ReifCo / Market Desk
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Duty rates, freight benchmarks, and the headlines that move landed cost. We built this because we check these things every week ourselves and got tired of five tabs. Use it, bookmark it, send it to whoever on your team owns landed cost.
Live against the USITC Harmonized Tariff Schedule. Public data, no account required.
Reference only, and not a classification opinion. The rate that applies to your shipment depends on country of origin, trade program eligibility, and Chapter 99 overlays including Section 301 and Section 232 actions that this lookup flags but does not price. Confirm every classification with a licensed customs broker before you file. Source: USITC Harmonized Tariff Schedule.
The lane most DTC inventory moves on. Daily, externally audited spot benchmark, rolling three months. If this has fallen well below where your contract was struck, you have a conversation to open.
The East Coast comparison. Read it against FBX01 rather than on its own. When the two spread wide, the all in cost of routing through a different coast has changed and your port strategy is worth revisiting.
Note this is a global composite rather than a lane, so read it for direction only and do not line it up against the two ocean charts. Useful when you are deciding whether to expedite a launch or eat the stockout, which is a stockout math question rather than a freight one.
Freight fees only. Customs brokerage is not included, which is exactly the gap that makes landed cost models wrong. Use it to sanity check a forwarder quote before you accept it.
FBX is published by Freightos in cooperation with the Baltic Exchange; FAX is the Freightos Air Index. Both are shown through Freightos' own free embed rather than reproduced, which is the licensed way to display them. Ocean rates are port to port for a forty foot equivalent unit and exclude duties, terminal handling, drayage, demurrage, and detention. The estimator covers freight fees only and excludes customs brokerage.
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Headlines link straight to the publisher. We do not reproduce article text. Where you see an operator note, that is our own read on why the item matters to a DTC cost structure, written by hand. For the weekly version with sourcing and dollar context, subscribe to The Weekly Edge.
Operator notes
Ten digits, and each pair does a different job. Most people classifying for the first time assume the whole number is negotiable. Only part of it is.
Two products that look identical on a shelf can sit in different subheadings because of fiber content, construction, or intended use. That is where tariff engineering lives, and it is legitimate when the classification is honest.
Duty is assessed on customs value, which for most US imports is transaction value, meaning the price actually paid or payable for the goods.
This is worth internalizing: unlike many countries that assess on a CIF basis, the United States generally excludes international freight and insurance from dutiable value. Your ocean rate is not in your duty base. That changes the math on a lot of sourcing decisions.
Qualifying for a Special rate is not automatic. It depends on origin rules and documentation, and claiming one you cannot support is a penalty exposure rather than a savings.
A product can show a low general duty and still land at a much higher effective rate, because of Chapter 99 overlays that sit on top of the base classification.
Both change frequently, and rates, exclusions, and covered lists move faster than any page can be kept current. The lookup above flags likely exposure. It does not price it. Verify against the current schedule and CBP guidance before you build a landed cost model on it.
Published container indices are port to port benchmarks for a forty foot equivalent unit. They exclude duty, terminal handling, drayage, customs clearance, demurrage, and detention. Your forwarder quote usually bundles several of those.
So do not treat the index as a price you should be paying. Treat it as direction and as leverage. If the benchmark on your lane has fallen thirty percent since your contract was struck and your rate has not moved, you have a conversation to open. That is the entire use case.
The same logic runs the other way. When the benchmark climbs sharply and your contracted rate holds, that is your procurement team earning its keep, and it is worth saying so out loud.
Common questions
An HTS code is the ten digit number identifying a product in the US Harmonized Tariff Schedule, and it determines the duty rate. The first six digits are the international Harmonized System code used by most trading nations. Digits seven and eight are the US subheading that sets the rate. Digits nine and ten are a statistical suffix used for trade data rather than duty.
Duty is generally assessed on customs value, which for most US imports is transaction value, the price actually paid or payable for the merchandise. Unlike many countries that assess on a CIF basis, the United States generally excludes international freight and insurance from dutiable value. The rate that applies then depends on the classification, the country of origin, any trade program the goods qualify for, and any Chapter 99 overlay.
Section 301 of the Trade Act of 1974 lets the US Trade Representative impose tariffs in response to unfair foreign trade practices, and has been used most prominently against goods from China. Section 232 of the Trade Expansion Act of 1962 lets the President impose tariffs on national security grounds, used most prominently on steel, aluminum, and derivative products. Both apply through Chapter 99, which is why a product can carry a low general rate and still land much higher.
Published container indices are port to port benchmarks for a forty foot equivalent unit and exclude duties, terminal handling, drayage, customs clearance, demurrage, and detention. A forwarder quote usually bundles several of those. The index is useful for direction and for negotiating leverage, not as a line item you should expect to pay.
No. This desk is a reference tool built by an operations executive, not a licensed customs broker, and nothing here is a classification opinion or legal advice. Use it to get oriented and to ask your broker better questions. File on your broker's determination.
If the numbers above are the problem
ReifCo is fractional operations leadership for scaling DTC brands. 3PL contract audits, cost to serve rebuilds, carrier re bids, WMS selection, and in house build decisions. Run by a sitting operator, not a former one.