What Are the MPF and HMF Fees for Importing Bags into the US?

These two charges are the part of an American entry that behaves least like a duty and is most often modelled as if it were one. They are fees for processing the entry and for using the port, they are charged whether or not any duty is payable, and their behaviour on small shipments is dominated by the floor rather than by the percentage.

Understanding that behaviour is worth more than memorising the rates, because it changes the answer to a question buyers ask constantly: should this order ship in one entry or three? On the fee layer, the answer is almost always one.

What Is the Merchandise Processing Fee Charged On?

On the entered value of the merchandise, at 0.3464%. Where the goods are duty-free the fee is still charged, because it is a charge for processing the entry rather than a tax on the goods. The percentage is stable; the floor and the ceiling are the parts that move, and they are revised by notice on an annual cycle.

On a small bag order the floor is what matters. Take 500 pieces at FOB Xiamen USD 4.80: the entered value is USD 2,400.00 and 0.3464% of that is USD 8.31, which is below the floor, so USD 32.71 is charged. The percentage never actually applies on an order this size.

Where Do the Floor and the Ceiling Bite?

The floor bites below the value at which 0.3464% produces the minimum, and the ceiling bites above the value at which it produces the maximum. Between those two points the fee is a straight percentage. Because the ad valorem figure reaches the floor at an entered value of roughly USD 9,400, most bag orders at or below that level pay the floor.

There is a second consequence that matters more in practice. Because the floor is a fixed amount per entry, the fee per unit falls sharply as the order grows — from about seven cents a unit on the 500-piece order to about one cent on the 50,000-piece one. Nothing about the goods changed; only the number of units the fixed charge was spread across.

The consequence is a fee curve with three regimes rather than one slope, and a landed cost model that applies 0.3464% to everything will be wrong at both ends of it. Model it as a maximum of the floor and the minimum of the percentage and the ceiling, and all three regimes take care of themselves.

What Is the Harbor Maintenance Fee Charged On?

On the value of commercial cargo arriving by vessel at a port subject to the fee, at 0.125%, with no floor and no ceiling. It is charged on imports, and it applies to the value rather than to the weight or the container count. Air freight, mail and land border crossings do not pay it.

The fee is also worth understanding as a port charge rather than a customs charge. It funds the maintenance of the channels and harbours the cargo moves through, which is why it attaches to the vessel arrival and not to the classification, the origin or the value of the duty. A shipment that pays no duty at all still pays it.

That mode distinction is the only real decision attached to the fee. A programme that flies a rush order avoids USD 0.125% of value, which on a small order is a few dollars — irrelevant against the freight difference, and worth knowing only so the model does not charge HMF on an air entry by habit.

Are There Exemptions Either Fee Does Not Reach?

A small number of preference programmes exempt MPF on qualifying goods, and goods of Chinese origin are not among them. There is also a different treatment for entries below the informal threshold, which attracts a flat fee rather than the ad valorem calculation; the treatment of low-value consignments has been narrowed for some origins, so the current rule has to be confirmed rather than assumed.

Where a programme uses a free trade agreement that does exempt MPF, the exemption has to be claimed on the entry with the same origin evidence the duty preference needs. An exemption that is available and not claimed is a fee paid for nothing, and it is one of the few places in this cluster where a claim reduces both a duty and a fee at once.

HMF has no exemption of that kind: if the cargo arrives by vessel at a subject port, the fee applies. The only lever on it is the mode, and the mode is decided by the freight economics rather than by the fee.

How Much Do the Fees Add to a Unit Cost?

On the 500-piece order they add USD 35.71 in total, or USD 0.07 a unit — about 1.4% of the FOB price. On the 2,000-piece order they add USD 74.96, or USD 0.04 a unit. Set against duty of USD 1.20 a unit on the small order and USD 1.40 on the larger one, the fee layer is a minor component of the duty stack and a major component of nothing.

That is the honest answer, and it is worth stating plainly: on a bag programme the fees are not where the money is. They matter because they behave differently from duty — per entry rather than per unit, and with a floor that dominates on small shipments — and because a model that gets them wrong is usually a model that has the wrong structure elsewhere too.

Does the Entry Type Change the Fee?

Yes. A formal entry carries the ad valorem MPF with its floor and ceiling and requires a bond. An informal entry below the informal threshold carries a flat fee instead and does not require the same bond. For a bag programme the formal route is the normal one, because the value of a commercial order at MOQ 500 pcs sits above the threshold in almost every case.

There is a related point about the bond. Continuous bonds are priced against the annual duty, tax and fee liability rather than per shipment, and a programme entering monthly is almost always better served by one. It is a commercial cost rather than a tariff one, and it belongs with the broker charges in the model.

What Else Lands on the Same Entry?

One of those deserves a note because it is the easiest to overlook: the ISF filing is due before the vessel loads, not before it arrives. A filing that is late is a penalty exposure and a possible do-not-load hold, and neither of those appears anywhere in a landed cost model. They appear as a missed delivery window instead.

The broker entry fee, the Importer Security Filing charge, the bond premium amortised across the year, and the inland movement. None of these is a tariff, all of them are quoted, and on a small order their combined total exceeds the two federal fees by a wide margin.

This is why the consolidation argument is really about the commercial layer rather than the statutory one. MPF at its floor is USD 32.71 whether the entry holds 500 pieces or 5,000; the broker fee and the minimum drayage behave the same way; and together they are the reason a 500-piece order carries an uplift of 53.5% while a 2,000-piece order carries 35.5%.

How Do These Fees Interact With Duty Recovery?

Duty is recoverable on re-export through the drawback provisions. The treatment of the merchandise processing fee has changed under the legislation that modernised drawback, and it is a point to confirm with a drawback specialist rather than assume in either direction. Where a programme plans recovery, settle the treatment of the fees before the first claim rather than at the point of filing it.

What is settled is that the fees are part of the entered value picture and part of any penalty calculation that follows a compliance failure. A misstatement that reduces duty also reduces the fee, and the exposure is calculated across both.

How Should a Buyer Handle All of This?

Put the two fees on their own rows in the model, read the floor and the ceiling from the current notice, and apply the mode test to HMF. That is the whole task, and it takes one cell each. What takes longer is the discipline of re-reading them: the floor and the ceiling move annually, and a model built two years ago is carrying two-year-old parameters.

Then use the behaviour rather than the number. Because both charges are levied per entry, the decision to consolidate is the decision that actually reduces them, and it is made on the freight plan rather than in the customs model. The landed cost calculator shows the effect of changing the entry count directly.

Where Does This Leave the Programme?

With a small, predictable line that is easy to model correctly and easy to get wrong by treating it as duty. The two failure modes are applying the percentage below the floor and above the ceiling, and charging HMF on cargo that did not arrive by vessel. Both are avoided by modelling the behaviour rather than the rate.

Everything else in the programme is unaffected: sampling 6-10 working days, bulk 35-50 days from written sample approval, inspection at AQL 2.5 under ISO 2859-1, T/T 30/70, FOB Xiamen. The fees are a consequence of how the order ships, not of how it is made.

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