HS Code for Lithium Batteries: 8507 Explained, Subheadings, Duty, and Dangerous Goods Rules
The HS code for lithium batteries is heading 8507, electric accumulators, with lithium-ion under 8507.60. The classification is usually the easy part. What catches importers is that lithium batteries are dangerous goods, so the same shipment also needs UN 38.3 test certification, Class 9 labelling, and compliant packaging, and any one missing stops the goods […]
HS Code for Routers and Switches: 8517 Explained, Subheadings, Duty, and Type Approval
The HS code for routers, switches, and most network equipment is heading 8517, apparatus for transmitting or receiving voice, images, or data over a network. The classification is usually the easy part. The real constraint is that much of this equipment must clear type approval from the destination country’s telecom regulator before it can be […]
HS Code for GPUs and Semiconductor Chips: 8542 Explained, Subheadings, Duty, and 2026 Controls
The HS code for GPUs and other semiconductor chips is heading 8542, electronic integrated circuits, with discrete GPUs, CPUs, and AI accelerators under 8542.31. But mount that chip into a module, a card, or a server, and the classification can shift out of 8542 entirely, and in 2026 that shift is where the duty and […]
HS Code for Servers: Heading 8471 Explained, Subheadings, Duty, and the 2026 Tariff Trap
The HS code for servers is heading 8471, automatic data processing machines and their units. For years that was the whole answer, because 8471 goods entered most major markets duty-free. In 2026 the subheading within 8471 can decide whether a server enters at zero or attracts a 25 percent US surcharge, so precise classification is […]
AI Server Import Duties in 2026: What Data Centre Operators Actually Pay
There is a dangerous half-truth circulating in data centre procurement: that AI servers are duty-free. It is half right, and the other half is what blows up budgets. The base customs duty on a server is, in many markets, genuinely zero, because computers fall under an international agreement that eliminates the tariff. But in 2026 […]
AI Server Trade Flows 2026: Where They Are Made, Who Exports, and Who Imports
The defining infrastructure story of 2026 is the construction of artificial intelligence at industrial scale, and it has a geography almost no one maps. Every AI data centre announced this year, in Texas, Abu Dhabi, Visakhapatnam, or Riyadh, depends on a physical object: an AI server packed with accelerators, memory, and networking that has to […]
IT Hardware Trade Compliance: Real Answers to the Data Centre Import Questions Buyers Ask in 2026
Importing IT hardware looks simple until the first shipment is held. Servers, switches, storage arrays, and the gear a data centre runs on are high-value, often export-controlled, and almost always on a deadline, which is exactly why the rules trip importers up. This guide answers the questions IT and data centre buyers actually search for, […]
Importer of Record for Amazon FBA: 2026 Enforcement, Bond Rules, and the End of De Minimis
There is one sentence in Amazon’s own seller guidance that has cost more FBA sellers more money than almost any other: Amazon will not act as the importer of record for your FBA inventory, for any shipment, of any size or value, regardless of origin or product. It sounds like a technicality. It is not. […]
The 2026 Importer of Record Landscape: Why the Duty-Free Era Ended, and What It Costs to Get Compliance Wrong
For most of the last decade, the dominant force in cross-border trade was frictionlessness. Thresholds rose, parcels flowed, and the importer of record was a box on a customs form that, for low-value goods, barely mattered. That era is over. Across 2025 and 2026, the world’s largest economies dismantled the duty-free treatment of low-value imports, […]
Importer of Record for Telecom Equipment: Clearing Network Hardware Through Type Approval and Radio Certification
Most goods clear customs on duty and documentation. Telecom equipment clears on something else entirely: type approval. Before a base station, a router, an antenna, or almost any device that transmits a signal can be imported and switched on, it usually has to be certified by the destination country’s telecommunications regulator, and that approval, not […]