US cosmetics import concentration, 2019–2025: a source-by-source analysis

Annual concentration trajectory, 2019 to 2025

Between 2019 and 2025, US general imports of beauty, make-up and skin-care preparations under Harmonized System (HS) heading 3304 became more geographically concentrated, but the shift occurred after 2021 rather than in a straight line from 2019. We track two complementary metrics across all reported customs origins in each calendar year: the all-origin Herfindahl-Hirschman Index (HHI) and the top-five origin share.

In this report, the all-origin HHI is the sum of squared percentage shares across every reported partner origin in a calendar year. It ranges from near 0 (imports spread across many small origins) to 10,000 (100% of import value from a single origin). The top-five share is the combined percentage of annual World CIF value supplied by that year’s five largest origin areas. Here, HHI is used strictly as a descriptive measure of geographic sourcing concentration across customs origin areas, not as a firm-level market competition or antitrust threshold.

HomeWise calculations from UN Comtrade annual US general-import data (U.S. Census Bureau submissions), HS heading 3304, nominal CIF USD. Shares and HHI values are rounded individually to one decimal place. UN Comtrade 2019 HS 3304 · UN Comtrade 2020 HS 3304 · UN Comtrade 2021 HS 3304 · UN Comtrade 2022 HS 3304 · UN Comtrade 2023 HS 3304 · UN Comtrade 2024 HS 3304 · UN Comtrade 2025 HS 3304

Year	World CIF value, USD	Reported origins	All-origin HHI (0 to 10,000)	Top-5 origin share, %	South Korea share, %	HS vintage
2019	$5,120,680,232	116	1008.2	66.2	10.1	H5
2020	$4,488,306,216	114	990.6	65.3	12.3	H5
2021	$5,557,871,155	120	955.9	64.6	13.3	H5
2022	$6,351,333,525	114	998.5	66.6	13.6	H6
2023	$6,837,507,124	121	1118.3	71.4	16.6	H6
2024	$7,792,401,064	117	1229.7	73.0	22.5	H6
2025	$7,471,942,824	117	1278.4	73.2	24.8	H6

From 2019 to 2021, geographic concentration eased slightly. The all-origin HHI moved from 1,008.2 in 2019 (116 reported origins) to 990.6 in 2020 (114 origins) and 955.9 in 2021 (120 origins), while the top-five origin share edged down from 66.2% to 64.6%. Concentration then rose for four consecutive years: HHI reached 998.5 in 2022, 1,118.3 in 2023, 1,229.7 in 2024 and 1,278.4 in 2025. Over the full 2019 to 2025 span, HHI increased by 270.2 points (+26.8%) and the top-five share increased by 7.0 percentage points (from 66.2% to 73.2%).

The composition of the top five origin areas remained stable across all seven years (France, Canada, China, Italy and South Korea), but their order changed substantially. France led annual HS 3304 CIF import value from 2019 through 2023. South Korea moved from fifth place in 2019 (10.1%) to third in 2020 through 2022, second in 2023 (16.6%), and first in both 2024 (22.5%) and 2025 (24.8%). By 2025, South Korea’s single-origin contribution to the HHI was 616.4 points (24.828337²), accounting for nearly half of the 1,278.4 all-origin total.

Top ten customs origins in 2025 compared with 2019

The ten largest customs origins in 2025 accounted for $6,524,440,702, or 87.3% of total US HS 3304 CIF imports ($7,471,942,824). Comparing those ten origins against their 2019 baselines shows that rising overall concentration reflects diverging paths among major suppliers rather than uniform growth across top partners.

HomeWise calculations from UN Comtrade annual US general-import data (U.S. Census Bureau submissions), HS heading 3304, nominal CIF USD. Shares and HHI values are rounded individually to one decimal place. UN Comtrade 2019 HS 3304 · UN Comtrade 2025 HS 3304

Origin area	2019 CIF value, USD	2019 share, %	2025 CIF value, USD	2025 share, %	Share change, pp
Rep. of Korea	$516,883,438	10.1	$1,855,159,165	24.8	+14.7
Canada	$755,249,783	14.7	$1,079,092,308	14.4	−0.3
France	$807,558,994	15.8	$1,033,862,893	13.8	−1.9
Italy	$571,425,681	11.2	$898,232,067	12.0	+0.9
China	$740,798,109	14.5	$604,775,585	8.1	−6.4
Mexico	$149,041,072	2.9	$286,133,847	3.8	+0.9
United Kingdom	$335,404,077	6.5	$252,625,241	3.4	−3.2
Germany	$204,180,528	4.0	$203,883,004	2.7	−1.3
Japan	$204,357,647	4.0	$187,942,812	2.5	−1.5
Other Asia, nes	$72,622,237	1.4	$122,733,780	1.6	+0.2

South Korea recorded the largest share expansion in the dataset, rising 14.7 percentage points from 10.1% in 2019 ($516,883,438) to 24.8% in 2025 ($1,855,159,165). Italy (+0.9 percentage points, from 11.2% to 12.0%), Mexico (+0.9 percentage points, from 2.9% to 3.8%) and Other Asia, nes (+0.2 percentage points, from 1.4% to 1.6%) also gained share between the two endpoints.

By contrast, several established origins represented a smaller share of US HS 3304 imports in 2025 than in 2019, even where nominal dollar values grew:

• Canada rose in nominal CIF value from $755,249,783 to $1,079,092,308, while its share of the US total edged from 14.7% to 14.4% (−0.3 percentage points). Canada ranked second in 2025, ahead of France.
• France increased in nominal CIF value from $807,558,994 to $1,033,862,893, while its share shifted from 15.8% to 13.8% (−1.9 percentage points).
• China declined in both nominal CIF value ($740,798,109 in 2019 to $604,775,585 in 2025) and share (14.5% to 8.1%, −6.4 percentage points).
• United Kingdom, Germany and Japan each recorded lower nominal CIF values and smaller percentage shares in 2025 than in 2019.

Note that South Korea overtaking France as the leading customs origin for US cosmetics imports in 2024 and 2025 has been reported previously by trade trackers and news outlets. HomeWise’s original contribution is the complete seven-year, all-origin concentration series (819 origin-year records reconciled to annual World totals) showing how the full partner distribution and HHI evolved around that shift.

What HS 3304 covers and what customs origin measures

Under the official HS 2017 (H5) and HS 2022 (H6) classifications, heading 3304 covers Beauty or make-up preparations and preparations for the care of the skin (other than medicaments), including sunscreen or sun tan preparations; manicure or pedicure preparations. It comprises five six-digit subheadings whose codes and descriptions are identical across both HS editions:

• 330410: Lip make-up preparations
• 330420: Eye make-up preparations
• 330430: Manicure or pedicure preparations
• 330491: Powders, whether or not compressed, for beauty, make-up or skin-care use
• 330499: Other beauty, make-up or skin-care preparations, including sunscreen or sun tan preparations

Heading 3304 does not cover the entire consumer beauty market. Perfumes and toilet waters are classified separately under heading 3303, and shampoos, hair lacquers and other hair preparations fall under heading 3305. Journalists citing these figures should specify beauty, make-up and skin-care preparations (HS 3304) rather than all personal-care or fragrance imports.

Three trade-accounting definitions also govern how these numbers should be interpreted:

1. Customs origin vs. brand nationality: As explained in UN Comtrade’s Reporters and Partners documentation, the primary partner for imports (partnerCode) is the country or area of origin where the goods were grown, produced or manufactured under customs rules. It does not identify the headquarters of the brand owner. A US-, French- or Japanese-headquartered brand that manufactures a skin-care formula in South Korea, Canada or Italy is recorded under the manufacturing origin. Similarly, the UN Comtrade partner entry Other Asia, nes (partner code 490) is a standard statistical partner area and is retained exactly as published rather than relabeled.
2. CIF valuation vs. customs value or retail spending: All values in this analysis use nominal US dollar CIF (Cost, Insurance and Freight) import valuation (cifvalue), which includes the transaction value of the goods plus international insurance and freight charges to the US border, as defined in UN Comtrade’s Trade Valuation guide and the U.S. Census Bureau’s International Trade Definitions. CIF values exclude US import duties and domestic wholesale or retail markups. They do not measure US consumer retail expenditure, unit volumes or domestic US cosmetics manufacturing.
3. Descriptive accounting, not causal proof: Changes in nominal CIF import values and shares reflect a combination of physical shipment volumes, product unit values, exchange rates, international freight rates and contract manufacturing decisions. This dataset does not isolate or prove the causal effect of tariffs, trade policies or consumer social-media trends.

Methodology and dataset vintages

HomeWise Review compiled this seven-year series and calculated the origin shares, ranks, HHI contributions and annual concentration metrics. The underlying trade observations were collected by the U.S. Census Bureau and disseminated by the United Nations Statistics Division through the documented UN Comtrade public API. HomeWise did not conduct customs surveys or collect proprietary shipment records.

For each calendar year from 2019 through 2025, we queried the UN Comtrade annual HS commodity preview endpoint on October 16, 2026 with identical selection parameters:

• Reporter (reporterCode=842): United States (USA)
• Trade flow (flowCode=M): Imports (general trade system, covering arrivals entering consumption, bonded warehouses or US foreign-trade zones)
• Commodity (cmdCode=3304): Four-digit HS heading 3304
• Secondary partner (partner2Code=0): World (unsplit by second partner)
• Customs procedure (customsCode=C00) and mode of transport (motCode=0): Total across all customs procedures and all transport modes

The seven annual API responses contain 826 source observations: 7 annual World denominator rows (partnerCode=0) and 819 partner-origin rows (partnerCode != 0). Because each annual response has between 114 and 121 partner rows (115 to 122 total records including World), every year falls well below the 500-record preview endpoint limit. We verified programmatically that for every year from 2019 through 2025, the sum of integer cifvalue across all reported partner origins equals the separately published World (partnerCode=0) integer cifvalue with zero discrepancy.

We use cifvalue explicitly for all seven years. In the 2020 annual response, fobvalue is zero-filled across all records while cifvalue and primaryValue are complete and reconcile to the World total; we therefore never use fobvalue. We also preserve the unbalanced panel of reported origins as published (between 114 and 121 origins per year) rather than imputing zero rows for country-year pairs not reported in a given year. Adding zero-share rows does not alter HHI or top-five share mathematically, and keeping only reported rows avoids fabricating unrecorded observations.

Dataset publication dates and the April 2026 revision

We verified the dataset publication metadata through the UN Comtrade metadata endpoints for 2024 and for 2019–2023 and 2025. Each annual dataset carries its original HS classification (H5 / HS 2017 for 2019 to 2021; H6 / HS 2022 for 2022 to 2025) and the following UN Comtrade release dates:

• 2019 (H5): Published April 4, 2020 (from U.S. Census Bureau data received March 12, 2020)
• 2020 (H5): Published February 15, 2021 (from U.S. Census Bureau data received February 8, 2021)
• 2021 (H5): Published February 23, 2022 (from U.S. Census Bureau data collected February 15, 2022)
• 2022 (H6): Published March 9, 2023 (from U.S. Census Bureau data collected February 9, 2023)
• 2023 (H6): Published February 11, 2024 (from U.S. Census Bureau data collected February 7, 2024)
• 2024 (H6): Published February 8, 2025 (from U.S. Census Bureau data collected February 5, 2025)
• 2025 (H6): First published April 22, 2026, and reprocessed in a specific revision on April 28, 2026 due to a data-processing issue, compiled from monthly U.S. Census Bureau submissions through April 7, 2026

Because UN Comtrade snapshots reflect the Census submissions ingested as of their respective publication or revision dates, they may differ from later U.S. Census Bureau benchmark revisions.

Formulas and independent verification

All calculations were performed from the exact integer dollar observations before rounding:

1. Origin share (%): 100 × (Origin CIF value ÷ World CIF value).
2. Origin HHI contribution: (Origin share in percent)².
3. All-origin HHI (0 to 10,000 scale): ∑ (Origin share in percent)² summed over all reported non-World origins in that calendar year.
4. Top-five origin share (%): 100 × (Sum of five largest origin CIF values in year t ÷ World CIF value in year t).
5. Endpoint changes: Index point changes and share percentage-point changes are calculated from unrounded values (2025 value − 2019 value); relative percentage changes are 100 × (2025 value ÷ 2019 value − 1).

Displayed table values are rounded to one decimal place; the downloadable CSV and JSON files retain six decimal places for every origin share and HHI contribution. An independent verification script using exact rational (Fraction) arithmetic re-parsed all seven raw API snapshots and verified all 826 observations, 845 structured facts and 1,658 derived calculations.

For other dimensions of the US beauty sector, see our companion historical references on US cosmetics and personal-care consumer price indices since 2019 and US nail-salon employer locations by state from 2019 to 2023. Those reports cover consumer price movement and domestic service establishments; their populations and periods differ from merchandise trade and should not be combined to infer causal supply-chain effects.

Sources

• UN Comtrade annual US HS 3304 import data (reporter 842, flow M, CIF USD): 2019 data, 2020 data, 2021 data, 2022 data, 2023 data, 2024 data and 2025 data.
• UN Comtrade dataset metadata and release notes: US 2024 annual metadata and US 2019–2023 and 2025 annual metadata.
• Harmonized System commodity classification references: HS 2017 (H5) reference JSON and HS 2022 (H6) reference JSON.
• UN Comtrade technical and methodology guides: Trade valuation (CIF and FOB), Reporters and Partners (country of origin) and UN Comtrade API documentation.
• U.S. Census Bureau foreign-trade definitions: International Trade Definitions (general imports, CIF and customs value).
• Data use and redistribution terms: Policy on Comtrade Data Use and Re-dissemination of Comtrade Data.

Download the dataset

Download origin-year CSV · Download origin-year JSON

Both files contain all 819 partner-origin rows across calendar years 2019 through 2025 (year, origin_code, origin_area, cif_import_value_usd, world_cif_import_value_usd, origin_share_percent, hhi_contribution, rank_by_cif_value, hs_heading, classification, trade_system, valuation, currency and source_url). Integer dollar values and codes are source observations from UN Comtrade (compiled from U.S. Census Bureau submissions); percentage shares, HHI contributions and annual ranks are HomeWise calculations.

Credit UN Comtrade (and the U.S. Census Bureau as original national provider) for the underlying trade values and HomeWise Review for the concentration and share calculations. UN Comtrade’s data-use policy and re-dissemination guidance permit transformed metrics (such as shares, indices and growth rates) and extracts under 100,000 records with proper attribution; raw UN data remain subject to United Nations terms and are not placed under a CC0 waiver. You may reuse the HomeWise calculations without registration, a permission request or a mandatory backlink.