The hum of sewing machines has fallen silent in one of Lesotho’s largest garment factories. Once a symbol of hope for the tiny mountain kingdom’s export ambitions, the Tzicc’s clothing factory now stands half-empty, its fate hanging by a thread following a sharp escalation in U.S. tariffs.
For years, Tzicc’s produced high-quality golf shirts including merchandise for the U.S. President Donald Trump’s own clothing brand, exported duty-free to American stores. But in April, President Trump imposed a sudden 50% tariff on Lesotho’s textiles, citing a “harmful” trade imbalance with the southern African country. The move, which came without warning or consultation, has plunged the factory and the lives of more than 1,300 workers into uncertainty.
“As soon as the tariffs were announced, we started losing buyers,” said Rahila Omar, the factory’s compliance manager. “We rushed to finish the few remaining orders before the three-month tariff pause ended, but now there’s no work left.”
Most of the factory’s employees, the majority of whom are women supporting entire households, were sent home indefinitely. The empty corridors of Tzicc’s echo with a deepening economic anxiety. In a country where poverty is widespread and the textile industry employs over 30,000 people, the loss of just one major factory could trigger a chain reaction of hardship.
For Minister of Trade Mokhethi Shelile, the U.S. tariffs are both baffling and dangerous. “Lesotho is a very small economy,” he told reporters. “This trade imbalance President Trump speaks of is not an aggressive policy. It’s a reflection of unequal capacities between nations. Penalizing us with tariffs will only widen that inequality.”
Analysts argue that Lesotho’s textile sector, built largely on preferential trade access to the U.S. under agreements like AGOA, has become collateral damage in America’s broader protectionist stance. Small economies like Lesotho depend on such lifelines not only for exports, but for the vital foreign exchange needed to import fuel, medicine, and food.
With the U.S. tariff pause set to expire on August 1st, uncertainty looms large. Workers like ’Mampho Mofokeng, a single mother of three who spent 11 years sewing at Tzicc’s, now wonder how they’ll feed their families. “We were proud to make clothes sold in America,” she said. “Now we are treated like we don’t matter.”
The shutdown of Tzicc’s may be only the beginning. Other factories across Lesotho report delays in orders and layoffs. The fear is growing that the collapse of Lesotho’s textile sector could undo years of fragile economic progress.
As trade talks approach their deadline, Lesotho finds itself at a crossroads, not because of its own doing, but because of decisions made in faraway corridors of power. And for the thousands who stitch, dye, and pack garments with care and precision, the future now hangs by a thread.
