akin to an embargo on Indian goods<\/a>.<\/p>\nBBC correspondents visited key export hubs across India to assess how the trade uncertainties are impacting business owners and livelihoods. <\/p>\n
Across Tiruppur – which contributes to a third of India’s $16bn (\u00a311.93bn) exports of ready-to-wear garments to brands such as Target, Walmart, Gap and Zara – there’s acute anxiety about what the future holds.<\/p>\n
“September onwards, there may be nothing left to do,” Krishnamurthy said, as clients have paused all orders. <\/p>\n
He recently had to pause his expansion plans and bench nearly 250 new workers who were hired before the tariffs were imposed.<\/p>\n
The timing of the announcement has made things worse because nearly half of annual sales for most export businesses are made during this period, in the run-up to Christmas. <\/p>\n
Now these units are banking on the domestic market and on the upcoming Diwali season in India, to survive.<\/p>\n
At another factory that makes underwear, we saw inventory of nearly $1m, meant for US stores, piled up with no takers.<\/p>\n
“We were hoping India will ink a trade deal with the US. The entire production chain was frozen last month. How will I pay workers if this continues?” Siva Subramaniam, the owner of Raft Garments, told the BBC. <\/p>\n
At a 50% tariff rate, an Indian-made shirt that once sold at $10 will cost US buyers $16.4 – far costlier than $14.2 from China, $13.2 from Bangladesh or $12 from Vietnam.<\/p>\n
Even if duties ease to 25%, India will be less competitive than its Asian peers.<\/p>\n
To soften the blow, the government has announced some measures – a suspension of import duties on raw materials, for instance. Trade talks with other countries have also gathered momentum to diversify markets. But many fear this is too little, too late.<\/p>\n
“We can expect the diversion of trade, with US buyers moving to Mexico, Vietnam and Bangladesh,” said Ajay Srivastava of the Global Trade Research Initiative.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"An eerie silence hangs over N Krishnamurthy’s garment manufacturing unit in Tiruppur, one of India’s largest textile export…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":373592,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5311],"tags":[49,978,659],"class_list":{"0":"post-373591","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-united-states","8":"tag-united-states","9":"tag-us","10":"tag-usa"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/115092168708184945","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/373591","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=373591"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/373591\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/373592"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=373591"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=373591"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=373591"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}