Importing Japanese knives into the USA

Importing Japanese kitchen knives into the United States from Japan

The Reciprocal Tariff rate for Japanese-made goods shipped to the USA is 15%. 

On August 29th, 2025 the US Government ended the $800 de minimis allowance for global goods entering the United States, meaning that this tariff is now levied on all orders from Knife Japan.

Import duty of 6.1% as described in the Harmonized Tariff Schedule of the United States Revision 10 2024 will also be levied.

From August 29th, 2025, the General Rate of import duty, the Reciprocal Tariff and a $17 DHL disbursement fee will be paid by you if your order from Knife Japan is delivered by DHL Express.

Japan Post has suspended parcel deliveries to the US. We'll provide information about their import processing fee when deliveries resume.

How are the tariffs and import duty paid? 

Deliveries made by DHL Express are managed by the company from acceptance of the parcel to final delivery. They will send an invoice and payment link to you by SMS or email prior to delivery for you to pay the assessed tax online. DHL pays the assessed tax on your behalf upon entry of the goods into the US and recoups that from you, and charges an associated fee of $17 which will be added to your bill.

With a postal item, the system has changed and Japan Post is also now responsible for payment of the postal item's assessed taxes upon entry to the United States. They aren't geared up for that presently, so delivery services have been suspended.

If the declared value of your postal parcel is over $2000 then your purchase becomes what’s called a formal entry, your delivery will be withheld and you’ll have to deal with further paperwork or consult a customs broker.

It appears that the Reciprocal Tariff may not be legal and might be walked back after judicial review. Please retain records of your tariff payments in case that portion of your payment is eligible for a refund down the track.

A note about state sales tax

State sales tax, if it applies in your state, is levied at the point of sale.

It's only relevant for an overseas vendor if sales for that vendor exceeds a certain threshold per annum (that figure varies, but it's a LOT of knives). We don't exceed those thresholds for any state, so state sales tax will not apply to your order.

If you've ordered from an overseas vendor on a platform like Ebay or Etsy and found yourself paying state sales tax, that's why. For state sales tax purposes sales on those platforms aren't calculated on seller-by-seller basis, but on the sales of the platform as a whole. As a result they will collect state sales tax on every transaction. 

If you have any questions about our products or how we can deliver them to you in the USA, please drop us a line using the form below.

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