Ahead of the tariffs President Donald Trump slapped on just about every country worldwide, apparel sellers began drastically pulling back imports into the U.S.
According to data from supply chain visibility provider Vizion, apparel saw a 59.1 percent weekly decline in import bookings on the week of March 31—the highest rate among product type across all countries. This covers apparel under HS (harmonized system) code 62, which includes items like shirts, shorts, pants, overcoats, suits, dresses and skirts.
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Kyle Henderson, CEO and co-founder of Vizion, told Sourcing Journal that the steep decline in apparel bookings “makes perfect sense,” particularly given the margin levels of the industry.
“A low-margin, high-volume Asia-origin business like apparel is extremely susceptible to the tariff whiplash,” Henderson said. “You can see the rationale of pause or hold all shipments, because if anything starts arriving in the country and these tariffs are active, a brand might now financially be in a tough spot because they now owe a pile of cash that they’re not prepared to pay.”
Various reports have already indicated that Amazon has already put the kibosh on select orders out of China amid a potential decoupling in U.S.-China relations, while specialty discount retailer Five Below has asked vendors to suspend products exiting the country. It remains unclear if the memo, sent out by its container shipping partner Maersk, went out to all Five Below vendors or a subset.
Maersk’s notice, first reported by Bloomberg, indicated that no containers are to be delivered to shipyards starting Thursday, and all containers that are loaded must be unpacked and returned to the carrier.
China is the largest source for Five Below merchandise, with company stock dropping nearly 10 percent through Friday morning after the report. The stock improved to a drop of 2.5 percent by end-of-day trading.
The collapse in import bookings across the board came as many other companies cancelled, paused or delayed inventory out of Asian countries ahead of President Trump’s Wednesday announcement that he would give a 90-day reprieve to the “reciprocal” tariff duties he hit them with the week prior.
With that statement, tariffs for most countries were scaled back to a 10-percent baseline, while duties on Chinese imports were escalated to 125 percent (not counting additional 20-percent punitive fentanyl-related tariffs).
Even as the tariffs have eased up in most sourcing countries like Vietnam and Cambodia, apparel retailers still have to grapple with the added costs.
“What if, for H&M, all of their sourcing costs doubled overnight?” Henderson said. “It would be amazingly impactful to their business at their price point and the type of consumer they target.”
According to Henderson, as of Friday, many of his brand customers have still been advised to take a wait-and-see approach, instead of booking. However, he has seen some businesses take the risk if they believe they can handle the worst-case financial scenario.
“If there are meaningful shipments where you determined you could bear the financial burden if need be, then there will be some decisions to ship some of that volume,” “Typically the transit time from these most-tariffed origin countries is between three-to-eight weeks. You could get some shipments done in 90 days if you had to. The question though is, is [the tariff delay] really going to be 90 days?”
Other apparel-adjacent categories saw some of the top declines in bookings for the week of March 31, including wool and fabric (HS code 51) with a 57.1 percent drop and feathers and down (HS code 66) declining 54 percent. Textile fabrics (HS code 59) went down 48.9 percent over the seven-day stretch, while fabrics like special wovens, trimmings and laces (HS code 58) dipped 40.5 percent.
Vizion’s Ion Platform monitors $7.5 trillion in goods daily via more than 240 data sources covering 60 percent of container shipments from origin.
The front-loading of goods in the weeks ahead of the tariff announcement likely contributed to the significant drops experienced at the close of March. With retailers bringing so much inventory already in the U.S., there are projections that the second half of 2025 can cargo imports decline as much as 20 percent.
Henderson expects some product shortages to start to hit retailers in the summer months as the shipments into the U.S. cool down.
“There will still be products available but it would not be surprising to see the variety and breadth of products fall off,” Henderson said. “I don’t know if shelves will be empty, like the Covid days, but the variety will take a hit while supply chains have to rejigger themselves. This can sometimes take years.”
