HTS Codes for Apparel: How Knit vs Woven, Fiber and Gender Set Your Duty Rate

This page covers how the code is determined. What you actually pay once the code is fixed, including the country tiers added in July 2026, is in current US import duty rates and Section 301 tiers for clothing, and the full cost stack is in the complete landed cost method for apparel imports. The authority throughout is CBP's Informed Compliance Publication Classification: Apparel Terminology Under the HTSUS, plus the HTSUS section and chapter notes. Rates below are illustrative of method and must be verified against the current HTSUS.

The five decisions that produce an apparel HTS code

Classification is not a lookup. It is a sequence of five determinations, applied in order, each narrowing the field. Get one wrong and every step after it is wrong too.

The classification decision tree for apparel, with the level of the code each step fixes.

Chapter 61 versus Chapter 62: the fabric decides, not the styling

Chapter 61 covers knitted or crocheted garments. Chapter 62 covers garments that are not knitted or crocheted. This is the largest single determinant of the rate, and it turns entirely on how the fabric was made.

The error that recurs is styling-led classification. A polo shirt looks like a dress shirt and is often merchandised alongside wovens, but it is knit piqué, so it belongs in Chapter 61. Jersey, interlock, rib, French terry, fleece and piqué are all knits. If the fabric came off a circular or flat knitting machine you are in Chapter 61, whatever the garment resembles on a hanger. Pull the construction from the mill spec, not the line sheet. See reading a fabric spec: GSM, yarn count and construction if the tech pack is ambiguous.

Garment type: the CBP definitions that separate a t-shirt from a shirt

Once the chapter is fixed, the heading is set by what the garment is, and CBP's Informed Compliance Publication gives operative definitions rather than descriptions. Four of them do most of the work.

• T-shirt, heading 6109. A lightweight jersey knit with short, close-fitting hemmed sleeves, a hemmed bottom, a close or lower neckline, and no buttons, no opening and no collar, without embroidery inconsistent with underwear styling.
• Shirt, headings 6105 and 6205. A neck-to-waist outer garment with a full or partial front opening.
• Sweater, heading 6110. A knit garment covering the body from the neck or shoulders to the waist or below, with 9 or fewer stitches per 2 centimetres measured horizontally. That stitch count is a measurable statistical-note criterion, not a judgement call, and it is worth having your QC team measure it on the sealed sample.
• Sweatshirt, heading 6110. A pullover with a snug bottom and cuffs, close-knit unpatterned fabric, napped on the inside surface only.

Key apparel headings in Chapters 61 and 62.

Chief-weight fiber and the 50/50 tie-breaker

Section XI Note 2 classifies a garment by the textile material predominating by weight. Not by the fiber that sets the hand, not by what marketing calls it, and not by yarn count. By weight.

The consequential rule is the tie-breaker. Where two fibers are exactly equal, the garment goes to the heading occurring last in numerical order, which for a cotton and polyester blend means the man-made fiber line. A 50/50 cotton-poly knit tee therefore falls in 6109.90.10 at 32 percent rather than 6109.10.00 at 16.5 percent. Metallized yarn counts entirely as "other textile material," which can drag a lurex-detailed knit into an unexpected line.

Two practical consequences. Specify 55/45 rather than 50/50 whenever the hand allows, and get the fiber split from a mill test report rather than the tech pack, because a blend written as 50/50 and produced at 49/51 is a different tariff line.

Gender, and why a unisex garment defaults to the women's line

Chapter 62 Note 8 uses the closure direction. Garments closing left over right at the front are men's or boys'; right over left are women's or girls', unless the cut clearly indicates otherwise. Garments not identifiable as either are classified as women's or girls' by default.

For a DTC brand selling a genuinely unisex tee with no front opening, the garment falls to the women's line. That determines which ten-digit statistical suffix, and therefore which textile category number, you report on every entry.

The fifth step is age. Garments for a body height of 86 centimetres or less get their own headings, 6111 for knit and 6209 for woven, at markedly lower rates: cotton knit babies' garments in 6111.20.60 carry 8.1 percent against 16.5 percent for the equivalent adult tee.

General duty rates for key apparel lines

Column 1 general rates for common apparel lines. These are illustrative of method and must be confirmed against the current HTSUS at hts.usitc.gov before you quote a price. Additional country-specific tariffs are added on top of these figures.

Note the compound rate on 6205.30.20. Several man-made fiber woven lines carry a specific charge per kilogram plus an ad valorem percentage, so "duty as a percentage" is a simplification for those lines: small on light fabrics, material on heavy ones. Women's cotton woven trousers sit on a line parallel to the men's, but read that rate directly from the HTSUS rather than assuming symmetry.

Worked example: what each classification decision costs on 10,000 units

Take one garment, 10,000 pieces at $4.30 FOB, an entered value of $43,000, and change one attribute at a time. The general rate is the only variable; country tariffs, MPF and HMF are identical across all four rows.

Duty on the same 10,000-piece order under four classification outcomes, at $43,000 entered value. General rates only, before any country-specific additional tariff.

Moving from 100 percent cotton to a 50/50 blend costs $6,665 on this single order, or 67 cents a unit, for a change most brands make on hand-feel grounds without ever seeing a duty consequence. Adding a placket and collar costs $1,376, or 14 cents a unit. Neither decision is wrong, but both should be made with the number visible, which puts classification in the design and costing conversation rather than at the point of entry.

Country of origin under 19 CFR 102.21, and what it does not do

Textiles and apparel do not use the general substantial-transformation test. They use the hierarchy in 19 CFR 102.21, applied in order until one rule resolves.

In practice, rule 4 resolves most cut-and-sew apparel, so the cut-and-sew country is almost always the country of origin. Chinese fabric cut and sewn in Bangladesh is Bangladesh origin, both for duty and for the country-of-origin marking that FTC rules require at the inside centre of the neck.

That is the legal mechanism that made "China plus one" work. It is also the point where brands most often over-read their position. Origin for tariff purposes does not launder the forced-labor provenance of the cotton. The Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act follows the input, not the assembly country, so Chinese-origin cotton, yarn or fabric in a Bangladeshi or Vietnamese garment still exposes the shipment to a rebuttable presumption of inadmissibility, and CBP uses documentary review plus isotopic and genetic testing of the fibre to test origin claims. A correct HTS code and a correct origin declaration are necessary and not sufficient. See UFLPA compliance for apparel brands.

Statistical suffixes and textile category numbers

The six-digit subheading is international. The last four digits are US-specific and operationally significant.

Heading 6109.10.00 splits into ten-digit lines that all share the 16.5 percent rate but report differently: a plain white men's tee, other men's tees, women's tees and girls' tees each have their own suffix. Those suffixes drive textile category numbers, the three-digit codes used for trade statistics and, before quotas were phased out on 1 January 2005, for quota administration. Cotton knit shirts sit in categories 338 and 339; cotton trousers in 347 and 348. A mismatch between the suffix your broker files and the category your factory prints is a reconciliation problem worth catching early.

Classification and valuation are the two levers CBP scrutinises most, and both are worth more money now than at pre-2025 duty rates. Read this alongside first sale valuation and duty drawback and the Yarnstick glossary of sourcing and customs terms.

This article is informational and is not legal advice. Tariff classifications, duty rates and admissibility determinations are fact-specific — verify against the current HTSUS and consult a licensed customs broker or trade counsel before relying on any figure here.

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