Sourcing comparison · Paper & Packaging
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 | $15,561 |
| $250,000 | $77,806 |
| $1,000,000 | $311,225 |
Savings scale linearly with volume. Enter your exact figure to model it precisely.
Calculate your exact volume →The cheapest factory for paper & packaging is no longer always the cheapest landed cost — tariffs have reshuffled the math. Sweden's 10% effective rate undercuts Brazil's 39.5% by enough to free roughly $31,122 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 duty layers tell the whole story of the gap. On the Brazil side, Customs applies a 2% Most-Favoured-Nation base duty, a 25% Section 301 surcharge, and a 12.5% forced-labor Section 301 duty on its paper & packaging, an effective 39.5% once the $49.74 in processing fees are added. A Sweden origin attracts a 2% Most-Favoured-Nation base duty and an 8% forced-labor Section 301 duty on its paper & packaging, an effective 10% once the $49.74 in processing fees are added. Brazil carries a 25% country-specific Section 301 duty, a punitive layer that compounds on top of the ordinary tariff and has no equivalent on the Sweden side. 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 $3,112.25 per $10,000 entry, all of it in the duty layers since the processing fees are origin-blind. That same per-dollar gap is about $7,781 on a $25,000 order and $31,122 on $100,000 of annual volume. Scaled to a single $25,000 PO, the gap is near $7,781, repeated on every reorder.
Within HTS 47, 48, 49, paper & packaging includes Corrugated cardboard, Kraft paper, Coated printing paper, Paper bags, Labels, Tissue paper, and Carton boxes. Because paper & packaging moves in volume, even a modest per-unit duty gap aggregates into a number that decides sourcing strategy. Paper, paperboard, cardboard, corrugated boxes, paper bags, labels, printed materials, and all forms of paper-based packaging for consumer and industrial use. A South America supplier, Brazil concentrates its US exports in steel iron products, crude oil petroleum, and fresh produce. Brazil has no agreement to soften the stack, so its paper & packaging carries the full column-1 plus surcharge load. Based in Europe, Sweden is best known to US importers for industrial machinery, passenger vehicles, and pharmaceuticals. Sweden trades under the EU bilateral framework, which shapes the duties on its paper & packaging. Spanning South America and Europe, the two lanes differ in freight and transit, so weigh those against the duty saving. Sweden is surfaced as a credible alternative, not just the cheapest line — it is among the origins a US buyer of paper & packaging could realistically qualify. 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 $31,122 at $100,000; because the rate gap is fixed, larger programs scale cleanly — $15,561, $77,806, and $311,225 at $50,000, $250,000, and $1,000,000. The numbers come straight from the landed-cost engine, with product cost and shipping fixed across both origins to isolate the tariff difference. 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 Sweden charges from the duty saving to get the true net benefit before deciding. A quick checklist for the Sweden 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.
At $100,000 of annual import value, switching from Brazil to Sweden saves an estimated $31,122 in duties and fees, because the effective tariff rate falls from 39.5% 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.
Sweden-origin paper & packaging is assessed a 2% Most-Favoured-Nation base duty and an 8% forced-labor Section 301 duty, for an effective 10% duty rate before the Merchandise Processing Fee ($36.55) and Harbor Maintenance Fee ($13.19).
Brazil carries an effective 39.5% rate versus 10% for Sweden. 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 .
