Trampoline Park Equipment: Duty Runs 10% to 24.6% by Origin
On 24 July 2026, the US duty on the tariff line that most imported trampoline courts clear through rose from 22.1% to 24.6% for goods made in China.
On 22 October 2026, spot freight from Shanghai to Los Angeles was assessed at $8,007 per 40-ft container, a 15-week high. The same box to Rotterdam was assessed at $3,632.
In calendar 2025, 62% of the $2.2 billion that entered the United States under that line still came from China. Vietnam held 8%.
None of those three statements is about trampolines. All three set what a trampoline court costs before a single spring is bolted down.
This article treats the two costs as separate axes, because they are. Duty scales with declared value and country of origin. Freight scales with packed volume and shipping lane. They no longer move together, and most equipment budgets still fold them into one line item called shipping.
1. Three Numbers That Set the Price of a Court
The statements above come from three unrelated records: a tariff schedule, a weekly freight index and an annual customs dataset. Each is public, each is dated, and each moves on its own schedule.
| Date | What changed | Where it is recorded |
|---|---|---|
| 24 Jul 2026 | Duty on HTS 9506.91.00 from China rose from 22.1% to 24.6% | Chapter 99 subheadings 9903.88.15 and 9903.05.31 |
| 22 Oct 2026 | Shanghai to Los Angeles spot rate $8,007 per FEU, up 2% and the highest in 15 weeks | Drewry World Container Index |
| Calendar 2025 | 62% of $2.2 billion on that line entered from China; Vietnam reached 8% | US Census general imports |
Read them in order and a shape appears. The tax side moved in July and has not moved back. The transport side has risen for two consecutive weeks after a soft autumn. The supply base has barely budged at all, which is the part most operators misread when they assume a tariff automatically relocates a factory.
That point matters for anyone building in 2027. A duty is a price signal, not a supply chain. Factories do not relocate on a schedule that matches a lease negotiation, and a park opening next spring will buy from whoever can ship in fourteen weeks, not from whoever has the lowest theoretical rate.
So the useful question is not which country is cheapest. It is which of the two cost lines a buyer can still influence, and at what point in the project. Answering that requires opening both numbers up.
Where these numbers come from: the duty figures are the rates recorded for goods entered on 27 October 2026, before customs fees and before any antidumping or countervailing order that might separately cover a shipment. The freight figures are the assessed spot rates published for the week ending 22 October 2026. Neither is an estimate we produced.
2. The Duty Stack, Line by Line
A single duty rate is almost never a single number. For the gymnastics and athletics equipment heading, four layers stack on top of each other.
The first layer is the ordinary tariff, 4.6% for this heading. The second is the 7.5% Section 301 duty that has applied to List 4A goods since 2018 and has not been removed. The third is the 12.5% layer created by the Section 301 action that took effect on 24 July 2026, which covers some 60 economies at rates between 5.4% and 12.5%. The fourth is not a duty at all but two customs fees, the merchandise processing fee at 0.3464% and the harbor maintenance fee at 0.125%, which together add about 0.47%.
| Country of origin | Ordinary rate | Added layers | Total duty |
|---|---|---|---|
| China | 4.6% | 7.5% + 12.5% | 24.6% |
| Vietnam | 4.6% | 12.5% | 17.1% |
| Thailand | 4.6% | 12.5% | 17.1% |
| Mexico | 4.6% | 10.0% | 14.6% |
| India, Malaysia, Indonesia, United Kingdom | 4.6% | 10.0% | 14.6% |
| Japan, South Korea, Switzerland | 4.6% | 7.9% | 12.5% |
| Germany, Taiwan, Italy, France | 4.6% | 5.4% | 10.0% |
| Brazil | 4.6% | 25.0% + 12.5% | 42.1% |
| Canada | 4.6% | 10.0% + 50.0% | 64.6% |
Two rows in that table deserve a second look. The highest rate does not belong to China. It belongs to Canada at 64.6%, because a 50% measure under Section 338 stacks on the ordinary rate and the 10% layer, and because the USMCA preference does not clear the Section 338 amount: qualifying Canadian goods still owe 50%. The lowest rates belong to Germany and Taiwan at 10%, only 5.4 points above the base rate charged to almost every country in the world.
Mexico carries a note that is easy to miss. The 14.6% applies to goods that do not qualify under the USMCA rules of origin; qualifying goods enter at zero. For a steel structure assembled from imported components, whether a court qualifies is a content and assembly question, settled by documentation rather than by the shipping address.
Every rate in the table is ad valorem, charged on the entered value of the goods. The same container pays the same percentage whether it holds twelve trampoline beds or forty. That is the first half of the asymmetry this article is about, and the trade line in the heading is what most imported courts are entered under, which is why it is the one we follow.
3. One Court, Two Tariff Lines
A trampoline court can reasonably be described two ways. It is a piece of gymnastics apparatus bolted to a floor, and it is an amusement attraction that a visitor pays to use. The schedule has a heading for each description, and the rates differ.
| Heading | How the schedule describes it | Ordinary rate | Total from China |
|---|---|---|---|
| 9506.91.00 | Articles and equipment for general physical exercise, gymnastics or athletics | 4.6% | 24.6% |
| 9508.29.00.00 | Amusement park rides and water park amusements; fairground amusements; parts | Free | 20.0% |
The gap is 4.6 points, and it is exactly the ordinary rate. The Chapter 99 layers apply to both lines, so the classification question does not remove the 7.5% or the 12.5%. It only decides whether a base rate exists at all. That is a smaller difference than most buyers assume when they hear that classification matters, and a larger one than they assume when they treat the first quote as final.
We do not answer classification questions, and no equipment supplier should. The line is decided by how the goods are presented, what the entry documents say, and in contested cases by a published ruling. Two consequences follow. Ask the broker to state the heading in writing before the deposit rather than after the container lands. And note that splitting a court into more crates does not change the answer, because unassembled goods presented together are classified as the complete article. A packing decision is not a tariff decision.
What a packing decision does change is the other axis, where the larger and more volatile number sits. The documents that travel with the goods, the conformity paperwork and the certificates behind them, belong to a different conversation than the one about entry.
4. Freight Is Priced by Volume, Duty by Value
Container rates are quoted per box, not per dollar of cargo. The assessed rates for the week to 22 October 2026 make the lane effect plain.
| Lane, from Shanghai | Rate per 40-ft | Week on week | Per m³ at 76 m³ usable |
|---|---|---|---|
| Los Angeles | $8,007 | +2% | $105.36 |
| New York | $10,166 | +1% | $133.76 |
| Genoa | $4,152 | +5% | $54.63 |
| Rotterdam | $3,632 | +3% | $47.79 |
| Composite index | $4,585 | +2% | $60.33 |
The per-cubic-meter column is our arithmetic, not a published figure. It divides each assessed rate by 76 m³, the internal volume of a 40-ft high-cube, and assumes the box is filled. A partly loaded box costs more per cubic meter, which is why fill rate appears again in section 7.
For identical goods leaving the same port on the same day, a park in California pays $105.36 per cubic meter of freight and a park in the Netherlands pays $47.79. That 2.2x gap is driven entirely by destination. On three containers it is $13,125, which is more than the duty difference between a 10% origin and a 17.1% origin on a $250,000 package.
Capacity explains part of the move. Drewry recorded six blank sailings in the assessment week and two announced for the following week, while vessel waiting time at Shanghai fell from 97 hours in week 38 to 38 hours in week 42. Faster port handling and fewer cancelled sailings pull in opposite directions, so a two-week rise is not yet a trend, and we are not going to dress it up as one.
Here is the asymmetry that should change how a budget is built. Double the value of the cargo and the duty doubles while freight stays identical. Halve the packed volume and freight halves while duty stays identical. Two lines, two units, two decisions, taken by different people at different points in the project.
5. What the 2025 Trade Data Shows
If a spread of 14.6 points between the cheapest and the most expensive common origin were enough to move a supply base, the customs data would show it. The 2025 figures show something more cautious.
| Origin | US imports, 2025 | Share | Duty today |
|---|---|---|---|
| China | $1.3 billion | 62% | 24.6% |
| Taiwan | $371 million | 17% | 10.0% |
| Vietnam | $180 million | 8% | 17.1% |
| Mexico | $72 million | 3% | 14.6% |
| Italy | $37 million | 2% | 10.0% |
| Canada | $37 million | 2% | 64.6% |
| United Kingdom | $19 million | 1% | 14.6% |
| Germany | $18 million | 1% | 10.0% |
| Netherlands | $17 million | 1% | 10.0% |
| Bulgaria | $11 million | 0% | 10.0% |
One caveat before reading anything into it. The published table reports a 2025 total that is 9% below 2024, and also reports year-on-year growth that is positive for every one of the ten listed origins. Those two statements cannot both describe the whole line. We therefore treat the shares as the reliable part and the growth column as indicative only, and anyone quoting the growth figures as a trend is quoting a table that does not reconcile with its own total.
The reliable part still says something useful. Sixty-two percent of the value on this line entered from a country paying 24.6%. Taiwan, at 17% and 10%, is the second source and pays less than half that rate. Vietnam, at 8% and 17.1%, is the fastest-growing of the listed origins. What the pattern shows is a supply base that has begun to diversify and has not yet diversified much.
For a buyer, the distance between the rate and the behavior is the real signal. The duty has been absorbed into prices rather than into the map. Equipment arriving in 2027 will mostly still come from the origin paying the highest rate, so the budget should be built around that fact instead of around a hoped-for relocation.
None of this is unique to play equipment. The tax charged at checkout is a separate line with its own geography, which the per-ticket sales tax comparison works through for six US cities. Both are percentages of the same ticket, and neither is set by the operator.
6. What Would Prove This Wrong
The claim here is narrow: the cost of imported play equipment is now set by two axes that move independently, and origin plus packed volume now matter more than the factory gate price. Five conditions would break it, and each one is testable.
One: the spread collapses. If a settlement, an exclusion or a new agreement brings the difference between the common origins below about three points, origin stops being a first-order decision and returns to being a tiebreaker. Watch the Chapter 99 subheadings rather than the headlines. Removing the 12.5% layer would flatten most of the table in a single notice.
Two: freight falls back. Below roughly $3,000 per 40-ft to the west coast, the lane premium stops dominating the duty gap and the per-cubic-meter argument loses its force. The composite index stood at $4,585 on 22 October. It has been lower within the past year, so this is not hypothetical.
Three: classification settles the other way. If rulings and entry practice put most installed courts under the amusement heading, the ordinary rate disappears and 4.6 points of this arithmetic evaporates. We have not surveyed entry practice, and we would not trust anyone who claims to have.
Four: local fabrication closes the lead-time gap. A buyer will pay 14.6 extra points to open on schedule. If a supplier inside the customs territory can deliver a court in eight weeks rather than sixteen, duty becomes a scheduling cost rather than a sourcing problem, and the axis flips.
Five: our volume assumption is wrong for your package. The per-cubic-meter figures assume a filled 40-ft high-cube at 76 m³. A package of long steel frames and low-density foam will not fill a box evenly. At 60% fill, every per-m³ number above rises by two thirds; the ranking between lanes does not change, but the absolute case for pack density does.
Notice what is absent from that list: a prediction about where the market goes. We do not have one, and the sources we used do not support one. A tariff schedule tells you today’s rate. It does not tell you next year’s.
7. The Arithmetic on a 30,000 Sq Ft Build
A reference box of 30,000 sq ft (2,787 m²) makes the two axes concrete. The invoice values below are assumptions chosen to make the arithmetic visible. The rates are not: they are the recorded rates for goods entered on 27 October 2026.
| Total duty | On $250,000 | On $400,000 | On $600,000 |
|---|---|---|---|
| 10.0% (Germany, Taiwan) | $25,000 | $40,000 | $60,000 |
| 14.6% (Mexico, India, UK) | $36,500 | $58,400 | $87,600 |
| 17.1% (Vietnam, Thailand) | $42,750 | $68,400 | $102,600 |
| 24.6% (China) | $61,500 | $98,400 | $147,600 |
Take the middle column. A $400,000 package pays $98,400 at the high rate and $40,000 at the low one. The difference is $58,400, or 14.6% of the package, or $1.95 per square foot of the reference box. The full duty at the high rate works out at $3.28 per square foot, which is worth setting beside the annual rent per square foot on the same floor, if only to remember that the duty is paid once and the rent every year.
Then add the volume line. If that package occupies 180 m³ of packed cargo, the container count depends on how well it is packed. At 70% fill against a 76 m³ box, that is 3.4 containers, so four ship and one runs part empty. At 85% fill it is 2.8, so three ship. One container saved is $8,007 on the Los Angeles lane. Three containers there cost $24,021; the same three to New York cost $30,498.
The two lines behave differently under pressure, and this is the practical point. A supplier who cuts the invoice by 5% cuts the duty by 5% and leaves freight untouched. A designer who takes one container out of the plan cuts freight by a quarter on a four-container shipment and leaves duty untouched. Neither move substitutes for the other, so a comparison that ranks offers on FOB price is ranking the smallest of the three numbers.
This is also where the equipment itself enters the argument. Frames that nest, beds that stack flat and padding that compresses into a defined pack height are not finish details; they decide how many boxes the shipment needs. The modular trampoline systems we build are specified with a pack plan for this reason, and the difference between two layouts at the same floor area often shows up in the container count before it shows up anywhere else.
Where this model came from: the reference floor area follows the 31,512 sq ft recorded in a Texas project filing for a park that opened in October 2026, rounded to 30,000 sq ft. The invoice values are illustrative. The duty rates, the freight rates and the container volume are sourced above. We have not published a per-attraction price, because none of our sources contains one.
8. What to Do Before You Sign
Three moves follow from the numbers, and none of them requires a new supplier.
Put a duty line in the capex sheet, next to freight. Most equipment budgets carry one line called shipping, which hides a percentage that can differ by 14.6 points between two quotes that look identical on paper. Ask each supplier for the country of origin, the heading they expect the goods to be entered under, and the Incoterm. A FOB quote and a DDP quote are not the same product, and the gap between them is usually this exact number.
Ask for the packed volume, not the floor area. Floor area tells you what fits in the building. Packed volume tells you what fits in the container, and the container is what you pay for. A layout that adds a zone and a container is a different project from one that adds a zone inside the existing pack. Both are legitimate. Only one of them is usually priced at the quotation stage.
Decide which axis you can actually move. If your package invoices under about $150,000, the entire duty spread is under $22,000 and the right answer is probably to buy the better design. At $400,000 and above, origin belongs in the request for quotation alongside lead time, because 14.6 points is disclosed rather than negotiated. If a lease has fixed your opening date, lead time outranks both.
One disclosure, since it bears on how you read this. We manufacture in China, so the 24.6% line applies to goods we ship to the United States. The duty is paid by the importer of record, not by us, and it does not appear in our margin. We wrote the numbers down because a buyer who discovers them after paying a deposit does not come back, and because pack design is the part of this we can actually influence. Buyers who want to check a supplier’s paperwork before a deposit will find the eight-document audit a useful starting list, and the materials and quality standards page explains what our own documentation covers.
For a specific box, send the floor area, the ceiling height and the target opening date through the design to delivery process and ask for the packed volume in the reply. The 22,000 sq ft layout breakdown shows how zone ratios shift with area, and the five project filings compared here show what declared build-out costs look like before equipment is priced at all.
FAQ
How much is the US import duty on trampoline park equipment from China?
On the gymnastics and athletics heading, 24.6%: a 4.6% ordinary rate plus 7.5% and 12.5% in Chapter 99 layers, and about 0.47% in customs fees. On the amusement ride heading the total is 20.0%, because the ordinary rate on that line is free. Which heading applies is a classification decision taken at entry, and we do not make it for you.
Who pays the tariff, the supplier or the park owner?
The importer of record pays, and for a new build that is normally the operating company or a broker acting for it. If a quote is DDP, the supplier has already bundled duty and freight into one number, which makes both lines invisible. Ask for the breakdown before comparing offers, because a DDP price and a FOB price are not the same product.
Is it cheaper to ship equipment to the west coast or the east coast?
The west coast, on the assessed rates for the week to 22 October 2026: $8,007 per 40-ft to Los Angeles against $10,166 to New York. Inland freight can reverse that for a site in the Midwest or the southeast, so the comparison has to be door to door rather than port to port. The ocean rate is only the first of two freight charges.
How many containers does a trampoline park need?
It depends on packed volume, not on floor area, which is why a container count derived from square footage is a guess. Divide the packed volume by roughly 76 m³ of usable space per 40-ft high-cube, then divide again by the fill rate you expect. A package measuring 180 m³ needs three containers at 85% fill and four at 70%.
Can a court be shipped in parts to reduce the duty?
No. The rate is charged on the entered value, and unassembled goods presented together are classified as the complete article. Splitting a shipment into more crates changes the freight and the handling, not the percentage. Reducing the entered value legitimately means buying less or making the goods somewhere else, and both of those are conversations for a broker and an accountant rather than for a packing list.
Sources
- HTS Hero, “HTS 9506.91.00: duty rates and tariff stack by country of origin”, rates for goods entered 27 October 2026, updated 27 October 2026. htshero.com/hts/9506.91.00
- U.S. International Trade Commission, Harmonized Tariff Schedule of the United States, 2026 Revision 20, heading 9506.91.00 and Chapter 99 subheadings 9903.88.15, 9903.05.31 and 9903.03.14. hts.usitc.gov
- U.S. Census Bureau, general imports of HTS 9506.91.00 and related codes, calendar 2025, queried through USA Trade Online. usatrade.census.gov
- Drewry Supply Chain Advisors, “World Container Index”, assessment for Thursday 22 October 2026. drewry.co.uk
- TariffsAPI, “HTS 9508.29.00.00: amusement park rides and fairground amusements”, rate stack by origin, synced 8 October 2026. tariffsapi.com/hts/9508.29.00.00
- KoalaGains, “HTS Chapter 95: toys, games and sports equipment, tariff rates by country”, 2026 Revision 21 basis, describing the Section 301 action effective 24 July 2026 across 60 economies. koalagains.com