The country costs behind each origin, on published figures rather than on reputation, and which country for which cloth.
Step 5, continued · Country costsEvery buyer
Country costs, origin by origin
Wages, power and tariffs by origin, each with its own year stated, so an origin
comparison is made on published figures rather than on reputation. The panel
deliberately refuses to publish a single ranking score, and it lists the six things
it cannot measure.
Costing factors
Seven supplier countries, side by side
What actually differs between the places a garment can be made: the wage bill, the
currency, the cost of borrowing, whether the power stays on, and how well the
goods move. Every figure carries the year it is from, because they do not share
one.
Macroeconomic and costing indicators for seven garment sourcing origins, each
figure with the year it refers to.
Indicator
Pakistan
Bangladesh
India
China
Vietnam
Turkey
Egypt
Manufacturing wage $/month
932025
1422024
2162025
8332022
3472024
8962025
1032024
Statutory minimum wage $/month
1332024
1082024
552024
2682024
2052024
6592025
1322024
Consumer price inflation % a year
3.52025
8.82025
2.42025
0.12025
3.32025
34.92025
14.12025
Commercial lending interest rate %
8.672021
8.622025
8.572022
4.352024
9.322023
no data
24.292024
Firms reporting electrical outages % of firms
50.72022
71.42022
15.42025
3.72024
43.02023
32.82024
35.62025
Logistics performance index, overall 1 to 5
2.422018
2.602022
3.402022
3.702022
3.302022
3.402022
3.102022
Spot rate
per US dollar, 14 October 2026
276.84 PKR
123.22 BDT
94.95 INR
6.69 CNY
25,901 VND
49.39 TRY
52.82 EGP
EU tariff treatment
preference scheme
GSP+
EBA
GSP
No GSP scheme
No GSP scheme
Customs union
No GSP scheme
There is no composite score here and there will not be one. These readings come
from four different years, so combining them into a single ranking would look
authoritative and mean nothing. Read each line on its own, with its year.
On the United States side, the base duty is the same for all seven. None of the seven origins appears in the special rate list on any of these lines, so on the base rate alone all seven pay the same. Most favoured nation base rates from the Harmonized Tariff Schedule of the United States. These are the base rates only. They do NOT include Section 301 duties or IEEPA additional duties, which sit in chapter 99 of the tariff and are not read here, so the duty actually paid on an entry can be higher and can differ by origin.
What is deliberately not compared here, and why (6)
There is no free, machine readable series of industrial electricity or gas tariffs covering all seven countries, so energy cost is not compared here. The share of firms reporting electrical outages is the nearest free proxy and it measures reliability, not price.
There is no free policy interest rate series for Pakistan, Bangladesh or Vietnam, so the commercial lending rate is shown instead. It is missing for Turkey entirely.
The readings do not share a common year. Every figure carries its own year and must be read with it. The Pakistan logistics score is still the 2018 survey while the other six are 2022.
The wages are national monthly averages in US dollars. They are not spinning or weaving mill rates, and they exclude overtime and employer contributions, so they show the gap between countries rather than a quotable labour cost.
The United States duty shown is the most favoured nation base rate only. It excludes Section 301 and IEEPA additional duties, which sit in chapter 99 of the tariff and are not read by this script.
No free, machine readable container freight rate by origin was found, so shipping cost is not compared. On short lead times it can outweigh every difference above.
What this means for country costs
What this is Seven sourcing countries side by side on wages, electricity, logistics performance, the exchange rate, and the tariff their goods pay entering the United States and the European Union.
How to read it Each column is a country, with Pakistan tinted as the home column, and each row is one costing ingredient in the unit printed under its name. The small year beneath each figure matters: countries report in different years, so figures across a row are only roughly comparable, which is exactly why no overall score is printed. Where a cell says no data, the source has none; it does not mean zero.
What moves it Wage revisions, energy policy, the currency, and trade preference decisions such as GSP eligibility.
How to use it A structured comparison before moving production, so the decision rests on all of the inputs rather than on one quoted FOB price.
The trap There is deliberately no single ranking score. Combining a wage with a tariff and a port score needs weights we would be inventing, and the panel lists the things it cannot measure at all, including quality, compliance, and whether a factory can actually make your product.
World Bank Indicators under CC BY 4.0 with attribution to the World Bank. Wage data
from ILOSTAT under CC BY 4.0 with attribution to the International Labour
Organization. EU preference status read from the Commission's own list; United
States base rates from the Harmonized Tariff Schedule. Read on 14 October 2026.
World Bank (opens in a new tab) ·
ILOSTAT (opens in a new tab) ·
US HTS (opens in a new tab)
Which country for which cloth, region by region
The long version, from the fabric buying guideWhat each country sells as cloth and as blend, why Bangladesh is missing from the tables, and whether a country grows the cotton it weaves. It opens right here.
Which country for which cloth
Nobody publishes a ranking of countries by fabric type, and we are not going to invent
one. What is published is what each country actually sells as cloth, and that is
the better question anyway. A country can weave enormous quantities and sew all of it
into its own garments, in which case you cannot buy fabric there whatever its capacity
says.
This table reads across, not down. Each row is one country's own export mix, so it says
what that country is for. The mix is taken over ten headings, the six here plus the
four blend headings in the second table, so one country's two rows add to a hundred.
Each fabric heading as a share of that country's own exports across ten headings,
with the reporting year of each country's row.
Country
Cotton, light HS 5208
Cotton, heavy HS 5209
Synthetic woven HS 5407
Knits HS 6006
Pile knits HS 6001
Home textiles HS 6302
China 2025
7.9%
4.0%
35.4%
19.2%
10.5%
16.1%
India 2025
23.0%
9.2%
16.2%
6.4%
0.2%
38.5%
Turkiye 2025
5.8%
11.2%
20.8%
28.1%
1.7%
26.9%
Pakistan 2025
7.8%
11.5%
0.7%
0.6%
under 0.1%
69.9%
Viet Nam 2023
6.8%
6.3%
17.1%
36.8%
10.3%
17.3%
Indonesia 2025
7.6%
3.0%
56.9%
11.6%
2.3%
2.4%
Derived by us from UN Comtrade, read 14 October 2026. Exports of fabric sold as fabric, not
fabric consumed inside a garment. Every figure on this page is a share or a ratio we
computed, never a value as Comtrade publishes it, because Comtrade's licence reserves
re-dissemination of its data "as is (without any transformation)" to paying subscribers.
HS 6302 is not fabric at all: it is finished bed and bath goods, and it is here so you can
see which countries sell the made article rather than the cloth it came from.
How to read this table
Cotton shirting and light wovens, 85% cotton or more. In order of size: China, India, Pakistan, Turkiye, Viet Nam, Indonesia.
The leader is 3.6 times the size of the next, so the second is a real alternative but not an equal one. Use it to test the leader rather than to replace it.
Heavy cotton wovens, twill and denim, 85% cotton or more. In order of size: China, Pakistan, India, Turkiye, Viet Nam, Indonesia.
The leader is 3.1 times the size of the next, so the second is a real alternative but not an equal one. Use it to test the leader rather than to replace it.
Woven synthetic filament, unblended. In order of size: China, India, Turkiye, Indonesia, Viet Nam, Pakistan.
The leader is 23 times the size of the next, so there is no second source at scale on this heading. Expect to negotiate terms, lead time and quality rather than rate.
Jersey, interlock, rib and other knits. In order of size: China, Turkiye, Viet Nam, India, Indonesia, Pakistan.
The leader is 9.9 times the size of the next, so there is no second source at scale on this heading. Expect to negotiate terms, lead time and quality rather than rate.
Pile knits, fleece and velour. In order of size: China, Viet Nam, Turkiye, Indonesia, India, Pakistan.
The leader is 29 times the size of the next, so there is no second source at scale on this heading. Expect to negotiate terms, lead time and quality rather than rate.
Bed and bath made-ups. In order of size: China, Pakistan, India, Turkiye, Viet Nam, Indonesia.
The leader is only 2.1 times the size of the next, so these are two sources of comparable depth. Quote both, and let each of them know you have.
Three cautions on that list. The order is by size of trade, and the countries do
not all report the same year, so a close order is less firm than a wide one. The multiples
are ours, computed from the underlying figures rather than printed from them. And none of
it is a price: no country publishes a fabric price, so this tells you who has depth, not
who is cheapest. Depth is what gives you a second quotation, a fallback when a mill is
full, and a supplier who has run your construction before, and on a first order that is
usually worth more than a small difference in rate.
And which country for which blend
A poly-cotton cloth is classified twice over, depending on which fibre wins. Note 2(A) to
Section XI of the tariff says a mixed cloth is classified as if it were made wholly of
whichever textile material predominates by weight. So a 60/40 cotton-polyester
sits in chapter 52 beside the pure cotton wovens, in headings 5210 and 5211, and the
40/60 version of the same cloth sits in chapter 55 instead, in 5513 and 5514. The dividing
line is fifty per cent by weight, and where nothing predominates the same note sends the
cloth to whichever heading comes last in numerical order, which puts an exact 50/50 into
chapter 55.
That split is not a quirk of the paperwork. It is the blend business seen from both ends,
and it lets you ask a question you cannot ask any other way: is this country's woven
cotton trade a pure cotton trade or a blended one?
The four blend headings as a share of each country's own export mix, and each
country's blended share of its own chapter 52 woven cotton exports.
Country
Cotton-rich, light HS 5210
Cotton-rich, heavy HS 5211
Poly-rich, light HS 5513
Poly-rich, heavy HS 5514
Blended share of its cotton wovens
China 2025
1.0%
3.6%
1.3%
1.0%
28%
India 2025
1.2%
3.5%
0.9%
0.8%
13%
Turkiye 2025
1.6%
3.5%
0.2%
0.3%
23%
Pakistan 2025
3.1%
2.7%
2.3%
1.4%
23%
Viet Nam 2023
1.3%
2.9%
0.6%
0.7%
24%
Indonesia 2025
5.7%
0.6%
6.7%
3.1%
37%
Derived by us from UN Comtrade, read 14 October 2026. The four blend columns are shares of
the same ten heading mix as the first table. The last column is a different sum: 5210 plus
5211 over 5208 plus 5209 plus 5210 plus 5211, so it covers the chapter 52 wovens only, and
it is left blank rather than estimated wherever those four cells do not all come from the
same year. The heading texts were read out of HMRC's tariff API on the same day, because
the whole split turns on an 85 per cent threshold and a rough paraphrase of it would put a
poly-cotton twill in the wrong column.
Cotton the majority fibre. In order of size: China, Pakistan, India, Turkiye, Viet Nam, Indonesia. This is the poly-cotton shirting and
workwear business, and it is where a brand that wants easy care performance without
losing the cotton hand actually buys.
Polyester the majority fibre. In order of size: China, Pakistan, India, Indonesia, Viet Nam, Turkiye. The same cloth family, on the other
side of the fifty per cent line, and therefore in a different chapter of the tariff.
Whether that changes the duty you pay depends on the market and the exact code, and it
is not safe to assume it does not.
Who is blended and who is pure. Indonesia is the most blended of them,
with 37 per cent of its woven cotton exports
carrying man-made fibre, against India at
13 per cent. Every one of them
weaves blends, so a low share is not an inability. It does mean that on a blended
construction in a mostly pure cotton country you are a smaller order in a smaller
department, and that is a lead time question before it is a price question.
Why this reaches your duty calculation. The two sides of the same blend sit in
different chapters of the tariff, so the code on your entry changes with the fibre ratio,
and so can the rate. If you are specifying a cloth near the fifty per cent line, settle
which side it falls on and check that code against
the import duty page before the fabric is confirmed,
not after. Section XI note 2(A) was read from HMRC's tariff API on 14 October 2026.
Why Bangladesh is not in those tables
Because Bangladesh files nothing to UN Comtrade. Not a fabric heading, not any heading,
not even total merchandise, in any of 2024, 2022, 2020.
Asked the other way round, from what its buyers report, Bangladesh supplied
0.04% of those buyers' cloth imports and
1.7% of their bed and bath made-ups. So it is not a
country with no textile trade. It is a country that sells the finished article and
not the cloth it was made from, and if a Bangladeshi supplier offers you fabric, ask
where the fabric came from before you take the price.
The working, and the three-market check
An empty Bangladesh row would read as "sells no fabric" when what it actually means is
"files no returns", and those are different claims. The fetch script re-checks that on
every run rather than taking our word for it.
So we asked the question the other way round. Bangladesh's largest buyers do report, both
what they bought from Bangladesh and what they bought from everybody, and the share of the
second that came from the first is below.
Bangladesh's share of each buyer's total imports of each heading from the world in
2024, as reported by the buying country.
Buyer
Cotton, light HS 5208
Cotton, heavy HS 5209
Synthetic woven HS 5407
Knits HS 6006
Pile knits HS 6001
Home textiles HS 6302
United States
0.01%
0.09%
under 0.01%
under 0.01%
nil
0.91%
Germany
0.01%
0.61%
under 0.01%
0.03%
0.01%
4.8%
China
0.48%
0.26%
under 0.01%
under 0.01%
nil
10.3%
Derived by us from UN Comtrade, read 14 October 2026. Each cell is what that buyer imported
from Bangladesh in 2024 divided by what it imported of the same heading from
the whole world. Six columns rather than ten, for width: the four blend headings were
fetched too and are counted in the totals below.
Those two figures are every cloth heading together, blends included, and bed and bath
made-ups on their own. Read them beside the cotton balance below and they are
consistent: Bangladesh spins on a large scale, buys almost all the cotton to do it, and
what leaves the country is the made article. So the fabric behind a Bangladeshi
garment quotation may be Chinese or Indian cloth with an extra pair of hands in the
chain, and that is worth knowing before you take the price.
Why a country is cheap: its own cotton, or cheap spinning and weaving
This is the part that turns the tables above into a prediction. A country is cheap for one
of two completely different reasons, and the two behave in opposite ways when something
moves.
Cotton grown against cotton spun by country, from the USDA balance sheet, with the
share of each country's spinning that has to be bought in.
Country
Grows m bales
Spins m bales
Buys in m bales
Bought-in share
What that does to your price
China
33.50
42.00
7.00
17%
Grows most of its own lint. A world cotton spike reaches it late and softened.
India
24.00
26.50
3.30
12%
Grows most of its own lint. A world cotton spike reaches it late and softened.
Turkey (Turkiye)
2.40
6.80
5.00
74%
Buys in most of its lint and grows the rest, so a cotton spike reaches it quickly and reaches most of its cost base.
Pakistan
5.00
10.20
5.10
50%
Buys in a large minority of its lint, so a cotton spike reaches it, but not in full.
Vietnam (Viet Nam)
not listed
8.30
8.30
100%
Buys nearly all its lint at the world price. Its cheapness is conversion and nothing else, so a cotton spike lands on it in full and at once.
Bangladesh
0.15
7.60
7.40
97%
Buys nearly all its lint at the world price. Its cheapness is conversion and nothing else, so a cotton spike lands on it in full and at once.
USDA World Agricultural Supply and Demand Estimates, October 2026, report number
676, marketing year 2026/27 Proj., read 14 October 2026. Million
480 pound bales. The bought-in share is our arithmetic on USDA's figures, not a line
USDA publishes: it is imports divided by mill use. USDA carries no Indonesia row, so
Indonesia is in the fabric tables above and not in this one, and USDA writes Turkey and
Vietnam where UN Comtrade writes Turkiye and Viet Nam. A work of the United States federal
government, in the public domain, republished with attribution to USDA. These are
forecasts and USDA revises them monthly.
How to use it. A cotton price spike hits the countries at the bottom of that table
immediately and the ones at the top last, because the ones at the top are largely paying
themselves for the fibre. A power tariff or a wage settlement does the reverse: a country
with no fibre advantage is selling you conversion and nothing else, so conversion is all
it has to absorb the hit with. Before you place a first order, look at where your
supplier's country sits in that last column, and you will know which headline is the one
that matters to your price.
One reputation the numbers do not support. Pakistan is famous for cotton and now
buys in about half the lint it spins, so it is no longer a fibre-advantage country. What
it has is cheap conversion, which is why the first table shows most of its export mix in
bed and bath made-ups and almost none of it in knits.
What this means for the origin comparison for fabric
What this is What each country sells as cloth, heading by heading, from UN Comtrade, beside how much of its cotton it has to buy at the world price, from the USDA balance sheet. Every Comtrade figure here is a share or a ratio we computed, never a value as they publish it.
How to read it Every figure in the upper tables is a share, not a dollar amount: the row meets the column at a percentage we computed from the source's own figures, and nil means no reported trade rather than a failed reading. The last table is a per-country sum in million bales: the cotton it grows, the cotton its mills spin, and the gap it must buy in. The bought-in share is the column to remember, because the higher it is, the faster a world cotton move reaches that country's quotations, which the final column spells out in words.
What moves it The trade figures move once a year and the release month differs by country, which is why every row carries its own year. The cotton balance is a forecast and USDA revises it monthly.
How to use it Choosing where to ask for a quotation on a particular construction or blend, and knowing in advance whether a cotton move or an energy move is the one that will reach your supplier first.
The trap Exports are not production and not capacity. A country can weave a great deal and sell none of it as cloth. And nothing here is a price: no country publishes a fabric price, so this says who has depth, not who is cheapest.
The machinery data we cannot afford to show (paid only)
The best forward indicator of where fabric capacity is going is not trade data at all, it is
machinery. Which country bought how many looms, of which type, last year tells you what will
be weavable there in two years, and the machine class maps almost one to one onto the fabric
type: water jet looms are synthetic filament, rapier and projectile are the heavy and fancy
constructions including denim, large circular knitting is jersey.
That data exists and it is not free. The International Textile Machinery Federation publishes
shipments by country of destination in its annual statistics, and the current issue costs
several hundred Swiss francs. Checked on 23 August 2026: the free pages carry world totals
only, with no country breakdown, and installed capacity by country sits behind the same
paywall. So there is no machinery figure on this page. If you are choosing where to build a
long term supply base rather than place one order, it is the report to buy.
Step two of the fabric purchase: which country is deep in that cloth, and which keeps the duty preference, with the rest of the thirteen steps around it.
