It would always be a difficult year for Bangladesh. Last summer, in the midst of an economic collapse, demonstrators a tyrant over And pushed the country on the edge of Chaos.
When a month ago, because a new government was still working to stabilize Bangladesh’s economy, the devastating news came that the United States placed a new 37 percent load on the country’s goods. Bangladesh relies on income from his export to buy fuel, food and other supplies.
President Trump soon paved those rates on Bangladesh and dozens of other countries after the world deducted. But the possibility that they will be restored are the employees who earn a living in the clothing factories of Bangladesh.
Murshida Akhtar, 25, a migrant from Noord -Bangladesh who lives near Dhaka, has supported her family by sewing machines for the past five years. One day recently she and 200 other employees, 70 percent of them women, registered for new jobs at 4A yarn paint, in the industrial hub of Savar.
Mrs. Akhtar admitted that he felt fear of the rates. But she was enthusiastic about the change in jobs. She expected to be paid $ 156 per month on 4A – slightly more than with her previous job and with a shorter living work traffic and a nicer working environment.
“My concern is that orders will be reduced,” she said. “Then there is less work.”
Bangladesh, a country of 170 million people crammed on a delta the size of Wisconsin, was mocked in the 1970s after his violent birth. It has grown steadily on the back of his clothing industry since the 1980s. Bangladeshi employees, and especially women, made the country a seamstress of the world. In the process, the average Bengalian has become better than the average citizen of even India, the gigantic country next door.
Mrs. Akhtar is one of the approximately four million Bangladeshis who work directly in making clothing for export. Maybe five times as much, including her husband and their son, depend on jobs like hers.
A rate such as the rate that Mr. Trump has planned, together with side effects such as the 145 percent rate he applied to Chinese goods, the engine of Bengalian growth would break.
Before Mr. Trump paused the rate, the interim leader of Bangladesh, the Nobel Prize for the Peace Prize Economist Muhammad Yunus, he wrote a letter ask for a deferment of 90 days. Mr Yunus promised that his country would buy more American cotton and other goods to reduce his trade surplus, which was $ 6 billion last year.
Al Mahmud -Titumir, an economist at the University of Dhaka, was less respectful. He called the tariff threat “an ugly representation of power.” It came just when the country, after decades of enviable growth, was confronted with a recession and vulnerable, he said.
A currency crisis in 2024 weakened the government of Sheikh Hasina, which in 15 years had started rule with an iron grip. Her expulsion caused an immediate security vacuum. Nine months later, Bangladesh still has to come up with a plan to restore his democracy.
Almost 85 percent of the exported goods from Bangladesh are garments and more ship to the United States than to any other country. Even if Mr. Trump does not reduce the 37 percent rate When his self -defined respite period ends in July, Bangladesh will face the rate of 10 percent that he has raised almost the world.
Even 10 percent is difficult to swallow in a company with a low margin such as the clothing trade. The competition is fierce from China, the only country that exports more, as well as from India, Vietnam, Cambodia and Sri Lanka.
The political revolution of Bangladesh was seen as a sign of hope by Western proponents of liberal democracy. India was irritated by the downfall of an alliance that had built it with Mrs. Hasina. But the administration of former President Joseph R. Biden Jr. Mr Yunus welcomed.
Bangladesh Central bank scribbled To contain the consequences of a looting of the financial system by the regime of Mrs. Hasina. It expected a year of reduced growth, but believed that things would be normal by 2026. Rates put an end to that hope. The World Bank has already lowered its expectations for the next two years of growth of Bangladesh.
The country feels the heat of the International Monetary Fund, which deleted a loan of $ 4.7 billion last year.
“We are under enormous pressure from the IMF to lower subsidies and increase prices” of fuel, said Fahmida Khatun, the director of the Center for Policy Dialogue, a think tank in Dhaka.
The rate of 10 percent and the prospect of more strike in the heart of a clothing sector that has transformed. In 2013, called a gigantic sweatshop Rana Plaza collapsedkilling more than 1,100 employees. The grotesque loss of life ensured that foreign buyers, among them large Western clothing brands, doubt that they could stay with their local partners.
But the industry gathered and understood that it had to change to survive. There is still a huge space where Rana Plaza once stood, on the main road from Dhaka to Savar. The grim circumstances that the site represents have led the future of Bengalian production.
The industry is consolidated. While the number of companies that clothing has shrunk, the value of their exports and the number of employees of the people has grown. Bangladesh is the home of 230 clothing factories that are certified under the Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design Program, a protocol of best practices that are confronted by the US with inspectors who make periodic visits. That is more than any other country in the world.
Among them is 4A yarn paints, where Mrs. Akhtar works. Despite his name, it has not painted yarn for years. It concentrates on upper outerwear, usually jackets with fancy zippers, waterproofing and other difficult to make bits. It proudly gives buyers of American brands, ranging from Carhartt to Calvin Klein, but has even more European customers than Americans.
The five working floors of the 4A Garn Dyeing factory are with employees who cut, sew and sew the newest for costcoes Jachs New York Series. Gigantic wall-mounted fans of humming against the naain needles and a piped-in music. The space is well lit, airy and pleasant, even in Savar’s premonsone -seal -bound swelling.
Signposting around the factory floors is first in English, not the local Bangla. Just like other Bengalian factories, 4A yarn paints is used for the curious eyes of foreign inspectors.
The outside of the factory is located by a cascade of hanging green. The roofs contain solar panels that help to provide the operations with power.
In August the factory was attacked during the uprising that Mrs. Hasina dropped. Khandker Imam, a general manager, proudly remembered how his factory continued to work.
Mobs had gathered outside of his factory, as they had on almost every others; Many of the companies of Bangladesh came to suspect that they worked with Mrs. Hasina. “Thousands of people came to attack our factory,” said Mr. Imam. He put on a helmet and joined his workers to stop the crowd outside the gate.
In the end, nobody was seriously injured and no production day was lost, said Mr. Imam. Just like the country, the company has become accustomed to the survival of life -threatening disturbances.
“The entire economy of this country depends on this sector,” said Mohammad Monower Hossain, head of the company’s sustainability. The human movement that knocked down Mrs. Hasina also understands this. As a country he said, “We only have our work.”
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