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The Harmonized Tariff Schedule (HTS) is the official U.S. classification system for imported goods, maintained by the United States International Trade Commission (USITC). Every product crossing a U.S. border is assigned an HTS number that determines its duty rate, eligibility for trade programs, and regulatory treatment. Connecting the HTS to Parabola lets trade, compliance, and operations teams search and export tariff data in bulk — so instead of looking up codes one at a time on hts.usitc.gov, you can classify entire product catalogs, validate codes against the official schedule, and feed accurate duty rates into your cost and compliance workflows automatically.

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Pull from Harmonized Tariff Schedule (HTS)

The Pull from Harmonized Tariff Schedule (HTS) step queries the USITC HTS API and loads the results directly into your flow. Use it to search for tariff articles by keyword or to export a full range of HTS numbers for bulk classification and reference work.

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How to authenticate

No authentication is required. The USITC HTS API is a free, public government data service — there are no API keys, accounts, or credentials to set up. Simply add the Pull from Harmonized Tariff Schedule (HTS) step to your Parabola flow and start pulling data right away.

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Available data

Using the HTS integration, you can pull:
  • Keyword search results — search the full text of tariff article descriptions by any word or phrase (e.g., “copper,” “women’s jackets,” “lithium battery”) and get back up to 100 matching tariff articles. Each result includes the HTS number, chapter, heading, subheading, description, and any associated notes.
  • HTS number range export — export every tariff article whose HTS number falls within a start-to-end range you specify (e.g., chapters 61–62 for knitted and woven apparel). Results include full HTS numbers, classification text, chapter, heading, and subheading breakdowns.

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Common use cases

  • Classify a product catalog in bulk: Search descriptions from your SKU list against the HTS to surface candidate tariff codes for each product, then route results to a compliance team for review instead of looking up codes manually.
  • Validate HTS codes on purchase orders: Export the relevant HTS range and compare it against the codes your suppliers or freight forwarders have declared on incoming POs to catch misclassifications before customs.
  • Build a tariff reference table for landed cost calculations: Export chapters relevant to your product categories and join the resulting duty rates to your purchase order or invoice data to calculate accurate landed costs.
  • Monitor classification changes across schedule updates: Re-export a fixed HTS range after each USITC update and diff the results against a prior snapshot to flag any descriptions, notes, or numbers that changed.
  • Automate Section 301 and trade program screening: Export HTS chapters covered by tariff actions (e.g., China Section 301 lists) and cross-reference your active SKUs to identify products subject to additional duties or eligible for exclusions.
  • Support import compliance audits: Pull a full chapter or heading export and attach it as reference documentation in your audit trail, replacing manual downloads from the USITC website.

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Tips for using Parabola with the Harmonized Tariff Schedule (HTS)

  • Use keyword search to discover, then export to validate. Start with a keyword search to find candidate HTS numbers for a new product, then use the range export to pull the full surrounding classification context and confirm the right level of specificity.
  • Narrow your range exports. The HTS contains thousands of articles. Exporting only the chapters or headings relevant to your product categories (e.g., 6101–6117 for knitted apparel) keeps your flow fast and your results focused.
  • Store exports as reference tables. Send HTS export results to Google Drive, Airtable, or Smartsheet so your team can reuse them as a lookup table across multiple flows without re-querying the API each time.
  • Combine with your product data using a Join step. After pulling HTS data, use Parabola’s Join tables step to match tariff articles to your SKUs or PO line items by HTS number, adding duty descriptions and classification breakdowns directly to your existing data.
  • Schedule re-exports when the schedule is updated. The USITC publishes HTS updates on a regular cycle. Set a scheduled flow to re-export your relevant chapters after each update and compare against the prior version using a Compare tables step to catch any changes automatically.
  • Strip text styling for cleaner data. When exporting HTS data for use in downstream systems or databases, set the “Include text styling” option to false. This removes bold, italic, and other formatting that can cause issues when loading data into spreadsheets or databases.
Last modified on June 18, 2026