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Canned Tuna Duty Rates: How Packaging Sets the Rate on 1604.14, From 1.1¢/kg to 35%

Computed from our HTS extract (23,193 lines, USITC REST vintage October 9, 2026) and our CBP CROSS rulings library (2,350 records, retrieved October 12, 2026): every rate, count and ratio on this page was recomputed from the datasets rather than quoted from a lookup page.

Ask “what is the duty on canned tuna?” and the answers you find will disagree with each other. One lookup page tells importers the MFN rate is 6%; the compliance FAQ further down that same page quotes “35% ad valorem on canned tuna in water, and a 12.5% rate on canned tuna in oil” — the exact inverse of what the schedule prints. Both numbers exist inside HTS 1604.14, but they attach to different packages, not to different opinions. The heading splits the same fish into eighteen ten-digit lines across seven eight-digit provisions with five distinct general outcomes: 35%, 12.5%, 6%, 4.9% and a flat 1.1¢/kg. Which one you pay is decided by three physical facts — packing medium, container weight, species — plus one clock (a quota window).

The full rate map of 1604.14

Source: data/hts.json, all records under prefix 1604.14 (18 ten-digit lines in 7 eight-digit provisions); general and Column 2 rates quoted verbatim. Dataset vintage 2026-10-09T17:43:36Z, 23,193 rows total.

Read the table top-down and the premium structure is explicit: oil-packing multiplies the base rate more than five-fold (35% vs 6%), losing the quota window more than doubles it (12.5%), and buying the fish by the bulk-format tonne collapses the liability to a per-kilogram charge worth a fraction of a percent at most commercial unit values. At a $1/kg entered value, the gap between the priciest and cheapest outcome in this table is roughly 32-fold (35% vs 1.1%).

Packing medium is the verdict, and the schedule says so twice

The 35% line is not a typo carried over from a decades-old schedule. It applies specifically to tunas and skipjack in airtight containers, in oil — the premium shelf-stable format. Take the same cooked loin, pack it in water or brine instead, and you move to the not-in-oil branch where the schedule starts at 6%. The foil-pouch continuations make the container-weight test just as literal: statistical lines described as “in foil or other flexible containers weighing with their contents not more than 6.8 kg each” appear under both the in-oil provision (.10.10) and the not-in-oil provisions (.22.51/.22.91, .30.51/.30.91), because the 6.8 kg foil test cuts across packing media while the rate does not.

Two details hide inside the 6% quota provision .22 that trip first-time filers:

1. The aggregate cap is written in consumption terms. The schedule limits entries to “an aggregate quantity entered in any calendar year not to exceed 4.8 percent of apparent United States consumption of tuna in airtight containers during the immediately preceding year, as reported by the National Marine Fisheries Service.” Your eligibility therefore depends on how much the entire market imported last year — a number that lives in a NOAA report, not on your invoice.
2. Insular-possessions product is excluded from the low-rate line. The provision reads “not the product of any insular possession of the United States”; American Territories supply a separate channel. Tuna from the freely associated states can additionally enter free of duty under General Note 10(c) per the USITC provision notes.

What CBP actually ruled: seared blocks, two lines, one decision rule

Our CROSS library holds 2,350 published classification rulings; exactly one of them classifies merchandise into 1604.14 — and it is a perfect worked example. In N345343 (February 6, 2025), Harbor Seafood asked CBP to classify frozen sliced and seared yellowfin (Thunnus albacares) loins from Indonesia as frozen fillets under 0304.87. CBP disagreed: the blocks were pressed in salt, pepper, garlic, dextrose and starches, then seared at 250–300 °C for ten seconds a side. Seasoning and searing are preparation, so chapter 3 was out and 1604.14 was in. The operative sentence pairs our two rate-map branches exactly.

The ruling assigns 1604.14.2291 “if entered while the tariff-rate quota remains open” — and 1604.14.3091 otherwise.

That is the 6% in-quota line and the 12.5% residual line separated by nothing except the calendar — same fish, same pack, same importer, a 6.5-point swing decided by when the vessel lands. Source: data/cross_rulings_full.json, CBP ruling N345343 (ruling number, date and tariff assignments as recorded; retrieved October 12, 2026).

The bonito discount nobody quotes

Species matters almost as much as packaging. The heading covers “tunas, skipjack tuna and bonito (Sarda spp.)”, and bonito gets its own tail block: 1604.14.70.00 prices bonito in oil at 4.9% — one-seventh of the 35% that identical oil-packed treatment costs tunas and skipjack — while 1604.14.80.00 prices not-in-oil bonito at 6%. If your product spec tolerates Sarda where the buyer asked for skipjack, the packing medium stops mattering: even oil-packed, you clear at 4.9% against the 35% tuna line. Chapter 16 as a whole runs a median general rate of 6.0% across its 109 clean ad-valorem lines (with 88 of 212 child lines Free), which makes the 35% oil-packed tuna provision the single most expensive rated line in the prepared-fish chapter. Source: data/hts.json, chapter-16 census of 109 clean ad-valorem lines.

When 1.1¢/kg beats every percentage

The bulk line 1604.14.40.00 is the quiet bargain of the heading: tuna in bulk, or in immediate containers over 6.8 kg, not in oil, clears at 1.1¢/kg with a Column 2 counterpart of just 2.8¢/kg. Because a specific duty does not scale with value, cheap raw material benefits most. The equivalent-ad-valorem math:

Method: equivalent ad valorem rate = (1.1¢ per kg expressed in dollars, i.e. $0.011, ÷ entered value in $ per kg) × 100.

This is why repacking economics matter: entering bulk and packing downstream shifts the goods toward the .40/.50 block, while pre-packing retail tins in a third country locks in the airtight-branch percentages. (Repacking after importation raises its own substantial-transformation questions — treat that as a legal question, not a logistics one.)

Three checks before you book the shipment

1. Fix the pack medium and container mass in writing, then map them to the provision. Oil vs not-in-oil is a 29-point swing inside the airtight branch; 6.8 kg vs 7 kg sounds pedantic until you realize the foil-pouch continuations repeat it four times across the heading.
2. Check the quota clock, not just the code. The .22 window resets each calendar year and fills on a first-come basis administered by CBP against the USDA/FAS licensing regime; CBP quota bulletins (e.g. QB 25-205 for the dairy analogue) show how literally the entry-type and reporting rules are enforced. Our Chapter 99 quota administration guide covers the mechanics.
3. Price the specific-duty line separately from the ad-valorem lines. Percentage-only calculators misquote 1604.14.40.00 by construction. Run both scenarios through the landed-cost calculator, which handles mixed specific and ad-valorem rates — see also our decoder for the three duty-rate types and the compound-rate arithmetic worked end-to-end.

Tracking several SKUs across the airtight and bulk branches? Provision-level rate changes and new Chapter 99 measures are exactly what the watchlist alerts cover — create an account to get notified, or compare the plan tiers if you need batch lookups across a full catalog. For the dispute landscape around prepared-fish codes generally, browse the published ruling family 1604.14 and its neighbor 1604.32.

FAQ

Why does canned tuna have so many different duty rates?

Heading 1604.14 assigns rates by packaging physics, not by the fish. Eighteen ten-digit lines split into seven eight-digit provisions with five distinct general outcomes: 35% for tuna packed in oil in airtight containers, 12.5% for other airtight packs outside the quota window, 6% for the small-container quota provision and for non-airtight packs, 4.9% for bonito in oil, and a flat 1.1 cents per kilogram for bulk shipments over 6.8 kg.

What is the US duty on canned tuna in oil versus in water?

In the airtight branch of 1604.14, in-oil packs clear at 35% while not-in-oil packs sit at 6% inside the quota window or 12.5% outside it. Some lookup pages invert this pairing — quoting 35% for water-packed and 12.5% for oil-packed tuna — which matches neither the schedule nor their own headline number. Check the pack medium clause printed on the provision before you price a contract.

Is there a tariff-rate quota on tuna imports?

Yes. Subheading 1604.14.22 holds a 6% in-quota rate for not-in-oil tuna in airtight containers weighing not over 7 kg each, provided the shipment is not the product of any insular possession of the United States and aggregate calendar-year entries stay within 4.8 percent of apparent US consumption of tuna in airtight containers during the preceding year, as reported by the National Marine Fisheries Service. When the window closes, the same fish falls to 1604.14.30 at 12.5% — CBP ruling N345343 applies exactly this pair.

How do you classify seared or seasoned tuna fillets?

Processing moves the fish out of chapter 3 and into 1604.14. In ruling N345343 (February 6, 2025) CBP rejected a 0304.87 frozen-fillet claim for vacuum-packed, seasoning-coated, seared yellowfin blocks because seasoning and searing are preparation, and assigned 1604.14.2291 while the tariff-rate quota remains open, otherwise 1604.14.3091.

Method note: all rates and counts come from data/hts.json (USITC REST export, 23,193 rows, vintage 2026-10-09T17:43:36Z) filtered by the 1604.14 prefix; ruling evidence comes from data/cross_rulings_full.json (2,350 records, retrieved 2026-10-12). Equivalent-ad-valorem figures assume the stated entered value per kilogram and divide the 1.1-cent specific rate accordingly; fees, taxes, antidumping/countervailing duties and Chapter 99 surcharges are excluded from every figure on this page.

Last dataset refresh: October 9, 2026 (USITC HTS REST); ruling corpus retrieved October 12, 2026 (CBP CROSS API). Rates shown are general (MFN) base rates unless labeled Column 2.