Ask five sources where American rugs come from and you will get five different answers, with numbers that disagree by an order of magnitude. Turkey appears as a $652 million supplier in one dataset and a $28 million supplier in another. India shows up as dominant in one table and second place in the next.
None of those sources is lying. They are counting different products under different customs codes, and almost nobody explains which.
This article does two things. It lays out where U.S. rug imports actually come from by country and construction type. And it explains why the trade data looks contradictory, so you can read any import figure you encounter and know what it actually measures.
Quick Answer: Where Do U.S. Rugs Come From?
The United States imported roughly $3.4 billion in carpets and textile floor coverings in 2025, according to UN COMTRADE data. India is the largest supplier of handmade and hand-knotted rugs, with the U.S. absorbing around 70 percent of India's total carpet exports. Turkey leads in machine-woven floor coverings by value. Pakistan and Nepal supply smaller but specialized handmade volumes, Pakistan in Bukhara and Persian-design weaving, Nepal in Tibetan-technique carpets. China remains significant in machine-made goods but has declined in handmade production. Tariff changes in 2025 and 2026 have pressured all five lanes, with India absorbing the steepest increases.
The Five-Country Comparison
Basis: 2025 full-year data. Sources labeled per column. 2026 direction assessed from verified tariff actions and partial-year monthly data, not full-year figures, which do not yet exist.
| Country | Position in U.S. market | Primary rug type | 2026 direction | Key issue |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| India | Largest handmade supplier. U.S. took roughly 70% of India's carpet exports in FY25 | Hand-knotted wool, hand-tufted, flatweave dhurries | Under pressure, volumes disrupted by 2025 tariff shock | Absorbed the steepest tariff increases of any major sourcing country |
| Turkey | Largest by value in hand-woven category, $652M in 2025 per OEC | Machine-woven, flatweave kilims, some hand-knotted | Holding, strongest monthly performer in early 2026 | Category definition inflates apparent handmade share |
| Pakistan | Mid-tier handmade supplier, roughly $51M knotted in 2023 per TrendEconomy | Hand-knotted Bukhara, Persian-design, Chobi and Ziegler | Stable to modest growth | Small scale limits ability to absorb India's displaced volume |
| China | $294.6M total floor coverings in 2025 per COMTRADE | Machine-made, some hand-knotted and Tibetan-style | Declining in handmade, stable in machine-made | Separate, long-standing Section 301 tariff regime |
| Nepal | Specialist supplier, roughly $54M knotted in 2023 per TrendEconomy | Tibetan-technique hand-knotted, wool and wool-silk | Small base, quality-positioned | Capacity constraints, competition from India and China |
For more on this topic, see our article: High Point Market Spring 2026: What Rug Retailers Need to Know.
Why the Numbers Conflict: The HS Code Problem
This is the section most rug import coverage skips, and it is the reason so much of that coverage is wrong.
Rugs are not one customs category. They are five, and each measures a different construction method:
| HS Code | What it covers | What that means in trade terms |
|---|---|---|
| 5701 | Knotted carpets | True hand-knotted goods. The smallest category by value, the highest by unit price |
| 5702 | Woven, not tufted or flocked | Includes both handmade kilims and high-volume machine-woven carpet |
| 5703 | Tufted | Hand-tufted and machine-tufted, the largest volume category |
| 5704 | Felt, not tufted or flocked | Small, mostly commercial |
| 5705 | Other floor coverings | Catch-all |
Here is why that matters. A source reporting HS 5701 is reporting hand-knotted rugs, where India dominates. A source reporting HS 5702 is capturing machine-woven volume, where Turkey is enormous. A source reporting all of HS 57 is capturing everything including wall-to-wall carpet.
That is the entire explanation for Turkey's $652 million versus $28 million discrepancy. The larger figure counts woven goods broadly. The smaller counts knotted carpets only. Both are accurate for what they measure.
What it means: Before you accept any rug import statistic, ask which HS code it covers. If the source does not say, the number is not usable for sourcing decisions.
India: The Handmade Anchor Under the Most Pressure
India is the single most important sourcing country for the American handmade rug trade, and it has had the hardest two years.
Indian trade reporting put carpet exports to the United States at roughly $808 million in FY25 through December, accounting for approximately 70 percent of India's total carpet exports, with handmade carpets making up around $667 million of that. India exports an estimated 85 to 90 percent of the carpets it produces, which makes the country structurally dependent on export markets and highly exposed to U.S. trade policy.
Production concentrates in the Bhadohi-Mirzapur belt of Uttar Pradesh, the largest hand-knotted carpet cluster in South Asia. Product spans hand-knotted wool, hand-tufted goods, and flatweave dhurries, covering nearly every price tier the American market buys, with Indian rug traditions spanning both Mughal-derived and contemporary design.
The tariff story
India absorbed the steepest tariff increases of any major rug-sourcing country. A reciprocal tariff imposed in 2025 stacked with a separate duty tied to Russian oil purchases, reaching a combined 50 percent by late August 2025, the highest applied to any significant rug-exporting nation. Legal challenges and bilateral negotiation brought that down through 2026, and India now sits under a 10 percent Section 301 tariff applied on top of existing rates following the July 24, 2026 changeover.
The damage was not primarily the rate. It was the volatility. Our coverage of tariff pressure on the handmade segment documented order pauses and weaver attrition that a rate reduction does not immediately reverse.
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What it means: India remains irreplaceable for handmade volume, but importers who spent 2025 unable to quote landed cost have permanently changed how they source.
Turkey: Bigger Than It Looks, For Reasons Worth Understanding
Turkey shows up as the largest supplier by value in the hand-woven category, at $652 million in 2025 according to OEC, ahead of India at $458 million. Monthly data for April 2026 showed Turkey at $61.8 million against India's $32.4 million in the same category.
Read carefully, though. The hand-woven classification captures woven construction broadly, which includes substantial machine-woven volume alongside genuine handmade goods. Turkey's traditional handmade output, the Hereke and Oushak weaving the country is known for, is a meaningful but much smaller slice of that total than the headline number suggests.
Turkey's genuine strengths are real: an established machine-woven industry with modern capacity, flatweave kilim production with strong U.S. design demand, geographic proximity advantages over South Asia on freight, and a comparatively favorable tariff position through the 2025 disruption relative to India.
What it means: Turkey is the most misread number in rug trade data. Strong and growing, but not primarily a handmade story.
Pakistan: The Specialist That Cannot Scale Fast
Pakistan occupies a specific and defensible position: hand-knotted production in Bukhara, Persian-design, Chobi and Ziegler styles, centered on Lahore and Karachi. Knotted carpet exports to the U.S. ran roughly $51 million in 2023 per TrendEconomy figures, placing Pakistan behind India and Nepal in that category despite comparable craft heritage.
Pakistan sits under the same 10 percent Section 301 tariff as India following the July 2026 changeover, which removes some of the relative advantage it briefly held during India's 50 percent period.
The structural question is capacity. When India's tariff situation deteriorated in 2025, the obvious hedge was shifting orders to Pakistan. That happened at the margins, but Pakistan's weaving base is not large enough to absorb meaningful displaced Indian volume, and Pakistani Bukhara production in particular is a specialized category rather than a general-purpose substitute.
What it means: A quality alternative, not a volume alternative. Diversification into Pakistan works for specific product, not for replacing India.
Nepal: Small, Specialized, Quality-Positioned
Nepal is the smallest of the five by value, at roughly $54 million in knotted carpets in 2023, but occupies the most distinctive niche. Nepalese production uses the Tibetan looped knotting technique rather than the asymmetrical and symmetrical knots used across the Middle East and South Asia, producing a thicker, plusher pile. The industry traces to Tibetan refugee resettlement after 1959 and reached export markets by 1964, as covered in our Nepalese rug history.
Nepal competes on quality, design collaboration with international studios, and GoodWeave-verified labor practices rather than on price or volume. Wool-silk blends have expanded the range while retaining the underlying Tibetan rug method.
The constraints are real: a weaving base that never returned to its 1990s peak, competition from Indian and Chinese producers making similar product at lower cost, and limited capacity to scale quickly.
What it means: A design and quality play, not a volume lane. Valuable for retailers differentiating on distinctiveness.
China: Machine-Made Strength, Handmade Retreat
China supplied $294.6 million in carpets and textile floor coverings in 2025 according to COMTRADE data, and $88.7 million in the hand-woven category per OEC, a distant third behind Turkey and India.
The trajectory is the story. China was historically significant in hand-knotted production, particularly the Ningxia and Chinese Art Deco traditions, but rising domestic labor costs pushed handmade production toward India, Pakistan and Nepal over the past two decades. What remains is primarily machine-made capacity, where China competes on scale and cost.
China also operates under a separate, long-established Section 301 tariff regime distinct from the 2025 and 2026 actions affecting other countries, which means Chinese pricing has been comparatively stable through a period of upheaval elsewhere.
What it means: Relevant for machine-made sourcing. Largely finished as a hand-knotted supplier to the U.S. market.
What This Means for Importers and Retailers
Diversification is now standard practice, not strategy. The 2025 tariff shock demonstrated that single-country sourcing is a genuine business risk. Most serious importers now spread orders across at least two origin countries, and our reporting on what importers are watching heading into fall found landed-cost uncertainty driving smaller, more frequent orders.
No country substitutes for India on handmade volume. Pakistan and Nepal are quality alternatives at small scale. Turkey's strength is weighted toward woven rather than knotted. If you sell hand-knotted rugs, India remains structurally necessary regardless of tariff conditions.
Country of origin is becoming a sales conversation. Buyers ask where rugs are made more often than they did five years ago, and a retailer who can speak accurately about what distinguishes hand-knotted construction in Bhadohi from Tibetan-technique weaving in Kathmandu has a genuine advantage over a marketplace listing.
If you're searching for a trusted local rug store, our retailer directory lists shops across the U.S. organized by state and specialty.
Some of this is pushing production closer to home. The same pressures driving diversification are driving production shifts toward domestic finishing and nearshore manufacturing, though hand-knotted weaving remains structurally tied to its traditional regions.
How to Read Rug Import Data Yourself
For anyone making sourcing decisions, primary data beats aggregators.
- Use USITC DataWeb. Free, authoritative, sourced from Census. Query Imports for Consumption by HTS code and country.
- Query HS codes separately, never combined. 5701 for knotted, 5702 for woven, 5703 for tufted. Combining them produces a number that means nothing.
- Expect a two-month lag. Current-year data is always partial. Anyone publishing full-year 2026 figures right now is not using official data.
- Watch revisions. Census revised 2023 through 2025 import statistics in June 2026. Figures you cited last year may have changed.
- Compare value and quantity together. Value alone hides whether a shift is volume or pricing.
Directory listings of active rug importers are a useful cross-reference for who is actually moving goods in each lane.
What to Watch Next
- Full-year 2026 data landing in early 2027, the first clean read on post-tariff sourcing shifts
- Whether India recovers volume or importers make diversification permanent
- Whether Turkey's growth continues and how much is genuinely handmade
- Pakistan and Nepal capacity expansion, or the absence of it
- Further Section 301 developments affecting any of the five lanes
Key Takeaways
The U.S. rug import picture is more concentrated than it appears and more confusing to measure than most coverage admits. India anchors handmade supply and has absorbed the most disruption. Turkey's headline dominance is real but rests substantially on woven rather than knotted goods. Pakistan and Nepal are specialist suppliers that cannot scale into India's role. China has retreated from handmade almost entirely.
The most practically useful thing in this article is not any single number. It is knowing that a rug import figure is meaningless without its HS code, and that anyone quoting 2026 full-year shares in August 2026 is quoting something that does not exist yet.