A recent Sourcing Journal article reported that clothing imports to the U.S. from China “fell to a 22-year low in May and were down by more than half (52 percent) from the same period in 2024 amid escalating tariff tensions between Washington and Beijing that have since resulted in a patched-up trade truce.”

They note that a year ago, Chinese imports represented 19.9% of clothing imports, and now represent only 9.9%. What’s not specifically addressed in the article, though, is whether China is using transshipment—sending apparel to third-party countries from which they are then shipped into the U.S.—and getting away with it. It would seem to me as a lay person in all of this that it would be pretty easy to fool the customs folks using this methodology, but that’s just me—not an expert by any means. However, data from UNComtrade did reveal that “China accounted for 63.8 percent of the $16.6 billion in textile imports to Vietnam in 2023, a ‘notable increase’ from 37.4 percent in 2010.”

Not all apparel created in China is “fast fashion” trash, but a great deal of it is, from suppliers like Shein and Temu. One would hope that that’s the majority of what’s not getting through anymore, especially with Trump’s elimination of the de minimus exemption which used to allow direct shipment to the end customer without tariffs for goods that cost less than $800.