Import rules by destination: where to check before you order from China

How do you find the rules for your product?

Find your market, then the row for your product family, and read the regulator's page itself. Each link below goes to a government or regulator site, and every one was checked on 24 September 2026. Where a regulator's page has moved since, its site search will usually find the replacement; the page titles given here are the ones to search for.

Three things decide which rules apply, and this page cannot settle any of them for you: which market the goods will be sold in, which product family they fall into (a lamp with a Bluetooth speaker is both electrical and radio equipment, for example), and who will act as the importer or responsible person on the record. Settle those before you brief a supplier, so the brief can ask for the right test reports and markings. How to write a sourcing brief has a place for them.

Some categories carry rules beyond the families below, and each category guide lists them by market: timber legality and furniture fire safety in sourcing furniture from Foshan and Dongguan, energy labelling and electrical waste in sourcing lighting from Guzhen, batteries and chargers in sourcing electronics accessories from Shenzhen, exotic leathers in sourcing bags and leather goods from Guangzhou, and forced-labour import rules in sourcing clothing from Guangdong.

This page is not legal or compliance advice. It lists where to check. It gives no duty rates, no tariff codes and no view on what applies to any particular product. Rules change: this page is due for review on 24 March 2027, and the "checked" column in each table shows when its links were last confirmed.

United Kingdom: where do you check?

The pages below cover Great Britain. Under the Windsor Framework, relevant EU rules for manufactured products apply in Northern Ireland; GOV.UK's guidance on placing CE or CE and UKNI marked products on the market in Northern Ireland covers the difference.

European Union: where do you check?

EU product rules apply across the member states, so one set of pages serves buyers in Ireland, Germany, the Netherlands and the rest.

United States: where do you check?

Several US agencies share the ground that one regulator covers elsewhere. For electrical safety, OSHA's page explains its Nationally Recognized Testing Laboratory programme, under which a recognised laboratory certifies a product and authorises a certification mark; radio equipment falls to the Federal Communications Commission. The CPSC's certificate page states that importers of consumer products subject to its certification requirement must electronically file certificate data from 8 July 2026.

Canada: where do you check?

Electrical safety certification in Canada is enforced by the provinces and territories; Health Canada's page says to check with your provincial or territorial electrical safety authority, and the Standards Council of Canada lists the certification marks recognised across the country.

Australia: where do you check?

Australia's electrical safety scheme and its radio and electromagnetic compatibility rules are run by different bodies, and both use the Regulatory Compliance Mark (RCM); the EESS and ACMA pages describe the two halves.

New Zealand: where do you check?

New Zealand's product safety, electrical, radio and labelling rules are published on four separate government sites. Food standards are set jointly with Australia through Food Standards Australia New Zealand, and the Ministry for Primary Industries' food business pages cover New Zealand.

What if you import somewhere else?

Start with your national customs authority for duty and declarations, your national product-safety regulator for what the goods must meet, and your national standards body for the standards they refer to.

Does the supplier's certificate settle it?

Not on its own. In each of the six markets the pages above place obligations on the business that imports or places the goods on the market, and a certificate or test report supplied by a factory is one input to meeting them, not a substitute. Ask which reports the supplier already holds for your market, in whose name they were issued and against which standard, and compare the answer with the regulator's page. The questions in how to check a Chinese supplier before you pay cover the same ground for the supplier itself, and testing or certification costs are one of the factors that make two quotes differ, as how to compare supplier quotes explains.

Why are there no duty rates or tariff codes here?

Because they change more often than this page can be reviewed, they depend on a classification only the importer can make, and every market publishes its own lookup tool at the customs links above. A rate copied onto a third-party page is out of date the day it changes, and no rate is safe to plan a margin on without checking the official tariff for your goods.