US Import Duty on Clothing in 2026: Rates, Tiers and What Changed

This page covers rates, tiers and the legal timeline only. If you want the full cost stack from factory price to DC door, that is the complete landed cost method for apparel imports. Everything below is current as of 16 August 2026 and needs re-checking against the HTSUS before you quote it, because the legal basis for US apparel tariffs changed three times in the twelve months to July 2026. Verified against the USTR final action notice of 23 July 2026.

What changed in US clothing tariffs between April 2025 and July 2026

Almost every article published on US apparel duty before August 2026 describes a regime that no longer exists. The sequence matters, because each layer was struck down or expired rather than being amended.

The 2026 US apparel tariff timeline. Each row replaced the one above it.

The practical consequence for a brand is that the additional-tariff layer on your apparel entries has had four different legal identities since April 2025, and the entries you filed under the first two of them are the subject of a separate, unresolved refund question. That is covered in IEEPA tariff refunds for apparel importers.

The 2026 tariff is a forced-labor tariff, and that is the whole design

This is the part most coverage misses. The Section 301 tariffs that took effect on 24 July 2026 are not reciprocal tariffs, trade-deficit tariffs or national-security tariffs. USTR opened 60 separate Section 301 investigations into whether economies prohibit and enforce against the importation of goods made with forced labor. On 2 June 2026 it announced determinations that 54 economies had failed to impose such a prohibition and 6 had failed to enforce an existing one. Final action followed on 23 July 2026.

Two things follow directly.

First, a country's rate is a policy variable, not a fixture. USTR's framework allows economies to exit or reduce their rate by enacting and effectively enforcing a forced-labor import prohibition, by fulfilling reciprocal trade agreement commitments, or by demonstrating effective partial enforcement. A sourcing plan built on a 2.5-point tier gap should carry an assumption about how long that gap lasts.

Second, this regime is durable in a way the last two were not. Section 122 carried a 15 percent cap and a 150-day limit written into the statute. Section 301 has neither a rate cap nor a time limit. Whatever happens to the tier assignments, the instrument itself is not scheduled to expire.

The design also links duty directly to forced-labor policy, which means the traceability work brands were already doing for the Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act now sits alongside a tariff-rate question rather than only a compliance one. See UFLPA compliance for apparel brands, and the Yarnstick glossary of sourcing and customs terms for the definitions used here.

Section 301 forced-labor tariff rates by tier, as of 16 August 2026

Read the tier structure carefully, because two of the four rows are calculated differently. "Plus MFN" means the rate is added on top of the normal duty for the HTS line. "Inclusive of MFN" means the stated figure is the ceiling for everything combined.

Section 301 forced-labor tariff tiers, effective 24 July 2026. Verify your specific origin against the USTR final action notice and HTSUS Chapter 99 before quoting.

† Sources conflict on the EU's treatment — one describes the EU as capped at 10 percent inclusive of MFN, as shown in the row above; another describes the EU as excluded under a separate 15 percent all-inclusive ceiling applying from 1 July 2026. We are not treating either version as settled. Verify against the USTR final action notice before relying on an EU figure.

The action covers roughly 60 economies and, on USTR's own framing, the large majority of US imports by value. Apparel is squarely covered. Goods already subject to Section 232 measures (steel, aluminium, copper, autos, timber) are excluded, as are crude oil, gas, coal, coffee, cocoa, bananas, seafood, pharmaceuticals, semiconductors and aerospace. A further 471 products were excluded beyond what the preliminary proposal contemplated. Cargo laden before 24 July 2026 and entered before 28 July 2026 was exempt under the in-transit rule.

All-in duty on a cotton knit tee by country of origin

Here is the arithmetic on a single real HTS line: a cotton jersey t-shirt in 6109.10.00, general rate 16.5 percent, entered value $100,000.

Duty on $100,000 entered value of cotton knit t-shirts (HTS 6109.10.00, 16.5 percent general rate), by country of origin, as of 16 August 2026. Rates are illustrative of method; confirm against the current HTSUS.

Add the federal fees, which do not vary by origin: the Merchandise Processing Fee at 0.3464 percent of entered value, which is $346.40 here and still below the $651.50 FY2026 per-entry ceiling, and the Harbor Maintenance Fee at 0.125 percent on ocean imports with no cap, which is $125 here. Total government take runs from about $26,971 on Indian origin to about $36,971 on Chinese origin, on identical goods. Both fees are covered in MPF, HMF and the other customs fees on an entry, and the duty difference is set against FOB, MOQ and lead time in comparing India, Vietnam, Bangladesh and China as sourcing origins.

To run the same stack on your own style, origin and order value rather than on this $100,000 illustration, work through an apparel import duty calculator worked step by step.

Two cautions on the China row. Most apparel has historically sat on List 4A at 7.5 percent, but some HTS lines sit on List 3 at 25 percent, and the correct list assignment must be checked line by line against HTSUS Chapter 99, Subchapter III. And note that the pre-2025 duty on this tee from any of these origins was simply 16.5 percent. The entire spread in that table is new.

Textile and apparel tariff-rate quotas: who got one and who did not

Alongside the tariff, USTR provided textile and apparel tariff-rate quotas for four economies: Bangladesh, Cambodia, Indonesia and Malaysia. Volumes inside the quota are not subject to the Section 301 tariff. Quota sizes are set by reference to each economy's importation of US inputs, meaning US cotton and yarn, which makes the mechanism an incentive to buy American fibre as much as tariff relief. Initial duration is three years, implementation no earlier than 1 September 2026.

India did not receive a textile and apparel TRQ. Indian industry bodies have flagged this as a competitive disadvantage against Bangladesh, with a reported figure of around $11 billion in annual Indian textile and apparel exports to the US at stake; treat that as an industry estimate, not a government figure. The practical reading is that Bangladesh's headline and effective rates may diverge once quota administration begins, while India's 10 percent applies to every unit.

The February 2026 US-India 18 percent figure is wrong

This still circulates, including in content published after it stopped being true, so it is worth stating plainly.

On 6 and 7 February 2026 the United States and India announced a framework for an interim trade agreement that set a reciprocal tariff rate of 18 percent on Indian goods, applying to textiles and apparel, alongside Indian commitments to cut duties on US industrial and agricultural goods. That 18 percent rate was imposed under Executive Order 14257, issued under IEEPA.

Thirteen days later, on 20 February 2026, the Supreme Court held that IEEPA does not authorize tariffs. The legal foundation for the 18 percent figure was removed. India's current additional rate is 10 percent under Section 301, effective 24 July 2026, giving an all-in 26.5 percent on a cotton knit tee.

The framework also contained a commitment to remove reciprocal tariffs on textiles and apparel subject to conclusion of the interim agreement. That commitment is unresolved and is the single largest upside catalyst for India sourcing. It is also not currently in force, so do not price against it.

Three separate things are called Section 301, and conflating them is expensive

Three distinct regimes get referred to as "the Section 301 tariffs" or lumped together as "the tariffs." They have different legal bases, different rates and different refund positions.

The practical error to avoid: assuming that because the IEEPA tariffs were struck down, "the China tariffs" went away. They did not. Chinese apparel now stacks MFN, the legacy China Section 301 list rate, and the 2026 forced-labor rate.

Where MFN sits before any of this is added

The additional tariffs are added to a base that is already high by US standards. Apparel duties under HTSUS Chapters 61 and 62 run from roughly zero to 32 percent, averaging about 14.5 percent for knit (Chapter 61) and about 12 percent for woven (Chapter 62), against low single digits for US imports overall. Apparel sits at the top of the tariff escalation ladder: raw cotton near zero, yarn low, fabric moderate, finished garment highest.

That base rate is set by classification, not by country, and it moves sharply between adjacent garment types. See how an apparel HTS code is determined.

De minimis is gone, so every apparel shipment now pays duty

The $800 Section 321 de minimis exemption was suspended for China and Hong Kong on 2 May 2025 and universally on 29 August 2025. An interim final rule effective 24 June 2026 indefinitely suspended it for merchandise arriving by all modes other than the international postal network, under 19 U.S.C. § 1321(b). The One Big Beautiful Bill Act, enacted 4 July 2025, permanently terminates de minimis effective 1 July 2027.

For a DTC brand shipping direct from an Asian factory to a US consumer this is structural, not procedural. Every parcel now needs a formal or informal entry with full classification, valuation and duty liability, informal-entry broker fees run roughly $50 to $150, and the channel that previously travelled below the entry threshold now sits fully inside CBP's forced-labor targeting.

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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