Sourcing comparison · Personal Care Products
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 | $17,144 |
| $250,000 | $85,719 |
| $1,000,000 | $342,875 |
Savings scale linearly with volume. Enter your exact figure to model it precisely.
Calculate your exact volume →The cheapest factory for personal care products is no longer always the cheapest landed cost — tariffs have reshuffled the math. China carries roughly 42.5% in duties and fees against 10% for Taiwan, a spread worth near $34,288 on $100,000 of annual volume. Where a competitor's margin erodes on the same tariff, a buyer who re-sources keeps the difference. Each component of the two stacks is detailed below, alongside what it means for a real sourcing decision.
The duty layers tell the whole story of the gap. On the China side, Customs applies a 5% Most-Favoured-Nation base duty, a 25% Section 301 surcharge, and a 12.5% forced-labor Section 301 duty on its personal care products, an effective 42.5% once the $49.74 in processing fees are added. Sourced from Taiwan, the goods face a 5% Most-Favoured-Nation base duty and a 5% forced-labor Section 301 duty on its personal care products, an effective 10% once the $49.74 in processing fees are added. Section 301's 25% origin-specific charge is what separates the two origins; strip it out and the stacks would look far closer. Because the MPF and HMF ($49.74 combined) track customs value rather than origin, they wash out of the comparison entirely. The arithmetic difference between the stacks is $3,428.75 per $10,000 entry, all of it in the duty layers since the processing fees are origin-blind. Scaled up, expect near $8,572 per $25,000 order and around $34,288 once annual buying reaches $100,000. At order level, $25,000 of goods carries roughly $8,572 more duty from China than from Taiwan.
Classified in HTS chapter 3303, 3304, 3305, 3306, 3307, personal care products spans products like Skincare, Cosmetics, Haircare, Perfume, Toothpaste, Soap, and Razors. Demand for personal care products is broad and price-sensitive, which is exactly why a duty wedge of this size reshapes who can supply the US market competitively. Perfumes, cosmetics, skincare products, haircare products, oral care products, soaps, and personal hygiene articles for consumer use. A Asia-Pacific supplier, China concentrates its US exports in consumer electronics, computers servers, and clothing garments. With no preferential deal in force, China personal care products faces the standard rates plus any applicable surcharge. 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 applies on personal care products entries alongside the base and Section 232/301 layers, now that Section 122 has lapsed to 0%. With both origins in Asia-Pacific, freight lanes and transit times are broadly similar, so duty is the cleanest variable to compare. Taiwan is surfaced as a credible alternative, not just the cheapest line — it is among the origins a US buyer of personal care products could realistically qualify. 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 $34,288 at $100,000; because the rate gap is fixed, larger programs scale cleanly — $17,144, $85,719, and $342,875 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 Taiwan charges from the duty saving to get the true net benefit before deciding. A quick checklist for the Taiwan 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. Because rates move, treat this as a point-in-time read and re-check before committing — new proclamations and bilateral deals can shift the stack with little notice. 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 Taiwan saves an estimated $34,288 in duties and fees, because the effective tariff rate falls from 42.5% 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.
Taiwan-origin personal care products is assessed a 5% Most-Favoured-Nation base duty and a 5% forced-labor Section 301 duty, for an effective 10% duty rate before the Merchandise Processing Fee ($36.55) and Harbor Maintenance Fee ($13.19).
China carries an effective 42.5% rate versus 10% for Taiwan. 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 .
