Since the February 2026 trade deal, Indian goods enter the US at an 18% tariff, below competing origins, and UK duties on Indian leather and footwear dropped to zero in July 2026. Match your product to its specialist hub, plan 45 to 90 days of production, and verify the IEC and certificates of any supplier before a deposit.
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The 2026 tariff picture: why buyers came back
India spent the second half of 2025 in tariff exile. The US imposed a 25% reciprocal rate in August 2025, then doubled it to 50% with a penalty tied to Russian oil purchases. Apparel shipments to the US dropped about 3% during the shock, and many programs moved elsewhere.
The deal announced on February 2, 2026 reversed the picture. The penalty went away and the reciprocal rate fell to 18%, which now sits below the rates most buyers modeled in their 2025 spreadsheets. Indian officials frame the deal as reopening a US textile and apparel import market worth over $100 billion.
Two caveats keep this honest. Product-level rates still vary, and furniture is the big exception: since late September 2025, wooden and upholstered furniture fall under Section 232 duties of 25% for every origin. Check your HTS line before quoting landed cost. On the EU side, the free trade agreement concluded in January 2026 is pending ratification, so treat it as upside, not as a current discount.
| Market | Status in 2026 | What it means for buyers |
|---|---|---|
| United States | 18% reciprocal tariff since Feb 2026 | Among the lowest of major origins; furniture at 25% under Section 232 |
| United Kingdom | CETA in force since July 2026 | Zero duty on Indian leather and footwear |
| European Union | FTA concluded Jan 2026, pending ratification | Current MFN duties still apply; cuts to come |
| Australia | ECTA in force since 2022 | Most Indian goods enter duty-free |
One specialist city per product
India does not have one manufacturing belt the way the Pearl River Delta does. It has specialist cities, most of them a century old, each with its own export infrastructure. Sourcing well in India means putting the order in the right city, then picking the right factory inside it.
| Product | Hub | Scale marker |
|---|---|---|
| Cotton knitwear, t-shirts | Tirupur (Tamil Nadu) | ~55% of India’s knitwear exports, record Rs 46,000 cr FY26 |
| Home textiles, rugs, recycled yarn | Panipat (Haryana) | Recycles ~1M tonnes of textile waste a year |
| Kitchen and table linen | Karur (Tamil Nadu) | ~350,000 cluster workers |
| Leather goods and bags | Kolkata (West Bengal) | ~60% of India’s leather goods exports |
| Leather and footwear | Kanpur, Chennai, Agra | $5.7B leather+footwear exports FY25 |
| Solid wood furniture | Jodhpur (Rajasthan) | 3,000+ exporters, 150,000+ artisans |
| Brass and metalware | Moradabad (UP) | ~600 export units, ~Rs 4,500 cr exports |
| Ceramics and glass | Khurja, Firozabad (UP) | GI-registered craft clusters |
| Hand-knotted carpets | Bhadohi-Mirzapur (UP) | ~40% of world handmade carpet exports |
We keep vetted short-lists per hub in our directories of clothing manufacturers, furniture manufacturers, bag manufacturers and handicraft manufacturers in India.
MOQs and lead times by category
India’s minimums are friendlier than most sourcing countries because so much capacity sits in small and mid-size export houses. The ranges below come from published supplier terms and industry guides, not from marketing pages.
| Category | Typical MOQ | Production lead time |
|---|---|---|
| Garments, small-batch studios | 25 to 100 pcs/style | 6 to 8 weeks |
| Garments, mid-size exporters | 300 to 500 pcs/style | 45 to 90 days |
| Knitwear (Tirupur) | 300+ pcs/style | 30 to 50 days |
| Home textiles | ~500 pcs/style | 45 to 60 days |
| Solid wood furniture | One 20ft container, ~50 pcs/SKU | 25 to 45 days |
| Handbags | 100 to 300 pcs/style | 60 to 70 working days |
| Handicrafts | 25 to 100 pcs/design | 4 to 8 weeks custom |
Shipping and transit times
Most export cargo leaves through Nhava Sheva (JNPT) near Mumbai, India’s largest container port at about 7.3 million TEU, or through Mundra. Chennai serves the southern leather and knitwear belts. Under 2026 routing conditions, plan roughly 28 to 38 days to the US East Coast, 30 to 35 days to the West Coast, and 18 to 30 days to Northern Europe.
The structural point buyers miss: India to Europe is one of the shortest Asia-Europe runs, one of the shortest Asia-Europe runs. For European brands, that is one to two weeks of inventory you stop financing.
Paperwork: IEC, GST and certifications
Three checks tell you quickly whether an Indian supplier is a real exporter.
- IEC. The Importer-Exporter Code from the DGFT is mandatory for any commercial export. No IEC, no legal shipment. We verify it before sampling starts.
- GST on the invoice. Exports are zero-rated. No Indian GST should appear on an export invoice; a supplier who adds it either doesn’t export often or is padding the quote.
- Certificates at the unit. India leads the world in GOTS-certified textile facilities and has deep SMETA, BSCI and SA8000 coverage. The audit question is never whether a certificate exists, it is whether it covers the exact unit sewing your order.
Where India bites back
Honesty section. India’s export base is more fragmented than East Asia’s, factory-to-factory variance is higher, and infrastructure friction is real in second-tier clusters. Hand work varies batch to batch by nature. None of this is disqualifying; all of it is why in-production checks matter more here than anywhere we work.
“The buyers who do well in India in 2026 are the ones who pick the hub first and the factory second. The ones who struggle picked a factory from a marketplace and never asked which city it was in.”
Priya Nair
Head of Sourcing, PRIMO IN
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