Fresh figures on US clothing imports for June 2026 add to a growing body of evidence that duty pressure is reshaping not just where garments are made, but the raw materials from which they are cut.
Numbers released by the Office of Textiles and Apparel (OTEXA) point to cotton-based clothing outperforming synthetic apparel, as buyers recalculate the true cost of goods once they clear customs.
Cotton starts from a stronger position
Much of this comes down to the duty structure itself. Standard most-favoured-nation rates applied to a large share of cotton garments generally sit in an 8–16% band, whereas equivalent items made wholly from synthetic fibres can attract duties of roughly 16–32%, the exact figure depending on how the product is classified.
That gap leaves considerable room for manufacturers to engineer garments, through fabric choice and construction, specifically to land in a cheaper tariff bracket.
This pattern had already begun to show through the course of last year. By volume, cotton clothing rose to a 39.9% share of US apparel imports, up from 38.5% in 2024 and 37.8% the year before that.
Synthetic-fibre clothing tracked the opposite path, slipping to 56.6% of the total from 57.9% and 59% across the same two years.
Figures for the second quarter of 2026 confirm the wider import market remains subdued. The value of US apparel imports slid 3.9% to $17.4 billion.
Within that total, cotton clothing values dropped 4.7%, while synthetic-fibre clothing values fell a broadly similar 4.6%, though on a volume basis, synthetic imports contracted far more steeply, underlining the heavier squeeze being felt by manufacturers reliant on man-made materials.
A second layer of tariff pressure
Sourcing decisions are now being made along two axes at once, with buyers weighing both country of origin and fabric content in the same calculation.
That task grew more complicated still once the Office of the US Trade Representative (USTR) introduced fresh Section 301 duties, an additional 10% or 12.5%, covering the bulk of imports from 60 trading partners, effective from 24 July.
Because that measure post-dates the period covered by the June trade figures, it cannot be reflected in this latest OTEXA data.
An opening for cotton-focused suppliers
For sourcing markets built around cotton, Bangladesh, Pakistan and India among them, this trend opens a window in categories such as t-shirts, trousers, denim and shirts.
Yet it carries a strategic downside too: leaning too heavily into cotton for the sake of duty efficiency risks starving investment in synthetic-fibre production capacity that activewear and performance-clothing brands will continue to need.
The question worth watching over the coming months is whether the July duty changes push fibre substitution further still, hardening what a modest shift in cotton’s favour is currently, into a lasting change in how the US buyers buy garments.
Image courtesy: Freepik
