Hit by Trade War, China's Garment Industry Refuses to Stop Hustling

New York Times

05-05-2025

Visuals by Qilai Shen
Text by Meaghan Tobin China makes nearly one in every three garments sold around the world. Much of it comes from Guangzhou, which has long been a hub of China's trade with the rest of the world. The city, in the southeast, is home to thousands of small factories where people sew seams and affix zippers as quickly as fashion trends change.
But as President Trump has ramped up tariffs targeting China, workers in the bustling garment industry here are growing worried about whether people around the world will keep buying. Online marketplaces like Amazon, Shein and Temu helped American shoppers get hooked on goods from Guangzhou at rock-bottom prices.These platforms became popular at the same time that the Chinese government was pushing small businesses to find buyers overseas.
Until April, business was good. Then the world's two-largest economies began forcing each other apart with tariffs. There's a reason Guangzhou is the world's hub for cheap clothing.In some neighborhoods, open-air workshops sit across the street from one another.
One cuts the fabric out, another sews the seams and a third adds zippers and finishing. A fourth business is responsible for picking up batches of orders that are collected at logistics centers. Feng Chaoyun has run a clothing factory with his wife for seven years. They used to employ 25 people sewing dresses for Shein, which ordered about 40,000 each month.But orders dropped to just 20,000 in April. Lately, Mr. Feng said, they can afford to pay only 10 workers.
'With the order volume down, we can't support so many people,' he said. For workshops here, many of which operate around the clock, profit margins are already razor-thin. Many don't have the safety net to survive this period of uncertainty.Eleven people told us they had watched neighboring businesses close down in the past few weeks as orders from foreign buyers dropped significantly.
Economists have warned that millions of people could lose their jobs because of the tariffs. Factories hire workers each day at informal markets that convene on particular streets.Managers bring samples of the products they are looking for people to assemble — crisp white T-shirts, delicate linen skirts.
Workers decide if they want to spend the day pressing seams or stitching elastic waistbands. Liu Miao parked his motorbike on the sidewalk with a dress sample draped over the handlebars. For the past five years, he sold clothes to wholesale buyers in the United States on Amazon. But they stopped buying when tariffs kicked in. This month, he stopped selling on Amazon.
'We can't make it work even if we hire fewer people,' Mr. Liu said. Workers are convinced that people all over the world still need to buy the T-shirts, dresses and crop tops made in Guangzhou's factories.Some are moving to other provinces or to other countries, where they hoped to pay lower wages and avoid tariffs. Others were looking for new buyers in Europe and Southeast Asia.
'People in other countries still need to wear clothes,' said Zhang Yikui, who works at a factory that sells clothing on Shein and Amazon. 'Little by little, China will keep going.'
Meaghan Tobin covers business and tech in Asia with a focus on China. Qilai Shen is a photographer based in Shanghai.
Siyi Zhao contributed research.