As US Tariff Shock Hits, TN’s Women Garment Workers Are Paying A Steep Price
The early impacts of the exceptionally high ‘reciprocal’ tariffs levied by the US on India could cost the women workers of Tamil Nadu’s garments their jobs and hard-won financial autonomy
Saraswati, a 35-year-old garment worker in Dindigul, didn’t know what “tariffs” were until orders slowed in her factory and she, along with many women on her production line, was put on rotational shifts – three days of work in a week instead of six.
“One moment I was working, the next there was an announcement that I don’t have to come tomorrow and that rotational shifts would begin. It means our salaries are halved,” she said. Now, she added, she is hearing that layoffs are spreading in the region’s factories that supply mainly to US fashion brands.
“I don’t know what I will do. Everything in my house is paid for with EMIs,” said Saraswati. She earns around Rs 12,000 a month, but with her income now cut to about Rs 6,000 she will have a hard time paying Rs 5,500 every month to a microfinance agency. She is one of the thousands of low-wage women workers across Tamil Nadu’s textile belt who have been hit hard by the sudden escalation in trade tensions between the US and India.
In early August 2025, the US first imposed a 25% “reciprocal” tariff on Indian goods. Less than a week later, it added another 25% “penalty” tariff tied to India’s continued purchase of Russian oil, bringing the total duty to 50%, effective from the midnight of 27 August,one of the steepest levies it imposed on any trading partner.
The US accounted for nearly USD 87 billion of India’s total exports in 2024, including about one-third of India’s garment exports—worth over USD 8 billion in 2024–25. In Tamil Nadu, the country’s largest exporter of textiles to the US, the impact has been immediate. The Tiruppur Exporters’ Association president KM Subramanian said the region’s annual exports stand at around Rs 45,000 crore, with the US market contributing Rs 12,000 crore (roughly 27%). “We expect 50% of business to the US, worth about Rs 6,000 crore, to be impacted,” he told PTI.
Dreams and Debts
These numbers now have devastating implications for Tamil Nadu’s garment workers and their families. The minimum wage for a tailor in the state is around Rs 430 a day, which translates to about Rs 11,200 a month for a six-day work week. With a few hours of overtime, most women workers typically take home between Rs 11,200 and Rs 14,000 a month — barely enough to cover household expenses and loan repayments. Already living from one paycheck to the next, many households are now being pushed into a deeper crisis.
Seema, 43, a garment worker in Dindigul, and her husband together earned between Rs 16,000 and Rs 18,000 a month. It was just enough to cover the loan for their small one-room home and their son’s engineering college fees. That fragile balance collapsed when her factory, which supplies to US buyers, scaled down production after the new tariff regime made exports unviable.
In practice, scaling down means that entire garment production lines supplying to US markets are shut until further notice, with workers either told to stay home without pay or shifted around to other lines with fewer hours. The first to be let go are usually contract workers like Seema, employed on short-term or piece-rate arrangements without the social security protections of permanent staff.
“They told us there’s no work now for contract workers like me and they don’t know when they will call us back. I am already in debt for the house, and my son’s college fees are due. Now I’m scared he will have to stop studying,” said Seema,who owes Rs 4.5 lakh of debt to microfinance agencies and moneylenders.
For Erode-based Anitha, 26, the tariff shock comes on the heels of another disaster. Last year, heavy rains brought down the roof of her house. With limited access to formal credit, she and her mother were forced to borrow Rs 2.5 lakh from a moneylender at a monthly interest rate of 10%.
The two work at the same garment factory, and their wages — Rs 12,500 for Anitha and Rs 11,200 for her mother – are barely enough to manage the repayments. Now, as US orders slow, the factory has begun cutting production and moving workers onto rotation lines. Her mother’s work has been slashed to three days a week, halving her income. Currently, Anitha gets to keep her own job only because her line produces for a European brand.
“This job is our lifeline. The income was low, but it was steady and we could manage our expenses. But now, with my mother’s wage cut in half, we are in a dire crisis. Earlier we thought twice before buying vegetables, now we think five times. I am terrified of what the moneylender will do if we can’t repay the loan on time,” said Anitha.
Wage insecurity is now the biggest source of fear, even for those still employed, said Navamani, the general secretary of the Tamil Nadu Textile and Common Labour Union.
“We are already hearing from workers that some factories under severe financial pressure, with no cash in hand, are saying they may delay monthly wages or final settlements. When that happens, families are forced to borrow from moneylenders at high interest rates just to survive. Once that cycle begins, it pushes them into a deeper crisis. It traps them in poverty, and whatever they saved or hoped to save is lost—sometimes for years,” Navamani said.
For many women workers, the uncertainty of the situation has also become its own burden, fuelling stress and anxiety. For Sangeetha, a 23-year-old worker in Tiruppur, the stress of watching friends being laid off, hearing of suppliers in crisis, and fearing what may come next has meant sleepless nights.
“I am so worried – what will I do if they fire me? My parents can’t work because of health problems, and I need to support them. There is no other job here. There is no one to support our family. If I lose this, how will my family eat?” Sangeetha asked.
When Work Means Safety
Women’s rights advocates and trade union representatives said that the consequences of tariff-driven layoffs extend well beyond income loss. In Tamil Nadu’s rural textile belt, where domestic violence and dowry-related abuse remain widespread, steady employment in the textile export industry has given many women the ability to live apart from abusive partners and raise their children independently.
Thivyarakini, the state president of the Tamil Nadu Textile and Common Labour Union, explained the importance of work in the lives of women textile workers: “It is about the freedom to live without fear, the ability to keep their children safe, and the dignity of standing on their own feet. In districts where textile work is the main form of non-agricultural employment, and alternatives such as agricultural labour are seasonal and irregular, the current tariff-induced slowdown reduces women’s options sharply.”
The risk, she added, is that women who have painstakingly built independent lives through wage work may now be forced to return to unsafe family arrangements, reversing years of fragile progress toward autonomy.
How It Affects Migrants
The tariff shock is especially hard for migrant women workers, who form a large share of Tamil Nadu’s garment workforce. In hubs like Tiruppur and Erode, nearly 70% of workers are interstate migrants, many from Odisha, Jharkhand, Bihar, and Assam.
Amid the slowdown, trade unions report that some factories are retaining migrant women who live in factory hostels while laying off local workers. Migrants are often preferred because they can be pushed into longer hours for lower pay, with little room to resist, said union activists.
“Right now, migrants are so afraid of losing their jobs that they accept even worse terms than the already poor ones they had—lower piece rates, no paid leave, anything just to hold on,” said Navamani. “That fear, especially given the trade shock, means they can’t negotiate or refuse unfair changes at work. It will lead to a quiet but dangerous erosion of their rights.”
For migrants, the loss of a job carries additional consequences. Many arrive in Tiruppur and Erode after paying debts to contractors or recruiters, and if they live in factory-controlled hostels, their housing is directly tied to employment. Aishwarya, a worker from Jharkhand, described the pressure this creates: “Layoffs mean we don’t just lose our wages—we also lose our rooms in the hostel. It can force us to suddenly go back to our villages, even if we want to stay and find other work here. There is nothing in our villages for us, and we don’t want to be pushed back.”
Devi, a 29-year-old worker in Tiruppur from Odisha, illustrated how precarious this situation can become for migrant workers. She has not been home for six months and had planned to return only for her wedding. But with rotational shifts and layoffs beginning in her factory, she is reconsidering. “If I take leave and go home, what if they remove my name from the rolls? When I come back, there may be no job left,” she said. She has also heard of other migrants who went home and were told not to return.
While her line continues to operate, she has already watched other sections shut down after buyers refused to accept goods unless suppliers absorbed the tariff costs. With her father unable to work and her mother dependent on her remittances from Tiruppur, Devi said she cannot risk losing the only steady income her family has—even at the cost of delaying marriage.
From Global Policy To Local Crisis
Small and medium-sized suppliers have been left particularly vulnerable by the trade crisis. Few have the financial reserves to absorb tariff shocks or withstand delayed payments, and those heavily dependent on US brands, without a diversified base of European and domestic brands, are being hit the hardest.
Suppliers also stress that US brands, fearing further restrictions from the US, are anxious regardless of whether they cater to the American or European market. “Many American brands producing for European markets are also pausing operations in India because they don’t want to take the risk of building an inventory that later becomes too costly and ends up blocked,” said a production manager from Erode who did not wish to be named.
At the same time, some suppliers report that European brands are using the desperation of Indian suppliers to push prices down, fully aware that peak-season production for the coming Christmas and New Year season makes it almost impossible for factories to say ‘no’. “This is the time when we usually earn our margins, but now European buyers are pushing for discounts because they know we have no other choice,” said the head of sourcing at another garment supplier.
Even alternative markets bring no relief. While India signed a free trade agreement with the UK in March 2025, exporters pointed out that it will take at least 10 months for the deal to be ratified and operationalised.
Some suppliers said they are themselves heavily indebted, having taken loans for machinery or expansions. Tariff shocks, combined with buyer pressure to cut prices, could push many into default, a crisis that could accelerate layoffs.
One factory owner, speaking on condition of anonymity, drew a parallel with workers’ struggles: “The crisis we are in is, in many ways, similar to the debt spiral facing workers. They are poorer, but in the global context, we are being squeezed just as hard by some of the richest global fashion brands. We have produced for them for years, but now, over phone calls, they threaten us: accept the tariff costs yourselves, or we will take our orders elsewhere.”
Despite years of debate on responsible purchasing practices – from voluntary CSR codes to multi-stakeholder guidelines, and more recently the EU’s Corporate Sustainability Due Diligence Directive (CSDDD) – brands have largely avoided binding accountability on how they treat suppliers and workers. Madhulika T, a labour lawyer who has worked for years on brand accountability in global garment supply chains, pointed out that what is happening now is a repeat of what happened during the pandemic when billions of dollars in orders were cancelled overnight. “When crisis strikes, risks are pushed down the chain, while profits of US and European brands are protected,” she said.
These contradictions — between lofty promises and binding responsibility, between global trade rules and shopfloor realities — are especially visible in Tamil Nadu’s textile industry, illustrating how trade wars, uneven due diligence regimes, and shifting geopolitical strategies converge on the shopfloor.
“Tamil Nadu’s garment industry, once projected as a success story of global integration, now sits at the centre of a paradox,” said Aabid Firdausi, a PhD candidate at the Johns Hopkins University who studies global garment supply chains. “On the one hand, global brands have positioned the region as a critical node in their ‘China+1’ sourcing strategies, relying on Indian suppliers to hedge against geopolitical tensions and rising costs in east Asia. On the other hand, retaliatory trade policies are creating immense strain on manufacturers and, by extension, on the workers who form the backbone of Tamil Nadu’s regional economic development.”
What Needs to Be Done
Labour unions and women’s rights advocates stress that while trade talks between Delhi and Washington continue, women workers cannot be left to shoulder the immediate fallout alone.
Some trade unions argue that the scale of the crisis is comparable to a disaster when governments invoke special powers, and targeted measures are needed now. Labour lawyer Shreela Manohar noted that the state could, as it did during the pandemic, impose a moratorium on debt collections, issue special ID cards to affected workers, and provide short-term unemployment allowances to help families survive the shock.
“We have to think boldly,” said Madhulika T. “The Employees’ State Insurance Scheme is sitting on surplus funds. Why not deploy them now for emergency wage support? With proper coordination and political will, ESIC could be a lifeline in the very districts where workers are suffering.”
Suppliers, unions, and civil society groups also stress that brands must share the risk, not shift it downwards. Lavinia Muth of the German Partnership for Sustainable Textiles, underlined this demand: “Companies must honour contracts on goods already in production, avoid retroactive price cuts, and maintain payment discipline. On-time payments are the cheapest and easiest way to prevent wage arrears. If orders must be moved elsewhere, brands should follow responsible exit protocols — notice, settlement of dues, and redeployment support – rather than abandoning suppliers and workers overnight.”
Unions emphasise that suppliers themselves, despite their financial pressures, must not pass all costs onto workers, especially women. “If your company is planning to lay off, do not begin with women workers who have the least savings and options,” Thivyarakini said. “Managerial staff who have more security, should take the first hit. And suppliers must work with unions to find constructive solutions where burdens are managed collectively, not pushed onto a few.”
Where disruptions are temporary, unions propose rotating workers across lines producing for US, European, and domestic brands — so that instead of retrenching those on US brand lines, everyone takes turns working on the existing European or Indian brand lines. This way, all workers share the available work, even if at lower rates, without anyone being pushed out entirely.
Civil society and philanthropy, lawyers and unions said, could help fill urgent gaps. This includes paralegal support and targeted outreach, particularly for the most vulnerable—single mothers, hostel-dwelling migrants, and survivors of gender-based violence. “We need urgent aid through existing networks,” said Thivyarakini. “Outreach must prioritise high-risk groups and also connect women to skilling, alternative jobs, shelters, and domestic violence services.”
Finally, labour advocates insist that this crisis should spark broader, practical solutions to reduce over-dependence on US fashion brands so that tariffs do not become a form of sanction crippling India’s largest export clusters and undermining economic independence. Shreela Manohar suggested that the government could back partnerships with Indian and international e-commerce platforms, or even pilot a public-sector retail channel to connect clusters like Tiruppur directly with consumers.
In the short term, she noted, suppliers could even be permitted to re-label goods originally meant for the US market and redirect them elsewhere. “Yes, re-labelling might violate brand contracts,” she admitted. “But when those same brands are refusing to honour commitments, threatening suppliers over phone calls, and abandoning workers, why shouldn’t India consider extraordinary measures to protect its own people?”
The Bigger Picture
“We have no say in these big decisions, but we are the first to pay the price,” said Tiruppur worker Sangeetha.
Beyond short-term relief, the crisis raises deeper questions about resilience. How can an industry built on low wages and heavy dependence on a few export markets withstand every geopolitical shock? Why should women like Anitha, Devi, or Sangeetha bear the highest costs of this shock?
Until purchasing practices change and new safeguards for workers are built into these global supply chains, women workers will end up as the shock absorbers of every trade dispute. As Madhulika T argued: “Every crisis exposes the same fault line – when brands push risks down, workers at the bottom pay.” She added that garment-producing countries such as Bangladesh, Cambodia, Sri Lanka, Indonesia and others may also need to act together, uniting to hold global fashion brands in the US and Europe accountable when they do business here.
The names of all workers have been changed to protect their identity.
[Nandita Shivakumar, Mitali Moharir, and Shreya Murali are researchers who have spent the past six years studying global garment supply chains, with a particular focus on gender, labor, and supplier–brand dynamics.]
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