Choose the country
Duty and whether you qualify for a lower rate, freight, time, wages, and the rules of the market you sell into.
NUMBER: duty, freightTOOL: duty table, freight reckoner
Country choice is mostly a duty, freight and time question, and duty is the biggest single lever: it changes by decree, not by negotiation. Read the duty page for the base rate your garment faces in each market, what each market charges duty on (they differ), and the rules of origin that decide whether a zero rate is actually yours. If you sell into Europe, read the Bangladesh timetable there too: its zero rate has a published end date.
Then compare what the making costs: wages, power, currency and duty status by country, each figure stamped with its own year. And check whether your selling market is actually ordering: Europe and the UK, the United States, and the Gulf.
Check it outside, at the source:
- ILOSTAT (opens in a new tab) minimum wages and manufacturing earnings by country, the wage line behind a CMT comparison
- World Bank Indicators (opens in a new tab) power, exchange rates and logistics by country, each figure stamped with its own year
- EU GSP and preference status (opens in a new tab) whether your origin holds GSP+ or Everything But Arms into the EU, the duty change that arrives by decree rather than by negotiation
- US Harmonized Tariff Schedule (opens in a new tab) the US duty by HS line, including the chapter 99 additional duties that sit apart from the general rate and are easy to miss
- EU Access2Markets (opens in a new tab) turns a GSP+ or EBA status into the actual rate on your code, and names the rule of origin the goods must satisfy to claim it
Tools for this step
- Import duty on garments
Read the base duty your garment faces in each market, next to what each market actually charges duty on. The bases are not the same.
- Seven supplier countries, side by side
Compare Pakistan, India, China, Bangladesh and the rest on wages, power reliability, currency, cost of money and the tariff they face, each figure stamped with its own year.
- Country cost indicators Excel
Take the whole origin comparison away as a sheet, with a reference year in its own column against every figure.
Every tool for this guide, grouped by what you are trying to do, is on the tools page.