What duty and tariff issues apply to custom electronics and PCB assembly?
Confidence 4/5 Established practice
Duty considerations for custom electronics and PCB assembly:
US Section 301 tariffs have applied to many Chinese electronics categories at rates that have changed repeatedly, so this is the category where a remembered duty rate is least trustworthy.
Sources
- PCB fabrication and assembly service terms — Published fab-house and assembly service guidance
- Printed circuit boards under HS 8534 — World Customs Organization HS nomenclature
- Section 301 tariff actions on Chinese goods — US Trade Representative
What goes wrong with custom electronics and PCB assembly
- Quoting from a BOM without checking component availability and lifecycle status.
- Assuming the factory will handle FCC or CE. It usually will not; that is a separate test house process.
- Designing in a single-source or end-of-life component.
- Skipping functional testing definition, then receiving boards nobody has verified.
- Treating the bare board and the assembly as one quote from one supplier when they are usually two.
Related questions people ask
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