Import duty from Germany to USA: what you actually pay

There is no comprehensive free trade agreement between the United States and the European Union, so German goods enter the US at the standard Column 1 General rate for their HTS code, the same MFN rate that applies to most trading partners. Those base rates are low on the things the US actually buys from Germany: passenger cars are 2.5 percent, most industrial machinery runs zero to about 5 percent, and pharmaceuticals and precision instruments are largely Free. What moves the number is everything layered on top: Section 232 duties on metals and vehicles, and a policy layer that in mid 2026 is changing month to month.

This article is built around the durable structure, because that is what survives the news cycle. Get the code right, know which sector actions touch your product, then check the current policy layer against CBP guidance on the day you file.

Why German goods pay the standard MFN rate

The US has comprehensive trade agreements with roughly twenty countries, including Canada and Mexico through USMCA, Korea, Australia, Singapore, Chile and Israel. No EU member state is among them. TTIP negotiations were never concluded.

You can verify this yourself in the tariff schedule rather than taking anyone's word for it. Look up any HTS line in the USITC Harmonized Tariff Schedule and read the Special column: it lists the program codes that get preferential treatment. There is no code for the EU or Germany. So the General rate in Column 1 is what applies, and there is no certificate of origin to prepare, no rules of origin analysis, and no preference claim to defend. Compared with a USMCA shipment, a German import is administratively simpler. It just does not get a discount.

Base MFN rates on what the US imports from Germany

These are Column 1 General rates from the current tariff schedule. They are the floor, before any sector or policy layer.

Two things in that table are worth pausing on. The 2.5 percent car rate against the 25 percent light truck rate is the so-called chicken tax, a retaliatory duty from a 1960s dispute over European tariffs on American poultry that has outlived the argument entirely. It is why the vehicle body style matters enormously to the duty.

And German wine is dutied in cents per liter, not as a percentage. Specific rates like that behave in the opposite way from ad valorem rates: they hit inexpensive wine hardest as a share of value and barely register on a premium bottle. Any spreadsheet that assumes every duty is a percentage will get wine, and a handful of other lines, badly wrong.

Section 232: the durable sector layer

Section 232 duties are national-security tariffs on specific sectors, and they are the part of the German import picture that has proven most stable. They are also where the largest amounts of money sit.

Steel and aluminum. EU-origin metal receives no reduced rate. The regime was substantially restructured in April 2026: duties now apply to the full customs value of a covered article rather than only to its declared metal content, which is a large increase for derivative products. The action is tiered, with the highest rate on primary and near-primary metal and lower tiers for substantially-composed and metal-intensive derivatives, and articles below a minimum metal content threshold fall out of scope.

For German machinery buyers this is the single most underestimated exposure. The derivative product list is long and has been expanded repeatedly to include things that nobody thinks of as steel imports: pumps, compressors, furniture with metal frames, cutlery, aerosol cans. A machine that is not itself a metal product can still appear on the derivative list and, since the 2026 change, be assessed on its whole value. If you import capital equipment from Germany, check the derivative list against your codes before you assume Section 232 is somebody else's problem.

Vehicles and parts. Automobiles and auto parts have been under a Section 232 action since 2025. For EU-origin vehicles the arrangement produces a 15 percent all-inclusive combined rate, meaning the additional duty is the difference between the MFN rate and 15 percent. A German passenger car at a 2.5 percent base therefore lands at 15 percent in total, not 17.5 percent. Because the mechanism is a ceiling rather than an addition, a product whose MFN rate already meets or exceeds 15 percent takes no additional 232 duty, which is why light trucks at 25 percent stay at 25 percent.

The reason this layer has been durable while others have not is legal architecture. Section 232 rests on a different statutory authority from the emergency-powers tariffs that were struck down in early 2026, so it was untouched by that ruling.

The 2026 policy layer, and why this article will not give you one number

In February 2026 the Supreme Court held that the International Emergency Economic Powers Act does not authorize tariffs, which voided the reciprocal tariff program built on it. Within days the administration replaced it with a 10 percent surcharge under Section 122 of the Trade Act of 1974, effective from late February 2026.

Three features of that surcharge matter for anyone modeling German landed cost. It stacks on top of the MFN rate rather than capping the total, which is structurally different from what it replaced. It does not stack with Section 232, so goods already covered by a metals or autos action are not hit twice. And Section 122 carries a hard 150-day statutory limit, which means it lapses by operation of law on July 24, 2026 unless Congress affirmatively extends it.

That date is days away as this is written. Separately, the surcharge was held unlawful by the Court of International Trade in May 2026 in a case now on appeal, with the injunction running only to the named plaintiffs, so every other importer has continued to pay. And USTR has open Section 301 proceedings covering a large group of economies, the EU among them, which are widely expected to supply a replacement mechanism. Section 301, unlike Section 122, has no rate ceiling and no automatic expiry.

So the honest position for a German shipment arriving in the next few weeks is: the base MFN rate for your code, plus any Section 232 sector duty that applies, plus a policy surcharge whose existence, rate and legal basis are all genuinely unsettled. Anyone quoting you a confident all-in percentage for EU goods right now is either working from a stale IEEPA-era number or guessing. Several widely-cited tariff calculators currently publish mutually contradictory figures for EU goods on the same site. Check CBP's CSMS messages for the week you are actually filing.

A worked example: a German machine tool

Take a CNC milling machine, HTS 8458, invoice value 180,000 dollars, shipped by ocean.

The base duty is 4.4 percent, or 7,920 dollars. The merchandise processing fee is 0.3464 percent of value, which calculates to 623 dollars and sits under the FY2026 per-entry ceiling, so you pay it in full. The harbor maintenance fee is 0.125 percent, or 225 dollars, and because the HMF is uncapped it keeps scaling on larger machines. That is roughly 8,768 dollars before any sector or policy layer.

Then the questions that actually decide the number. Does the machine appear on the Section 232 derivative list, and if so at which tier, assessed on the full 180,000 dollars? Is a policy surcharge in force on the date of entry, and does the Section 232 exemption apply to it? Those two answers can swing the total by tens of thousands of dollars on a single machine, which is exactly why the classification has to be right before any of the arithmetic means anything. You can pin the code down on the live classifier and build the layers in the import duty calculator.

Practical steps for importing from Germany

Classify precisely, because everything downstream keys off the code. The gap between two neighboring subheadings is often the difference between Free and 9 percent, and it also determines whether a Section 232 derivative listing catches you.

Check the Section 232 derivative lists explicitly rather than assuming they only cover raw metal. Establish your customs value correctly, which means the transaction value in USD, with the Incoterms understood: an EXW price and a DAP price are not the same customs value, and German suppliers quote both. Getting the component and material values documented on the supplier's paperwork matters more than usual here, since metal content can determine both scope and tier. Teams importing steadily tend to pull the line items off supplier invoices into a spreadsheet automatically rather than transcribing them, because the values feed the customs entry and the books at the same time.

Budget for the fee layer, which people routinely forget on Free-rated goods. A duty-free German instrument still pays MPF, and still pays HMF if it came by sea. And on the policy layer, verify rather than assume: check CBP guidance in the week you file, and if you are importing the same product repeatedly and the classification is contestable, a binding ruling from CBP gives you certainty on the one variable you can actually lock down.

For the fee mechanics, see the merchandise processing fee and the harbor maintenance fee. For how the same analysis runs on other lanes, compare import duty from the UK, which shares the no-FTA structure, and import duty from Mexico, which does not.

Frequently asked questions

What is the import duty from Germany to the USA?

There is no US-EU free trade agreement, so German goods pay the standard Column 1 General MFN rate for their HTS code. Those base rates are generally low: 2.5 percent on passenger cars, zero to about 5 percent on most machinery, and Free on most pharmaceuticals and precision instruments. Section 232 sector duties on metals and vehicles, plus any current policy surcharge, are added on top of that base.

Is there a trade agreement between the US and the EU?

Not a comprehensive free trade agreement. TTIP negotiations were never concluded, and no EU member state appears in the Special column of the US tariff schedule, which is where preferential program codes are listed. A political framework agreement was announced in 2025 and the EU implemented its side in 2026, but that is not the same as an FTA, and the US-side mechanism has been disrupted by the 2026 court ruling on emergency tariff authority.

How much is the duty on a German car imported to the US?

The base MFN rate on a passenger car is 2.5 percent, but the Section 232 action on automobiles produces a 15 percent all-inclusive combined rate for EU-origin vehicles, so the additional duty is the difference between the base rate and 15 percent. Light trucks and vans are different: their base rate is already 25 percent under the long-standing chicken tax, which exceeds 15 percent, so they take no additional 232 duty and remain at 25 percent.

Do I pay VAT on goods imported from Germany?

No. German VAT should not appear on an export sale to the United States, and the US has no federal VAT or national sales tax on imports. What you pay instead is customs duty, the merchandise processing fee, and the harbor maintenance fee on ocean shipments. If a German supplier has charged you VAT on an export sale, query the invoice, because it usually indicates the sale was not processed as an export.

Are German goods subject to Section 232 tariffs?

Yes, and EU-origin goods receive no reduced steel and aluminum rate. Since April 2026 the metals action applies to the full customs value of covered articles rather than only their metal content, and the derivative product list extends well beyond raw metal into pumps, compressors, metal-framed furniture and many machine categories. Automobiles and parts are covered by a separate 232 action with a 15 percent all-inclusive rate for the EU.

How do I calculate the total landed cost from Germany?

Start with the correct HTS code and its Column 1 General rate applied to the customs value. Add any Section 232 duty that applies to your product, then any policy surcharge in force on your entry date. Add the merchandise processing fee at 0.3464 percent within its per-entry caps, and the harbor maintenance fee at 0.125 percent uncapped if the goods arrived by sea. Then add freight, insurance and brokerage to reach the landed cost.