The White House’s Tuesday tariff announcement was confirmation, not a revelation, but it still sent shockwaves through the markets. Now, groups representing the interests of apparel, footwear, textiles and retail are grappling with the long- and short-term implications of 25-percent tariffs on goods from Mexico and Canada and a deepening of duties on China-made product.
Whether their members are U.S. brands and retailers dealing in finished goods or American manufacturers trading in inputs and materials, industry advocacy groups bemoaned what they view as the skewering of a collaborative hemispheric supply chain and a strong, interconnected consumer market bolstered by free trade. ...
U.S. Fashion Industry Association (USFIA) president Julie Hughes also expressed dismay at the president’s decision to take on the industry’s major nearshore trading partners, saying that the tariffs “ignore the complex Western Hemisphere supply chains and close trade ties created by textile and apparel companies during the more than 30 years since a regional free trade agreement first went into effect.”
According to Hughes, farmers, retailers and shoppers will bear the brunt of the impact of tit-for-tat trade wars. Canada on Tuesday announced its own duties on more than $100 billion in American-made goods—starting with apparel, among other categories. Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum said her government would respond imminently with its own duties on U.S. goods.
“The Western Hemisphere’s apparel and textile supply chain is deeply intertwined and retaliation will hurt Americans,” Hughes said. “The ‘Made in’ label only tells part of a garment’s story,” she added, noting that the journey of even a simple cotton T-shirt can be a winding one, incorporating inputs and labor from multiple markets. U.S. cotton growers, for example, supply about 60 percent of the raw material to support Mexico’s textile production needs.
And together, Mexico and Canada supplied about $3.1 billion apparel imports to the U.S. in 2024.
China, too, still has an outsized role to play in the life of the American consumer, despite Trump’s longstanding political objectives in targeting the PRC, the USFIA lead said. “There will be a major impact on costs and inflation from the 20 percent additional tariffs on imports from China,” she added. “Apparel and textile products already face some of the highest tariff rates of any U.S. imports, reaching as high as 32 percent.”