Docket expenses: quarter-to-date landed cost, the share captured automatically from email, and the demurrage exposure still avoidable. — Landed cost — each line traced back to the email it came from.

Harbor maintenance fee (HMF): 0.125%, at listed ports

The harbor maintenance fee is a US port use fee of 0.125 percent of the value of commercial cargo loaded or unloaded at a listed port. Unlike the merchandise processing fee it has no minimum, no maximum and no exemption for preferential origin, so a container owing no processing fee under a trade agreement still owes this one. On imports, liability attaches at unloading.

Harbor maintenance fee: A US port use fee of 0.125 percent of the value of commercial cargo loaded on or unloaded from a commercial vessel at a port listed in the regulation. On imported cargo the importer is liable at the time of unloading, and the fee is shown and paid on the entry summary.

What the harbour fee does and does not reach The exemptions are about cargo and geography. Preferential origin is not one of them, which is where the fee diverges from MPF.

The harbor maintenance fee is the simpler of the two US federal fees on an import entry, and the one more often applied where it is not owed. Its rate never moves. What moves is whether the fee exists on the shipment at all.

What is the harbor maintenance fee rate?

Commercial cargo loaded on or unloaded from a commercial vessel is subject to a port use fee of 0.125 percent (.00125) of its value if the loading or unloading occurs at a port within the definition of this section

No floor, no ceiling. Unlike the merchandise processing fee, whose minimum and maximum are re-indexed every fiscal year and rose 38 percent on 1 October 2026, this one is proportional from the smallest consignment to the largest and its rate has not moved. A percentage column in a spreadsheet holds it correctly, and that is all the arithmetic there is.

On an import the base is not in doubt either. The fee “is based on the CBP appraised value of the shipment pursuant to 19 U.S.C. 1401a, the same basis as that used for duty payment”: the customs value, shared with the duty and with the processing fee.

The condition is the port, and the list is in the regulation

“A port within the definition of this section” is doing the work. The definition is a channel or harbour in the customs territory, not an inland waterway, open to public navigation, at which Federal funds have been used since 1977. The regulation then prints the complete list, port code by port code.

The list is not uniform even within a port. Against the Alaskan entries it carries notes such as “Fee does not apply to Juneau Harbor” and “Fee does not apply to Wades Cove”. A desk that applies 0.125 percent to every arrival is applying it to arrivals that never owed it, and a desk that never applies it is understating most of its book.

No origin exemption, which is the trap

The exemptions are listed in paragraph (c) and they are about cargo and geography: bunker fuel, ship’s stores, sea stores and vessel equipment; fish or other aquatic animal life caught and not previously landed on shore; passenger-and-vehicle ferries; and specified movements involving Alaska, Hawaii and the possessions.

Origin is absent from that list. The processing fee disappears on goods originating under the USMCA; this fee does not. So the arithmetic on a preferential entry is not “no duty, no fees”. It is no duty, no processing fee, and the harbour fee in full.

Liability at unloading, payment at filing

The two moments are not the same, and the regulation separates them deliberately. The importer “is liable for the payment of the port use fee at the time of unloading”, while the money moves later: the amount is shown on CBP Form 7501 or its electronic equivalent and added to any normal duty, tax or fee payable at formal entry processing.

For anyone reconciling an estimate against an actual, that is two dates on one charge. The entry summary is where it is paid; discharge is when it was incurred. Keeping both against the container, with the broker’s own working sheet behind the figure, is the part landed cost tracking software is for — and the two fees’ different shapes are what a single percentage gets wrong.

Questions traders ask

What is HMF in shipping?

The harbor maintenance fee, a US federal port use fee charged on commercial cargo moving over a port that the government has spent money maintaining. It is 0.125 percent of the value of the cargo, owed where the loading or unloading happens at a port within the regulation's definition. On an import the importer is liable at the time of unloading, and the amount is entered on the CBP entry summary and paid with the duty.

What is the HMF rate?

0.125 percent, written in the regulation as .00125 of value. There is no minimum and no maximum, and no annual inflation adjustment of the kind that moves the merchandise processing fee's floor and ceiling, so the charge stays proportional however large the shipment is. On an import the base is the CBP appraised value under 19 U.S.C. 1401a — the same value the duty is assessed on.

Does the harbor maintenance fee apply at every US port?

No. The fee applies where the loading or unloading occurs at a port within the regulation's own definition, and that definition is a list the regulation prints in full, by port code. The list also carries notes against individual harbours: one Alaskan entry states that the fee does not apply to Juneau Harbor, another that it does not apply to Wades Cove. So the port of discharge decides whether the charge exists at all.

Is cargo under a free trade agreement exempt from HMF?

No, and this catches desks out. The fee's exemptions are about the kind of cargo and the geography of the movement — bunker fuel, ship's stores and vessel equipment; fish or other aquatic animal life caught and not previously landed; ferries carrying passengers and their vehicles; and specified Alaska, Hawaii and US possessions movements. Origin is not among them. A USMCA-originating container is exempt from the merchandise processing fee and still owes the harbour fee in full.

When is the harbor maintenance fee due on an import?

Liability attaches at the time of unloading, but payment runs through the normal entry process: the fee is shown and identified on CBP Form 7501 or its electronic equivalent and added to any duty, tax or fee payable at formal entry processing. It is collected on all formal entries, warehouse entries and temporary importation under bond entries included, and on admissions into a foreign trade zone.

What is the difference between HMF and MPF?

They are both percentages of the same appraised value and they agree on nothing else. The processing fee is 0.3464 percent with a floor, a ceiling and an annual re-indexing — $34.58 and $670.86 for fiscal year 2027 — pays no regard to the port, and disappears on USMCA-originating goods. The harbour fee is 0.125 percent with no clamp, depends entirely on which port the cargo crossed, and ignores origin. Because the processing fee stops at its maximum and this one does not, the harbour fee becomes the larger of the two above about US$536,688 of entered value this year, a crossover that moves every October.

Related terms

Merchandise processing fee — A US customs user fee charged for processing an entry. On a formal entry it is an ad valorem fee of 0.3464 percent of the entered value, subject to a minimum and a maximum amount that CBP re-indexes for inflation each fiscal year, plus a surcharge on a manual entry.
Entry Summary — The documentation or data filed with US Customs and Border Protection that enables it to assess duties, collect statistics on imported merchandise and determine whether other legal requirements are met. Normally CBP Form 7501, submitted through ACE within 10 working days of entry.
Customs value — The value of imported goods on which customs duty is assessed. Under the WTO Valuation Agreement the primary basis is the transaction value — the price actually paid or payable for the goods when sold for export — adjusted by the additions listed in Article 8 and by no others.
Landed cost — The total cost of a consignment delivered into the buyer's warehouse, combining the goods value with duty, freight, port and terminal charges, agent fees, inland transport, insurance, bank charges, inspection and any demurrage or detention.
Terminal storage charge — The charge a marine terminal operator levies for an import container occupying terminal ground beyond its free dwell time, set out in the terminal's published scale of rates and identical for every importer at that terminal, as distinct from the carrier's demurrage.
Bill of Lading — The transport document a carrier issues for goods received, which works at once as a receipt, as evidence of the contract of carriage, and, when made out to order, as the document of title to the cargo.