"India’s Garment Workers Are Paying the Price for Trump’s Tariffs", 29 October 2025

Every autumn, the buzz of sewing machines...begins to wind down as workers head home for Diwali.

This year, however, the annual exodus came earlier than usual, hastened by hefty American tariffs that shuttered factories and slowed production far ahead of schedule...

For many workers, the fallout has been swift and devastating.

“The [factories] started telling us to go home for festival holidays and come back once things in America got better,” said Raju B. Chikkanarasaiya, the general secretary at Karnataka State Garment and Textile Workers Union. “They don’t know themselves if it will happen in two or three months, but for us even one month is a lifetime. We can’t survive without wages that long, it has become like Covid again.”

Labour representatives in the state...say workers at US-focused suppliers have faced furloughs, reduced shifts, cut pay and a freeze on overtime compensation in the months since America imposed a 50 percent tariff on Indian goods...

In...Tiruppur...the shock of US tariffs is rippling across factory floors with particular force...

Most production units in the area are small-scale operations that rely on subcontracting from bigger suppliers for work and have limited resources to weather demand shocks. A large proportion of the regional workforce is made up of migrant labourers, whose lack of local networks make them particularly vulnerable at times of uncertainty.

“They’re the first to lose jobs,” said Janaki S, a leader at the Garment and General Workers Union in Tamil Nadu. “It’s hard because, as migrants, they also have less collective organisation and union representation since they come from all different states and don’t speak Tamil, so factories can fire them without much pushback.”

With many orders from US brands on pause, that’s exactly what’s happening, she said.

...unions and workers who spoke with The Business of Fashion...said layoffs have become routine in...Tiruppur...Some US-dependent factories have shut down entirely, while others remain only partially operational with reduced shifts, they added.

According to estimates from the Asia Floor Wage Alliance...thousands of migrant workers have already left Tiruppur as work dried up...

“It’s a complicated situation,” said Anant Ahuja, head of sustainability at Indian apparel manufacturing giant Shahi Exports...He said the company...[decided] to absorb the 25 percent...to protect long-term buyer relationships. “You don’t want to burn that bridge,” he said. “It’s a buyer’s market.”

But that’s not a long-term strategy: Shahi has been operating at a loss for the past few weeks, Ahuja said...

Labour groups say even workers at larger factories are still feeling the pinch...Transport services from hostels have been cut, forcing workers to pay their own way or lose a day’s wage, said Bangalore-based labour union leader Raju B. Chikkanarasaiya...

In a letter to Prime Minister Narendra Modi in August, Tamil Nadu chief minister M.K. Stalin warned that up to three million jobs across the state’s textile sector could be at risk without financial support from the central government...