In terms of syntactic grouping, > and < have higher precedence; that is, these two commands are equivalent:
sort < names | head
( sort < names ) | head
as are these two:
ls | sort > out.txt
ls | ( sort > out.txt )
But in terms of sequential ordering, | is performed first; so, this command:
cat in.txt > out1.txt | cat > out2.txt
will populate out1.txt, not out2.txt, because the > out1.txt is performed after the |, and therefore supersedes it (so no output is piped out to cat > out2.txt).
Similarly, this command:
cat < in1.txt | cat < in2.txt
will print in2.txt, not in1.txt, because the < in2.txt is performed after the |, and therefore supersedes it (so no input is piped in from cat < in1.txt).