…of man-made fibers…
I was just browsing the Harmonized Tariff System in use by the US International Trade Commission today… you may (or, more likely, you may not) be interested to know that 6201.13.1000 is the HTS code you would use if you were responsible for the import of “Men’s or boys’ overcoats, carcoats, capes, cloaks and similar coats, of man-made fibers, containing 15 percent or more by weight of down and waterfowl plumage and of which down comprises 35 percent or more by weight; containing 10 percent or more by weight of down.” This category would not include anoraks, ski-jackets, windbreakers, suits, ensembles, suit-type jackets, blazers, trousers, bib and brace overalls, breeches, shorts, or swimwear.
Your goods would be subject to a 4.4% tariff, unless you operate in Cuba or North Korea, in which case your tariff would be 60%.
This definition is interesting because of the peculiar requirements it places on garments it includes. Say the weight fraction of down is x, the weight fraction of other waterfowl plumage is y, and the remainder of the garment (which is made primarily of man-made fibers) is z=1-x-y. For your garment to be included in this category, the following three requirements would have to be met:
- x + y > 0.15 (green)
- x / (x+y) > 0.35, or in other terms, x > 0.538 y (blue)
- x > 0.1 (red)
These requirements are illustrated in the figure below:
If you run awry of these requirements, and your overcoat also does not “contain 36% or more by weight of wool or fine animal hair,” then the rates go up. The regular-folks tariff jumps to 27.7% and the dirty-commies rate hits 90%.
In 2008, by the way, we imported 36,485 dozen such coats (reported in dozens), having a total customs value of $3,472,687 and having a weight of 277 metric tons, almost 94% coming from China. That comes out to an average customs value of $7.93 apiece for a coat weighing on average about 630 grams.
I suppose, instead of researching coats I could probably have been working just now.
p.s. My convert-figure-to-image script doesn’t work because the transparency effects require PDF rendering. So I had to crop it manually from the PDF using gimp.