The Ten Highest-MFN-Rate Chapters in the U.S. Tariff Schedule

Findings

Tobacco (Chapter 24) - by far the highest dutiable average, reflecting sin-tax policy intent

HTS Chapter 24 (Tobacco and manufactured tobacco substitutes) carries the highest average dutiable MFN ad valorem rate of any chapter in the schedule, well ahead of every other chapter. The high rate reflects U.S. tobacco policy more than industrial-protection rationale: federal excise tax structure, FDA regulatory scrutiny, and state-level taxation of tobacco products all align with a high federal import tariff. Cigarettes, cigars, snuff, and other tobacco preparations attract elevated duty rates, while some leaf-tobacco subheadings carry the 0% General rate that this dutiable-only average excludes.

Oil seeds and oleaginous fruits (Chapter 12) - tariff-rate-quota peaks skew the average

HTS Chapter 12 (Oil seeds and oleaginous fruits; industrial or medicinal plants) ranks second on a dutiable-only basis. This is not because most Chapter 12 lines carry high duties, most oilseed and industrial-plant subheadings are duty-free or low-rate, which is why the chapter's average drops sharply once free lines are excluded from the denominator. The dutiable-only average is instead pulled up by a small number of tariff-rate-quota (TRQ) subheadings whose above-quota rate is intentionally prohibitive, the same TRQ mechanism used for sugar and dairy elsewhere in the schedule.

Footwear (Chapter 64) - historic industry protection preserved through GATT/WTO rounds

HTS Chapter 64 (Footwear, gaiters, and the like) carries dutiable-line average rates well above most manufacturing chapters. The rate structure reflects post-WWII U.S. footwear-industry protection that was preserved through successive GATT and WTO rounds. While most U.S. footwear production has migrated to Vietnam, Indonesia, China, and Mexico over the past three decades, the MFN rates on non-FTA imports remain elevated. Athletic footwear, leather footwear, and rubber footwear all carry meaningful duty rates.

Cork (Chapter 45) - a narrow chapter where a few high-rate lines dominate the average

HTS Chapter 45 (Cork and articles of cork) is a small chapter by tariff-line count, and its dutiable-only average is driven by a limited set of subheadings. Because so few lines in this chapter carry a positive rate at all, the ones that do carry disproportionate weight in the average, this is the clearest example in the top ten of why a chapter's dutiable-only rate should be read alongside its underlying line count rather than treated as representative of "what cork imports typically pay."

Apparel, knit and woven (Chapters 61-62) and the man-made-fiber chapters upstream (54-55, 60) - Multifiber Arrangement legacy

HTS Chapter 61 (Apparel and clothing accessories, knitted or crocheted) sits in the top ten alongside two upstream textile-input chapters: 54 (Man-made filaments) and 55 (Man-made staple fibres). Chapter 62 (woven apparel) and Chapter 60 (knitted or crocheted fabrics) run close behind, just outside the top ten. The rate structure across this whole complex, fiber through fabric through finished garment, traces to the Multifiber Arrangement (MFA), a Cold War-era textile-and-apparel quota system that expired in 2005 but left a tariff residue at every stage of the supply chain, not just the finished-apparel chapters. Free trade agreements (NAFTA/USMCA, CAFTA-DR, KORUS) provide duty-free treatment for qualifying textiles and apparel under stringent yarn-forward and fabric-forward rules of origin, but the MFN rate continues to apply to non-FTA sourcing at every stage.

Dairy (Chapter 4) - tariff-rate-quota supply-management adjacency

HTS Chapter 4 (Dairy produce; birds' eggs; natural honey) carries elevated dutiable-only rates driven by above-TRQ-threshold subheadings, the same mechanism as Chapter 12's oilseed peaks. The U.S. does not have a Canadian-style supply-management system, but the dairy tariff structure includes high above-quota rates that effectively cap import volumes at the TRQ level for many categories (milk powder, cheese, butter). Below-quota imports benefit from significantly lower rates that this dutiable-only average does not represent.

Beverages, spirits and vinegar (Chapter 22) - a mixed chapter with a high-rate tail

HTS Chapter 22 (Beverages, spirits and vinegar) also lands in the top ten on a dutiable-only basis. As with Cork, a relatively modest number of dutiable lines means specific higher-rate spirits and beverage subheadings carry outsized weight in the chapter average; most beverage imports do not pay anywhere close to this figure.

Cereal preparations (Chapter 19) - the clearest tariff-escalation example in the schedule

HTS Chapter 19 (Preparations of cereals, flour, starch, or milk) rounds out the top ten. Its dutiable-only average sits meaningfully above the raw cereal and milling chapters (10-11) that feed it, a textbook example of tariff escalation, where the rate rises with the processing stage. The same pattern holds, more modestly, between raw fruit and vegetables (Chapters 7-8) and prepared fruit and vegetables (Chapter 20), even though Chapter 20 itself does not quite crack the top ten. Imported pasta, prepared cereal-based snacks, and processed-milk products face materially higher duties than their raw-input equivalents.

Tobacco's special status compounds with state-level taxation

Beyond the headline MFN rate, tobacco imports face a federal excise tax (structured as a per-stick or per-pound assessment), state and local cigarette and tobacco taxes that can add several dollars per pack, and federal Master Settlement Agreement payment passthroughs on cigarettes specifically. The combined effective tax burden on imported cigarettes therefore vastly exceeds the headline MFN rate, the most extreme example in the schedule of how the customs duty is only one layer of a broader fiscal structure governing landed cost.

Why these rates persist after decades of trade liberalization

The top-ten high-MFN-rate chapters share a common pattern: most have either a domestic constituency that has successfully blocked tariff reduction in trade negotiations (textiles and apparel, footwear), a tariff-rate-quota program protecting a specific commodity (dairy, and the TRQ lines within oil seeds), or a public-health/revenue rationale rather than an industrial one (tobacco). Cork and beverages are the exception: their high dutiable-only average is more a statistical artifact of a small dutiable-line count than evidence of a deliberate protection policy. In the constituency-driven cases, the persistence of high MFN rates after decades of WTO-driven trade liberalization is a story about political economy more than about comparative-advantage economics.

Implications for importers

Importers sourcing from the top-ten high-MFN-rate chapters should carefully evaluate free-trade-agreement preferences, since the savings from FTA-qualifying imports (Mexico, Canada, Korea, Central America, Japan, Australia, Israel, etc.) are largest where the MFN rate is highest. Importers should also be alert to TRQ status in the dairy and oilseed chapters: in-quota imports face dramatically lower rates than above-quota imports, and TRQ allocation can be administered first-come-first-served, by historic-share allocation, or by license. Misunderstanding the TRQ structure is a frequent source of post-entry duty assessments on dairy and certain oilseed and meat-product imports.