Trump Tariffs and the Global Textiles & Fashion Industry

This is not the first time that India has found itself with a heaven-sent opportunity. This time, however, all indicators are that the ground situation is different. Will India be able to upstage China in the global textiles and apparel trade? A ground report.

Re-strategise, re-set, upskill, go compliant, build in agility and resilience—these should be the mantras for the footwear industry as it gears up in the next 89 days for the final dictum from the White House. And yeah, US+1 will work here too. And that could well be here’s looking at you India!

The Big Bro vice-like squeeze of the sweeping tariff hikes will soon be felt far beyond edgy boardrooms and uneasy stock exchanges, and there are sporadic reports of this already starting to take effect. For hundreds of thousands of garment workers—many in the factories across South and Southeast Asia, and Africa to a lesser extent—the arbitrary spike in trade tariffs will be a matter of life and death.

The lesson of the current US tariffs crisis roiling the trade world is this: you cannot keep relying on one country as your export destination. From now on it has to be ‘US Plus One’.

Perspectives are varied, and it is not an open-and-shut case against US Prez Donald Trump as his political opponents would have us believe. The tariff calculations could be questionable and the unilateral announcement should be decried, but what’s amply clear is this: trade will never be the same again.