What Is an Importer? Meaning, Duties and How to Become One

This page is for someone about to become one. It sits under UFLPA compliance for apparel brands, the compliance cluster pillar, and covers what an importer legally is, how importers and exporters differ, how to register with US Customs, and what an apparel importer takes on that a general importer does not. The question arrives in a dozen phrasings — what is a importer among them — and the legal answer does not change with the wording.

What an importer is under US customs law

An importer is the party that brings merchandise into a customs territory and answers to the government for it. The commercial definition is loose — anyone buying goods made abroad. The legal one runs through 19 U.S.C. § 1484, which requires the importer of record to make entry and to use reasonable care in classifying and valuing the merchandise and in giving CBP what it needs to assess duties and determine admissibility. Five obligations attach:

Recordkeeping sits behind all five. Under 19 U.S.C. § 1508 an importer must keep the import records supporting each entry — invoices, purchase orders, payment evidence, classification workings, origin documents — for five years from the date of entry, which outlasts the season, the style and usually the supplier.

Importer meaning versus importer of record

The importer meaning in ordinary business language is broader than the customs term. Most people use importer for the company buying from abroad; CBP uses importer of record for the party liable on an entry. Usually they are the same company. They come apart when a foreign seller ships DDP, or when a US-domiciled partner enters the goods for you — see importer of record versus consignee. The practical test: the importer US Customs recognises is whoever is named on the entry and whose bond secures the duty.

Importer and exporter: what each one does

An exporter sends goods out of a country and answers to its export authorities — declarations, licences and controls. An importer brings goods in and answers to the destination country's customs authority. Two roles, two legal systems, two ends of the same shipment.

One company can be both, on different legs: a brand air-freighting trims to its factory is exporter of record on that movement and importer of record when the garments come back.

Who is the importer of a shipment when several parties are involved

A single container can involve a factory, a trading company, a forwarder, a broker, a 3PL and a brand. Only one is the importer.

• The factory sells the goods and is normally exporter of record at origin.
• The forwarder arranges carriage — a service provider, not a principal.
• The customs broker files the entry under your power of attorney; the liability stays with you.
• The consignee receives the goods, and may be your warehouse rather than your company.
• The importer of record is named on the entry, holds the bond, and is who CBP writes to.

So who is the importer? The party that made entry — which is why the role is worth deciding deliberately rather than inheriting it from whatever the seller proposed.

How to be an importer in the United States: six steps

1. Get an importer number — for a US company, your IRS-issued Employer Identification Number. A sole proprietor may use a Social Security number.
2. Or request a customs assigned importer number if you have neither an EIN nor an SSN, which is normally the case for a foreign company.
3. File CBP Form 5106, the Create/Update Importer Identity Form, to establish your importer identity in CBP's systems.
4. Buy a customs bond. A single-transaction bond covers one shipment at entered value plus duties, taxes and fees. A continuous bond covers a year of entries at 10% of the prior 12 months' duties, taxes and fees, rounded up to the nearest $10,000, floor $50,000, at roughly $400–600 a year at that floor — see continuous versus single-transaction customs bonds.
5. Open an ACE portal account to see your own entry data, duty statements and bond sufficiency.
6. Appoint a licensed customs broker with a power of attorney, and agree who files the Importer Security Filing — due 24 hours before lading, with liquidated damages of $5,000 per violation.

The customs assigned importer number, and when you need one

Most US brands never meet this one: they have an EIN and use it. The customs assigned importer number exists for parties CBP cannot identify through the IRS — typically a foreign manufacturer or trading company importing in its own name. It is requested on the same Form 5106 and behaves identically in the entry system. Since Executive Order 14411 of 3 June 2026, foreign importers also face no informal entries, limits on continuous bonds, and mandatory CTPAT validation.

What a customs entry number is and where to find it

A customs entry number is the identifier CBP uses to track one entry through its systems. It is 11 characters: a three-character filer code assigned to the broker or self-filer, a seven-digit entry number unique within that filer, and a check digit. It is printed on the CBP Form 7501 entry summary and is the reference you quote in any correspondence about that shipment — a duty bill, a request for information, a post-summary correction or a protest.

Store it against the purchase order in your own system, not only the broker's: the entry number is how you find the entry again three years later when CBP asks.

What clothing importers take on that general importers do not

Clothing importers carry four burdens a general importer does not.

Classification is genuinely hard. Apparel sits in HTSUS Chapters 61 (knit) and 62 (woven), and the rate turns on construction, garment type, chief-weight fibre, gender and size band. A cotton knit tee is 16.5%, the man-made-fibre version 32%, and a 50/50 blend falls to the man-made-fibre line. Chapter 61 averages about 14.5% and Chapter 62 about 12%, against low single digits for US imports generally. See how apparel HTS codes are determined.

Origin follows a special rule. Textiles and apparel use the hierarchy at 19 CFR 102.21, not general substantial transformation, and under it the cut-and-sew country is almost always the origin: Chinese fabric assembled in Bangladesh is Bangladeshi origin.

Labelling is regulated by a second agency. The FTC enforces fibre content, RN or company name and country of origin under the Textile Fiber Products Identification Act, plus care instructions under the Care Labeling Rule. Children's apparel adds CPSIA testing and flammability under 16 CFR Part 1610 — see US apparel labeling requirements.

Forced-labor admissibility is a live risk. Apparel and cotton products are two of the twelve high-priority enforcement sectors in CBP's 2026 forced labor operational guidance, and the UFLPA rebuttable presumption has applied since 21 June 2022. Traceability documentation has to exist before a shipment is stopped, not after.

Worked example: the duty and fees on a first shipment

Basis: 2,000 cotton knit tees, $4.30 FOB, HTS 6109.10.00, India origin, ocean entry, FY2026 fee schedule. Illustrative of method — verify against the current HTSUS.

That is 32.25% of entered value, or $1.387 a unit. The same calculation on a 10,000-piece order comes to about 27.7%, because the MPF floor stops biting and the broker, ISF and bond charges spread across five times the units — first shipments are structurally the most expensive you will make. Full method in how to calculate duty and landed cost on an apparel order.

For the liability side — reasonable care, § 1592 penalties and prior disclosure — see importer of record responsibilities and penalties and the apparel sourcing and customs glossary.

Frequently asked questions