Sourcing comparison · Passenger Vehicles
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 →If your passenger vehicles currently ships from Germany, the duty bill is worth a second look. United Kingdom's 10% effective rate undercuts Germany's 15% by enough to free roughly $5,275 a year at $100,000 of volume. Two suppliers can quote the same factory price and still land at very different costs once Customs is done. Below, each tariff layer is laid out for both origins, with the saving scaled to several order sizes.
The duty layers tell the whole story of the gap. From Germany, the entry is assessed a 2.5% Most-Favoured-Nation base duty and a 12.5% Section 232 measure on its passenger vehicles, an effective 15% once the $49.74 in processing fees are added. Sourced from United Kingdom, the goods face a 2.5% Most-Favoured-Nation base duty and a 7.5% Section 232 measure on its passenger vehicles, an effective 10% once the $49.74 in processing fees are added. Section 232 is not the same on both sides here: Germany is charged 12.5% and United Kingdom 7.5%, so this layer is part of the gap. Because the MPF and HMF ($49.74 combined) track customs value rather than origin, they wash out of the comparison entirely. The per-shipment gap comes to $527.50 on $10,000 of goods — a clean read on the 5% rate difference. A $25,000 order therefore differs by about $1,319, and a $100,000 year by roughly $5,275. A buyer placing $25,000 orders sees about $1,319 of avoidable duty on each one.
Within HTS 8703, passenger vehicles includes Sedans, SUVs, Minivans, Electric vehicles, Luxury cars, Pickup trucks, and Crossovers. The US imports passenger vehicles at scale, so the origin mix for this category is unusually sensitive to tariff policy. A USMCA claim does not remove the Section 232 duty on passenger vehicles: a Canada or Mexico claimant pays it on full customs value, on top of the USMCA rate (U.S. note 33(a)). Commerce can approve an individual vehicle to pay it only on its non-U.S. content (note 33(d), heading 9903.94.03), but approval is per vehicle and this site does not model it. Partner agreements set a ceiling instead for some origins: Japan, the EU member states and South Korea pay a total of 15 percent including the column 1 rate, and the United Kingdom pays 7.5 percent on top of the column 1 rate within its annual quota (U.S. note 33(i), (k) to (s)). 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 passenger vehicles. A Europe supplier, United Kingdom concentrates its US exports in pharmaceuticals, passenger vehicles, and industrial machinery. Absent a trade deal, United Kingdom's passenger vehicles is assessed standard duties and whatever surcharges apply. Because both sit in Europe, a switch barely changes the freight picture and mostly changes the duty bill. The recommendation is filtered to feasible suppliers, so United Kingdom appears because it plausibly makes passenger vehicles, 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.
For $100,000 a year of passenger vehicles, the move from Germany to United Kingdom is worth about $5,275, scaling to $2,638 at $50,000, $13,188 at $250,000, and $52,750 at $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. Treat the annual saving as the ceiling on switching cost: as long as moving to United Kingdom costs less than that, the change is accretive. Request parallel quotes from your Germany incumbent and a vetted United Kingdom source, then compare landed cost with the duty gap held constant. The saving is current today; given the pace of 2026 revisions, verify it again at contract signing. 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 Germany to United Kingdom saves an estimated $5,275 in duties and fees, because the effective tariff rate falls from 15% 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.
United Kingdom-origin passenger vehicles is assessed a 2.5% Most-Favoured-Nation base duty and a 7.5% Section 232 measure, for an effective 10% duty rate before the Merchandise Processing Fee ($36.55) and Harbor Maintenance Fee ($13.19).
Germany carries an effective 15% rate versus 10% for United Kingdom. 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 .
