Long before Donald Trump mocked Lesotho as a country “nobody has ever heard of,” and before his administration threatened a 50% tariff on its exports, some in this tiny southern African nation already knew the American president’s name for a different reason.
“Trump Golf,” read the label that workers at Precious Garments ironed into the necks of polo shirts made in the factory. “Made in Lesotho.”
Such shirts sell on TrumpStore.com for about $75, about half the monthly wage of the workers who have sewn them. Still, in one of the world’s least developed countries, those in the factory’s largely female workforce considered themselves fortunate to have jobs at all.
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Lesotho faces one of the highest tariff threats lodged by the Trump administration. No one in the tiny African nation can figure out why.
Now, their futures hang in the balance. On Aug. 1, new U.S. tariff rates will go into effect for dozens of countries, including Lesotho, whose economy leans heavily on clothing exports to the United States. But already, the threat of large duties is unraveling the industry here. Spooked buyers have canceled orders. Factories are slashing production. In early July, the government of Lesotho (pronounced “Le-SOO’-too”) announced a two-year “state of disaster.”
“I don’t have any plan for survival if the factory closes,” says Malehlohonolo Makhetha, a seamstress at Precious Garments, her voice cracking in frustration. “We are a small country that already lacks money, and now this.”
Unbalanced effects
Lesotho’s troubles with the U.S. began in early March, when President Trump declared to Congress that he would put an end to wasteful foreign aid spending, including “$8 million to promote LGBTQI+ in the African nation of Lesotho, which nobody has ever heard of.” The audience howled with laughter.
Then, in early April, President Trump slapped the country with a 50% tariff on its exports to the U.S., the single highest rate imposed on any country in the world at the time.
That tariff – currently paused for 90 days – was intended to balance out high tariffs imposed by Lesotho on the U.S., the Trump administration claimed, as well as a vast trade surplus. But the effects were hardly felt equally.
In 2023, the U.S. sold $7.3 million in goods to Lesotho, a mountainous country of 2.3 million people and 2 million sheep tucked inside the borders of South Africa. Those products, which included dump trucks, vaccines, and used rubber tires, amounted to approximately one 4,000th of 1% percent of all U.S. exports that year.
Lesotho, on the other hand, sent some $228 million worth of goods to the U.S. – mostly clothing – totaling around 25% of all its exports.
The 50% tariff surprised many here in part because the enormous trade imbalance President Trump complains of was actually by American design. In 2000, the U.S. brought Lesotho into the African Growth and Opportunity Act (AGOA), a trade agreement that allowed it to import certain goods tariff-free to the U.S.
Rebecca Blackwell/AP/File
A quiet revolution
Immediately, Lesotho’s small textile industry took off. Cavernous factories sprung up in the scruffy industrial suburbs of the capital, Maseru. Workers flocked from across the country to sew Levi’s jeans and Reebok T-shirts.
The vast majority were women. And as the garment industry ballooned into the country’s largest private employer, Lesotho became a nation of female breadwinners, a quiet gender revolution built on skinny jeans – and polo shirts.
“I love what I do,” says Ms. Makhetha, the Precious Garments seamstress. And she is proud of the life it has made possible for those she loves. Her husband earns erratically as a street vendor, so Ms. Makhetha’s monthly salary of 3,000 maloti (about $170) supports a constellation of family members, including her child, her brother-in-law’s two children, and her mother.
In recent weeks, however, she and others in the factory have been put on “short time,” meaning their hours – and wages – were slashed in half. Precious Garments, which is one of the country’s largest clothing factories, told local trade unions that it has not received any new orders since the tariff announcement in April.
Mamatŝeliso Thobileng, who has worked in the factory for 17 years, is blunt about what that means.
“We’re already poor,” she says. “This will only make the poor poorer.”
A domino effect
On a recent afternoon, chimneys outside Precious Garments belched black smoke, smearing the vista of mountains in the distance. Vendors just outside the gates tempted workers on their breaks with fried dough balls and grilled chicken feet.
Meanwhile, dented, wheezing minibuses idled nearby to ferry them home to the cinder-block rooms that have sprung up like weeds on the city’s fringes to house factory workers. All of these businesses exist to sop up the money coming into Lesotho through workers’ salaries, explains Thabo Qhesi, CEO of the Private Sector Foundation of Lesotho, a policy advocacy group.
“If the garment sector collapses, these other sectors collapse, too,” he says. “There will be a multiplier effect on the entire economy.”
Although there is no comprehensive data on how the garment industry has already been affected, the country has seen many orders from U.S. buyers put on hold, reduced, or canceled outright, according to Malikhabiso Majara, secretary general of the Lesotho Textile Exporters Association.
As Lesotho awaits the final announcement of its U.S. tariff rate on Aug. 1, it remains unclear to many here what the U.S. stands to gain from imposing high duties on its exports.
Ms. Makhetha has always been proud of the fact that the clothes she sews travel the world, and that they are worn by Americans. Now, she sees how fragile that connection is.
“I am only here hoping Trump changes his mind,” she says.
