Shouldn't FedEx, UPS or whichever carrier you use be able to tell you something about this? (at least, that is the case here in The Netherlands and I assume it is the same in the US).

Yes, Fedex and UPS will generally take care of it. But they both say (at least here) that they can't estimate customs charges beforehand. What they normally do is pay the import duty (presumably up to some limit) and then will either COD the recipient or they can bill the import tariff to your Fedex/UPS account (depending on how you asked for tariffs to be billed/paid).

My main concern is that the recipient not be stuck with import tariffs. We build some hardware in Mexico and ship to the United States. We'd like to be able to ship directly from Mexico to our customers in the U.S. but we don't want them getting stuck with a Customs COD or having the product tied up in Customs while they decide what to charge. So what we normally due is ship a number of units to a distribution point in the U.S. They get hit with the import charges, if any.

To-date neither our distribution point in the U.S. nor the occasional customer that we've shipped the product directly to from Mexico have ever had to pay U.S. import duty. What has happened, interestingly, is having to pay an import duty to get stuff into Mexico.

To me, "free trade" will be when the only thing Customs does in each country is make sure you're not importing anything illegal. Not lesser tariffs, not fewer tariffs... no tariffs. The way it should be.

Craig Steiner