It was always going to be a difficult year for Bangladesh. Last summer, in the midst of an economic collapse, the protesters knocked down a tyrant and pushed the country to the edge of chaos.
Then, a month, as a new government was still working for the stable economy of Bangladesh, the devastating news emerged that the United States was raising a new 37 percent position on the country’s assets. Bangladesh is based on the income of its exports to buy fuel, food and other essential elements.
President Trump soon stopped these rates on Bangladesh and the dishes from other countries after the world backed down. But the possibility of restoring the concerns of workers who earn a living in Bangladesh’s clothing factories.
Murshida Akhtar, 25, a migrant from northern Bangladesh who lives near Dhaka, has been supporting her family from sewing machines during the last five years. One day, recently, she and another 200 workers, 70 percent of them women, signed for new jobs with dyed thread, at the Savar industrial center.
Mrs. Akhtar admitted feeling apprehension from the rates. But she was excited by the change in the works. I expected them to pay $ 156 for months to 4a, a little more than in the previous work and with a shorter commut and a more pleasant work environment.
“My concern is that orders will be reduced,” he said. “Then there is less work.”
Bangladesh, a country of 170 million people crowded in a delta of the size of Wisconsin, mocked as a lost economic cause after its violent birth in the 1970s. It has grown firmly since the 1980s in the back of its clothing industry. Bangladesh workers, and women in particular, made the country a seamstress for the world. In the process, the average bangladesh has been improved that the average citizen of even India, the giant country next door.
Mrs. Akhtar is one of the approximately four million Bangladesi directly used in the creation of garments for export. Maybe five more times, including her husband and son, depend on jobs like her.
A tariff like Trump planned, along with side effects such as the 145 percent rate that applied to Chinese products, would break Bangladesh’s engine.
Before Trump stopped the rate, the interim leader of Bangladesh, the winning economist of the Nobel Peace Prize Muhammad Yunus, wrote a letter a 90 -day break. Mr. Yunus promised that his country would buy more American cotton and other goods to help reduce his commercial surplus, which last year was $ 6 billion.
Rashed Al Mahmud Titum, economist at the University of Dhaka, was less deferial. He called the tariff threat “a ugly sample of power.” Just when the country, after decades of enviable growth, faced a recession and vulnerable, he said.
A monetary crisis in 2024 wove the government of Sheikh Hasina, which had governed with an iron grip for more than 15 years. His merchant caused an immediate security vacuum. Nine months later, Bangladesh has not yet created a plan to restore his democracy.
Almost 85 percent of Bangladesh’s exported products are garments and more send more to the United States than to any other country. Even if Trump does not bring back the 37 percent rate when the self -defined grace period ends in July, Bangladesh will face the 10 percent rate that virtually raised the entire world.
Only 10 percent is difficult to swallow in a low margin business, such as clothing trade. The competition is fierce from China, the only country that exports more, as well as India, Vietnam, Cambodia and Sri Lanka.
Bangladesh’s political policy was seen as a sign of hope for Western defenders or liberal democracy. India was upset by the disappearance of an alliance she had built with Mrs. Hasina. But the administration of former President Joseph R. Biden Jr. welcomed Mr. Yunus.
The Central Bank of Bangladesh hastened to contain the consequences of a looting of the financial system by the regime of Mrs. Hasina. He anticipated a year of reduced growth, but believed that businesses would benefit from normal by 2026. Tariffs put an end to that hope. The World Bank has already reduced its expectations for the next two years of Bangladesh growth.
The country feels the heat of the International Monetary Fund, which cleared a loan of $ 4.7 billion last year.
“We are under a tremendous IMF pressure to reduce subsidies and increase prices” or fuel, said Fahmida Khatun, director of the Policy Dialogue Center, a group of experts in Dhaka.
The 10 percent rate and the perspective of more attack in the heart of a sector of the garment that has been transformed. In 2013, a gigantic upload workshop called Rana Plaza collapsed, killing more than 1,100 workers. The grotesque life loss made foreign buyers, the main brands of western clothing among them, hesitate to continue with their local partners.
But the industry recovered, understanding that he needed to change to survive. There is still a fixed space where Rana Plaza once was, on the main road from Dhaka to Savar. The gloomy conditions that the site repeats have guided the future of the manufacture of Bangladesh.
The industry has established itself. While the number of companies that make garments has been reduced, the value of their exports and the number of people employed have grown. Bangladesh is home to 230 certified garments factories under the Energy Leadership and Environmental Design Program, a protocol led by the United States of best practices monitored by inspectors who make periodic visits. That is more than any other country in the world.
Among them is 4a hyarninging, where Mrs. Akhtar works. Despite his name, he has been dyed thread for years. It is concentrated on exterior clothing with greater value, mainly jackets with elegant zippers, waterproofing and other bits difficult to do. It proudly lists buyers of American brands ranging from Carhartt to Calvin Klein, but has even more European clients than Americans.
The five work floors of the Dyeing 4A Yarn factory with the workers cutting, sewing and sewing the latest for the Costco Jachs New York series. Giant fans mounted on the wall buzz against sewing needles and music with pipes. The space is well illuminated, aerated and pleasant, only in Savar’s Primosconal Swelter.
The signaling around the factory floors is first in English, not in the local bangla. Like other Bangladesh factories, thread dyeing 4a is used for the indiscreet eyes of foreign inspectors.
The exterior of the factory is led by a cascade of hanging vegetation. The roofs contain solar panels that help feed operations.
In August, the factory fell under the duration of the attack, the uprising of Mrs. Hasina. Khandker Imam, a general manager, proudly remembered how his factory continued to work.
The mobs had gathered outside their factory, as they had done in almost any other; Many of Bangladesh’s businesses fell under suspicion of having collaborated with Mrs. Hasina. “A thousand people came to attack our factory,” Imam said. He put on a helmet and joined his workers to contain the crowd outside the door.
In the end, no one was seriously injured, and a single day of production was not lost, Imam said. The company, like the country, has us used to survive the interruptions of life.
“The entire economy of this country depends on this sector,” said Hossain de Mohammad, Hossain, Chief of Sustainability of the Company. The movement of the people who overthrew Mrs. Hasina also understands this. As a country, he said: “We only have our work.”
