Sourcing comparison · Textiles & Fabrics
Tariff & fee savings only, assuming equal product cost — your actual landed cost also depends on price and freight, which vary by supplier.
| Annual import value | Estimated duty & fee savings / year |
|---|---|
| $50,000 | $2,901 |
| $250,000 | $14,506 |
| $1,000,000 | $58,025 |
Savings scale linearly with volume. Enter your exact figure to model it precisely.
Calculate your exact volume →For US importers of textiles & fabrics, country of origin has quietly become the biggest line item you can actually negotiate. South Korea's 12.5% effective rate undercuts India's 18% by enough to free roughly $5,803 a year at $100,000 of volume. Two suppliers can quote the same factory price and still land at very different costs once Customs is done. Each component of the two stacks is detailed below, alongside what it means for a real sourcing decision.
Both stacks share the same customs valuation, so the comparison is apples to apples. India-made goods carry an 8% Most-Favoured-Nation base duty and a 10% forced-labor Section 301 duty on its textiles & fabrics, an effective 18% once the $49.74 in processing fees are added. Sourced from South Korea, the goods face an 8% Most-Favoured-Nation base duty and a 4.5% forced-labor Section 301 duty on its textiles & fabrics, an effective 12.5% once the $49.74 in processing fees are added. Two charges are origin-blind — the MPF and HMF, together $49.74 on this entry — which is why the entire difference lives in the duty layers. That leaves a $580.25 gap on every $10,000 of goods, driven entirely by the 5.5% spread in effective duty rate. Across a year that is roughly $1,451 on a $25,000 purchase order and about $5,803 on a $100,000 program. At order level, $25,000 of goods carries roughly $1,451 more duty from India than from South Korea.
The category, HTS 50, 51, 52, 53, 54, 55, 56, 57, 58, 59, 60, takes in Cotton fabric, Polyester fabric, Wool cloth, Silk fabric, Non-woven fabric, Knit fabric, and Technical textiles among other textiles & fabrics. For textiles & fabrics, where buyers reorder frequently, the duty rate compounds into one of the largest controllable costs on the P&L. On the pricing side, textile tariffs raise costs for US apparel manufacturers still reliant on imported fabrics, adding to competitive pressures against foreign-made finished garments. From Asia-Pacific, India's top US-bound categories include pharmaceutical ingredients, generic drugs, and clothing garments. India's bilateral deal sets a fixed rate on textiles & fabrics, a structurally different stack from origins without one. A Asia-Pacific supplier, South Korea concentrates its US exports in consumer electronics, passenger vehicles, and steel iron products. South Korea trades under a negotiated bilateral rate that applies alongside the base and Section 232/301 layers, with Section 122 at 0% since its 2026-07-24 lapse — reshaping how its textiles & fabrics stack is built. Because both sit in Asia-Pacific, a switch barely changes the freight picture and mostly changes the duty bill. The recommendation is filtered to feasible suppliers, so South Korea appears because it plausibly makes textiles & fabrics, not merely because its rate is low. The figures here reflect the rules in force today; in a year of frequent revisions, the value is in re-running them as policy moves, which this site is built to do.
The headline is $5,803 at $100,000; because the rate gap is fixed, larger programs scale cleanly — $2,901, $14,506, and $58,025 at $50,000, $250,000, and $1,000,000. Every figure is produced by the same tariff engine behind the site's calculators, holding FOB value, freight and insurance constant so only the duty effect of origin shows through. These figures reflect tariff and fee savings only, assuming equal product cost — your actual landed cost also depends on price and freight, which vary by supplier. Subtract any per-unit premium South Korea charges from the duty saving to get the true net benefit before deciding. A quick checklist for the South Korea option: match the HTS classification, get a quote that itemises duty apart from freight, and check for any antidumping or countervailing order on your item. The saving is current today; given the pace of 2026 revisions, verify it again at contract signing. Model your exact volume and compare further origins in the interactive Tariff Savings Finder.
At $100,000 of annual import value, switching from India to South Korea saves an estimated $5,803 in duties and fees, because the effective tariff rate falls from 18% to 12.5%. The saving scales linearly with volume. These figures reflect tariff and fee savings only, assuming equal product cost — your actual landed cost also depends on price and freight, which vary by supplier.
South Korea-origin textiles & fabrics is assessed an 8% Most-Favoured-Nation base duty and a 4.5% forced-labor Section 301 duty, for an effective 12.5% duty rate before the Merchandise Processing Fee ($36.55) and Harbor Maintenance Fee ($13.19).
India carries an effective 18% rate versus 12.5% for South Korea. The gap comes from differences in the base, Section 232 and bilateral rates that apply to each origin.
Tariff rates from Tax Foundation, USITC, and Penn Wharton Budget Model; retaliatory and industry data from the ITA Foreign Retaliations Database and U.S. Census Bureau (NAICS). Last verified .
