Congress, it turns out, plays fashion favorites.

Take bathing suits. It slaps a 28 percent tax on men’s imports, but just 12 percent on women’s.

Or overalls. The government imposes a 14 percent tariff on women’s, but only 9 percent on men’s.

Woven wool shirts? Men’s are hit with an 18 percent duty, more than twice as much as women’s.

There is no apparent pattern to the tariffs, which penalize men in some instances, and women in others. But the fees tacked onto clothing, shoes and swimwear as they enter the country’s ports may be the last legal form of sex discrimination in the United States, approved year after year by lawmakers and passed on to consumers.

For decades, apparel companies have grudgingly tolerated the peculiar disparities, writing them off as a vestige of smoke-filled, backroom trade negotiations.