Certificate of Origin (COO)

A certificate of origin (COO; the "COO full form" is certificate of origin) is a document stating the country in which goods were manufactured, produced or grown. It may be required by the importing country's customs, by a bank under a letter of credit, or simply by the buyer.

Non-preferential and preferential certificates

• Non-preferential (generic): states the country of origin without qualifying the goods for any tariff preference. Some countries also require it to be notarized, certified by a chamber of commerce and legalized by their consulate
• Preferential: shows that the goods meet the rules of origin of a free trade agreement, so the importer can claim that agreement's reduced or zero rate. Who may certify, and in what form, depends on the agreement

What origin means

Origin is the country of manufacture, production or growth, not the port the goods sailed from. Work done in a second country changes the origin only if it is a substantial transformation, which CBP describes as creating a new article with a different name, character and use; trade agreements apply their own, more specific rules. Goods that are only transshipped through a third country keep their original origin, and origin also decides whether country-specific additional duties apply, such as the Section 301 duties on certain products of China.

What US Customs asks for

• The entry documents listed in 19 CFR 142.3 are the entry itself, evidence of the right to make entry, the commercial invoice, a packing list where appropriate, and any other document CBP or another agency requires for the shipment. A certificate of origin is not a standard item on that list
• Origin is declared instead: the commercial invoice must show the country of origin (19 CFR 141.86), and most imported articles must be marked with the English name of their country of origin (19 CFR 134.11)
• For a USMCA claim, the importer enters "S" or "S+" before the HTS number and must hold a certification of origin completed by the importer, exporter or producer. It has no prescribed format and can appear on the invoice, but it must contain the data elements listed in 19 CFR 182.12, and the supporting records must be kept for five years from importation (19 CFR 182.15)

Certificates of origin from India

India's Directorate General of Foreign Trade (DGFT) runs a common electronic platform for certificates of origin. Since 1 January 2025, non-preferential certificates must be filed electronically on it (eCoO 2.0, at trade.gov.in), and at its January 2025 launch it connected 125 issuing agencies, 110 of them chambers of commerce and industry. The United States has comprehensive free trade agreements in force with 20 countries, and India is not one of them, so on the India to USA lane the certificate that matters is the non-preferential one a buyer or bank may ask for.

Origin documents on Airlift shipments

We check the origin on the certificate, the commercial invoice and the packing list against each other before the goods sail, so a mismatch is fixed at origin rather than at the border. Airlift is not a licensed customs broker; the US entry is filed through our licensed customs-broker network (customs clearance). To see the duty for your HTS code and country of origin, use the tariff simulator.