The prices will make sneakers, jeans and almost all that the Americans wear cost more, warn the trade groups

New York (AP) – send children to school in new sneakers, jeans and t -shirts tailor -made prices President Donald Trump The leading exporters come into force as expected, warn the groups of the American industry.

About 97% of clothing and shoes bought in the United States are imported, mainly in Asia, said American Apparel & Footwear Association, citing its most recent data. Walmart, Gap Inc., Lululemon and Nike are some of the companies that have the majority of their manufactured clothes in Asian countries.

These same manufacturing centers took a big blow As part of the President’s plan to punish individual countries for commercial imbalances. For all Chinese products, this meant prices of at least 54%. It set import tax rates for Vietnam and neighboring Cambodia at 46% and 49%, and Bangladesh and Indonesia products at 37% and 32%.

Working with foreign factories has reduced labor costs for American businesses in fashion, but neither them nor their suppliers abroad are likely to absorb New costs such high. India, Indonesia, Pakistan and Sri Lanka have also been slapped with high prices, so are not immediate supply alternatives.

“If these prices are allowed to persist, he will finally go to the consumer,” said Steve Lamar, president and chief executive officer of the American Apparel & Footwear Association.

Another commercial group, shoe distributors and America retailers, has provided estimates for price increases that could be in store for shoes, noting that 99% of pairs sold in the United States are imports. Work boots made in China that are now $ 77 would cost $ 115, while customers would pay $ 220 for racing shoes made in Vietnam at a price of $ 155, the group said.

The president of the FDRA, Matt Priest, predicted low -income families and the places they shop would feel the impact most. He said that a pair of Chinese manufacturing children’s shoes that cost $ 26 today will probably wear a price of $ 41 by the return to school shopping season, according to the calculations of his group.

Prepare for a motion target

The prices on the main fashion producers finished by fashion, but also many materials made shoes and clothing on retailers and American brands. Before Trump’s first term, American companies had started to diversify far from China in response to trade tensions as well as human rights and environmental concerns.

They accelerated the pace when he ordered prices on Chinese products in 2018, transferring more production to other Asian countries. Lululemon said in its last annual file that 40% of its sports clothes last year had been manufactured in Vietnam, 17% in Cambodia, 11% in Sri Lanka, 11% in Indonesia and 7% in Bangladesh.

Nike, Levi-Strauss, Ralph Lauren, gap. Inc., Abercrombie & Fitch And VF Corporation, which owns Vans, The North Face and Timberland, also reported a considerably reduced dependence on clothing manufacturers and suppliers in China.

Steve Madden shoe brand said in November that this would reduce imports from China by 45% this year due to Trump’s commitment to impose a price of 60% on all Chinese products. The brand said it had already spent several years developing a factory network in Cambodia, Vietnam, Mexico and Brazil.

Industry experts say that the revival of the American clothing industry would be extremely expensive and would take years if it was possible. The number of people working in clothing manufacturing in January 2015 amounted to 139,000 and had decreased to 85,000 in January of this year, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. Sri Lanka employs four times more despite a population less than a seventh size of the United States

In addition to lacking a skilled and arranged workforce, the United States has no national sources for more than 70 documents which enter into the manufacture of a typical shoe, said shoe distributors and America retailers in the comments written to the Trump sales representative.

Shoe companies should find or install factories to make cotton laces, eyelets, textile stems and other components to make finished shoes in the United States on a large scale, the group wrote.

“These materials simply do not exist here, and many of these documents have never existed in the United States,” said the organization.

Price increases can be a shock

The damage to clothing price increases would follow three decades of stability. Clothes cost us mainly consumers in 2024 as in 1994, according to US Bureau of Labor Statistics data.

Economists and industry analysts have attributed the tendency to free trade agreements, containing foreign countries Where workers are paid much less and stormy competition for buyers among retailers at reduced prices and fast fashion brands like H&M, Zara and Forever 21.

But customers are not used to inflation in the clothing sector and which are detached from several years of high increase in the costs of the grocery and housing can be very sensitive to any large launch of clothing prices. Priest, shoe distributors and American retailers, said he observed Buyers shoot back On the purchase of shoes since Trump’s return to the White House.

“They are nervous,” he said. “They have obviously played in the long game for inflation for several years now. And they simply do not have endurance to absorb higher prices, especially because they are imposed by the American government.”

Winners and losers in a trade war in clothing

According to a report by British Bank Barclays published on Friday, the winners of The Tariff Wars are retailers who have at least one of these attributes: a large power of negotiation with their suppliers, a strong brand and a limited supply in Asia.

In clothing and shoes, which includes retailers off the price Burlington, Ross Stores Inc. and TJX CompaniesWho operates TJ Maxx and Marshalls, as well as Ralph Lauren and Dick’s Sporting Goods, according to the report.

Companies for a more difficult period are those which have a limited negotiation power, limited pricing power and high exposure to products in Asia, a list including Gap Inc., Urban Outfitters and American Eagle Outfitters, according to the report.

The resale site for used clothing by applauded a related action that Trump took with his latest series of prices: eliminate Widely used tax exemption This has allowed millions of low -cost products – most of them in China – to enter the United States every day as a franchise of rights.

“This change in policy will increase the cost of disposable clothes produced at lower cost imported from China, having a direct impact on the commercial model which feeds the overproduction and degradation of the environment,” said Thredup.

Several analysts and economists from the industry said they thought the prices will eventually be A consumer sales tax This widens the yawning gap between the richest residents of America and those of the intermediate and lower end of the income spectrum.

“So where will the United States are buying now that pricing rates on Bangladesh, Vietnam and China are astronomical?” Mary E. Lovely, a principal researcher at the Peterson Institute for International Economics, said the calendar should come into force on Wednesday. “Does the new” golden age “imply knitting our own panties and slamming our mobile phones?”