Market Data

The Tariff Quoting Playbook: Pricing Duty Risk Without Guessing

Duty risk doesn't belong in the margin line. A working method for quoting it explicitly, with current effective rates.

The worst place to discover a tariff is in the margin review after the job ships. The second worst is in a quote that padded 25% "to be safe" and lost the work. The fix is neither: quote the effective rate for the material's family and origin, state it as a line item, and index it. For calibration, the manufacturing-wide average effective rate ran 12.4% of customs value in 2025, but family rates scatter widely around it.

• Plastics in primary forms: 5.39% effective (2025) (MFN Free–6.5% · molding feedstock)
• Insulated wire and cable: 12.27% effective (2025) (MFN Free–5.3% · panel and harness stock)

The playbook

• Identify the HTS family for each imported input; the family page gives the effective rate and the origin spread.
• Quote duty as its own line at the origin's effective rate, not blended into overhead.
• Add an escalation clause tied to the family's effective rate, the way steel quotes index the mill price.
• Re-check quarterly: overlay actions move effective rates between quotes, and the data refreshes monthly.

Manufacturing-wide effective tariff, 2025: 12.4%. Total calculated duties ÷ total customs value across all tracked families (USITC DataWeb).

A worked example: a harness shop importing $250K of wire and cable a year at 12.27% effective pays $31K in duty. Quoted explicitly, that is a defensible line item; buried in overhead, it is margin erosion. Reference statistics derived from USITC published data. Not a customs ruling; verify rates with a licensed customs broker before relying on them.

Model annual duty cost from import volume, customs value, and the effective rate. Run your own duty scenario

Published 2026-07-19.