Turkey vs China for hotel furniture: duty and freight for one hotel order

Turkey and China both make hotel furniture to drawings for export. For one hotel order, what separates them is less the workshop and more what happens after it: the duty at the destination port and the sea or road route to site. This page sets out both for the US, the EU and the Gulf. Duty figures come from the rule texts; freight figures are published market indices, labelled as market data, not our quotes.

The comparison at a glance

Sources for each row are listed below the page. Duty rows read on 12 October 2026.

US duty: the line-by-line gap on guestroom casegoods

The 2005 anti-dumping order covers wooden bedroom furniture from China. Its scope reads like a guestroom casegoods list: wooden beds, headboards, footboards, night tables and nightstands, dressers, chests, wardrobes, vanities and wardrobe-type cabinets, in solid wood or in board with veneer or laminate. Exporters without a rate of their own pay the China-wide cash deposit, set at 216.01% in Commerce’s August 2026 notice. The forced-labor Section 301 notice says plainly that anti-dumping duties still apply on top.

The HTS code of each line is the importer’s broker’s call, and the broker confirms how the duties stack on an entry. Every line on our quote carries its HTS code so the broker can check it before the order is placed. An exporter that holds its own rate under the order pays that rate. The list of those exporters is in Commerce’s notices, and it changes with each annual review.

The Gulf: freight and the Red Sea’s southern gate

Since the Strait of Hormuz closed on 28 February 2026, containers for the Gulf have been routed to Jeddah on the Red Sea or Khor al Fakkan in the UAE, then trucked on. On 10 September 2026, Xeneta put China–Jeddah at US$10,870 per 40 ft container, up 256% since 28 February. In the same fortnight, Drewry put Shanghai–Rotterdam at US$3,485. A Gulf-bound container from China cost about three times a Europe-bound one.

A ship from China reaches Jeddah through Bab el-Mandeb, the strait at the Red Sea’s southern end. Xeneta measured container capacity there in August 2026 at about 23% of its level before the Red Sea crisis. From Turkey, a ship reaches Jeddah from the north, through Suez, and does not pass Bab el-Mandeb. By road, TIR trucks run from Turkey through Iraq into Saudi Arabia (a corridor trialled in April 2026) and through Saudi Arabia to the UAE.

China is the incumbent supplier in the Gulf: its 2025 furniture exports under HS 9403 were US$823m to Saudi Arabia and US$611m to the UAE (UN Comtrade). We quote Gulf deliveries by land and via Jeddah, with the route and its validity written on the quotation.

Europe: same duty, different distance

Wooden furniture enters the EU at 0% from both. Turkish goods move under the EU–Türkiye Customs Union with an A.TR, with no origin calculation. The difference is the route. A full truck from Istanbul reaches Frankfurt in about 3 to 6 days, so one floor can travel at a time and a damaged piece can follow on the next truck. A container from China is one sailing, and the phases of a hotel are planned around it. Asia–Europe rates were easing in late September 2026 as capacity returned (Drewry via CargoLinked).

Scale

China exported US$35.14bn of HS 9403 furniture in 2025, about 15 times Turkey’s US$2.32bn (UN Comtrade). The US alone took US$7.99bn of China’s total. Scale says where the long production runs are. A hotel package is a set of short runs, each built to its own drawing, with samples and a mock-up room before the batch. Both countries have factories that work that way, and the questions in the guide to choosing a manufacturer apply to both.

Where Rovers fits

Rovers Contract works with partner factories in Turkey. We read the BOQ and the drawings, price every line with the Turkish partner factory that fits it, produce shop drawings for approval, run samples and the mock-up, follow production on the floor, inspect before packing and ship. For a US project the furniture is manufactured and delivered; outside the US we also install.

What to send us

Send the BOQ or drawings, the destination and the date each floor must be ready. We return every line priced, with its HTS code, the route and the duty for the destination, so a China quote and ours can be compared on the same lines.