What your product really costs on a U.S. shelf

Almost every exporter who wants to sell in the United States runs the same calculation: FOB price, freight, tariff, and a rough guess at the rest. The problem is that "the rest" is where most of the money goes — and it is not a sum, it is a multiplication. Each link in the chain applies its margin on top of an already loaded cost.

We published three studies that rebuild that chain link by link, with the real internal taxes of the state where the product is sold, and they are free at hub.adonait.com/estudios. The first covers Argentine wine: a bottle leaving Mendoza at US$ 3.14 FOB reaches a Miami shelf at US$ 11.77, and 15.6 % of that final price is tax. The second covers Chilean salmon, which holds 70 % of the fresh fillet imported by the U.S. and since 24 July 2026 pays a 12.5 % tariff — around US$ 330 million a year for the industry. The third covers Argentine beef, the only one of the three that enters paying almost nothing, but through a 100,000-tonne quota that expires on 31 December and was 61 % used by the end of July.

The most useful finding is the least obvious: the multiplier between FOB and shelf is not constant. It runs from 3.8 times on a US$ 9 bottle to 2.7 times on a US$ 146 one, because freight, excise and customs clearance are fixed costs per unit and weigh twice as much on a cheap product. Which means the U.S. chain penalises the entry-level product precisely where volume lives.

Each study also runs the model backwards: starting from the shelf price you want, it works out the FOB you need. That is the number to bring to a negotiation with an American importer. The reports are written in Spanish, they are free, and if you need the same study for your own product, ask for it on the same page and we'll prepare it.