The first method of shipping your goods is through air shipment. It is advantageous if you need products to be shipped to you in a short time, if the products are of low volume, low weight and are of value, and of your order is small. There are a lot of air shipping service providers that you can choose from like DHL, TNT, UPS, and FEDEX.
The second method is the Ocean or Maritime Shipping which advisable if you're shipping large volumes of goods. But it takes time, at least several weeks, to reach the port of destination. Shipping from China to USAalso has additional costs like customs clearance and inland distribution to your warehouse. Then there are the documents that you have to process in the port of origin and destination.
Though you can spare yourself the hassle of preparing the paperwork's by hiring a third party logistics service provider with customs broker capabilities and extensive experience with the port of origin and destination that you are working with.
The importer is the one responsible for the import duties, meaning, you will be the one to contact the local customs agency for the details of the duties for various product categories. Both the U.S. International Trade Commission have online data bases for tariffs and duties by product category and index of national customs websites which provides duty information, respectively.
When you ask for a price quote, check the origin and the Shipping from China to USAcarefully since most freight forwarders will give you quotes for a region but not for a specific city.
Most importantly, don't forget to plan for the quality control of your goods before the shipment, because this is the last time that you can refuse the merchandise. You have to notify the supplier / manufacturer and forwarder about the inspection and as to where and what time and who will carry it out.