Maintenance Fee are charged on customs value, not origin, so they sit at $49.74 on either stack and never contribute to the gap. Subtract one stack from the other and $527.50 per $10,000 shipment separates the two origins. Across a year that is roughly $1,319 on a $25,000 purchase order and about $5,275 on a $100,000 program. Scaled to a single $25,000 PO, the gap is near $1,319, repeated on every reorder.
The category, HTS 8539, 9405, takes in LED bulbs, LED tube lights, Commercial luminaires, and LED strips among other led & lighting equipment. Because led & lighting equipment moves in volume, even a modest per-unit duty gap aggregates into a number that decides sourcing strategy. Based in Asia-Pacific, Taiwan is best known to US importers for semiconductors chips, computers servers, and consumer electronics. For Taiwan, a negotiated bilateral rate stands in for Section 122, changing the math on led & lighting equipment entries. 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 led & lighting equipment. Different regions — Asia-Pacific versus Europe — mean shipping economics deserve a look beside the tariff math. The recommendation is filtered to feasible suppliers, so Germany appears because it plausibly makes led & lighting equipment, not merely because its rate is low. 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.
The headline is $5,275 at $100,000; because the rate gap is fixed, larger programs scale cleanly — $2,638, $13,188, and $52,750 at $50,000, $250,000, and $1,000,000. 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. Subtract any per-unit premium Germany charges from the duty saving to get the true net benefit before deciding. A quick checklist for the Germany 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. The saving is current today; given the pace of 2026 revisions, verify it again at contract signing. Model your exact volume and compare further origins in the interactive Tariff Savings Finder. One origin still carries the Section 122 surcharge, due to expire mid-2026; the ranking can shift once it lapses.
At $100,000 of annual import value, switching from Taiwan to Germany saves an estimated $5,275 in duties and fees, because the effective tariff rate falls from 19% to 14%. 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 led & lighting equipment is assessed a 4% Most-Favoured-Nation base duty and a 10% Section 122 reciprocal surcharge, for an effective 14% duty rate before the Merchandise Processing Fee ($36.55) and Harbor Maintenance Fee ($13.19).
Taiwan carries an effective 19% rate versus 14% for Germany. The gap comes from differences in the base, Section 122, Section 232 and bilateral rates that apply to each origin.
Possibly. One of these origins currently carries the Section 122 reciprocal surcharge, which is scheduled to expire in mid-2026. The Tariff Savings Finder lets you toggle a post-expiry view to see whether the ranking shifts once that surcharge is removed.
Tariff rates from Tax Foundation, USITC, and Penn Wharton Budget Model. Last verified May 13, 2026.
