Tariff

A tariff is a government tax on imported goods, collected by U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) when the goods enter the country. Strictly speaking, the "tariff" is the published rate in the Harmonized Tariff Schedule (HTS), while the "duty" is the actual dollar amount you pay once that rate is applied to your shipment's customs value — people use the words interchangeably, but that is the technical distinction. For example, importing $10,000 of furniture with a 25% Section 301 tariff produces $2,500 of duty owed to CBP. Tariffs matter because they are paid by the U.S. importer of record (not the foreign seller), they stack in a defined order (MFN base, then trade-remedy layers like Section 232/301), and they are the single largest controllable line in your landed cost.