MASERU, Lesotho —Crowds of women, bundled up in wooly hats and mittens against the sharp winter chill, wait every morning at the gates of a garment factory in Lesotho's capital, hoping that a few among them will be called in to work a shift.
But no-one comes out and the factory gates – which bear the name of the Taiwanese company that runs it in red Chinese lettering – remain firmly shut.
It's one of the few factories in what used to be called "the Denim Capital of Africa" that's still operating after U.S. President Donald Trump announced in April he was slapping the impoverished nation with the highest tariffs in the world.
Many others have been forced to close down, with buyers spooked by the 50 percent tariff announcement even though they've been paused, for now.
With the economy quickly unravelling the government declared a two-year national state of disaster in early July hoping to unlock funding to create jobs. But the challenge is immense and many people are already desperate.
Maqajela Hlaatsane, 54, has been working in Maseru's garment industry for decades - a job that's allowed her to raise her children on her own. Like many here she's a single mother who has been empowered by joining the workforce.
Now she's unemployed and hungry, she says, pointing to the water bottle she carries around drinking to try to trick herself into feeling full. What food she has she's saving for her family.
"I'm here looking for a job," she says, standing on the street in the garment district where the smell of sewage fills the air. "My family can't survive on water alone."
Like many searching for work, she's unclear why the U.S.. imposed such massive tariffs on her desperately poor country, but they all keep repeating one name: "Trump, Trump, Trump."
Trade Imbalance
The U.S. leader says he imposed the tariffs in April because of a trade imbalance between the two countries. Last year, the tiny mountain Kingdom surrounded entirely by South Africa exported $237 million in goods to the US – mostly garments– while the US exported just $3 million to Lesotho.
But Lesotho's government argues this is a sign that a key U.S. policy introduced under former President George Bush has been working exactly as intended. The African Growth and Opportunity Act (AGOA) allows some countries on the continent tariff-free access to the U.S. market.
Lesotho made the most of it, and soon Taiwanese companies were setting up factories in Maseru, producing t-shirts, sportswear and other apparel for large American brands like Levi, Wrangler and Walmart.
African leaders are nervous because Congress will be deciding on whether to renew 25-year-old AGOA in September, but Lesotho's Trade Minister Mokhethi Shelile says it's already basically dead.
"AGOA, in effect it's already sort of been scrapped with the tariffs," he told NPR in his office in an unassuming old building in Maseru's small, dusty CBD.
"It's good value chain and if you cut it, it will surely hit even the U.S. itself," said the minister, adding that the trade imbalance Trump objects to is because Lesotho simply can't afford many U.S. products.
"It was a good policy that has given livelihoods for people here and I want to believe some people are benefiting in the U.S. as well," he said, also noting that the government recently gave Elon Musk's Starlink satellite service a license to operate in the country.
Another factory sits across the road from the operating factory where Hlaatsane and others are queuing for work. But its now stopped operations. Manager Restselisitsoe Moshoeshoe says it mainly exported athleisure wear to Walmart. But it closed a few weeks ago and he's had to send 2,000 workers home.
"We cannot get raw material, we cannot export…The orders have been stopped, because everybody doesn't know what's going to happen," he says.
"People who were supplying us with orders were scared," he explains, even though the tariffs were paused shortly after being announced.
Levi's and Vetkoek
Across town it's lunchtime at the Levi's factory.
Workers come out and eat their lunch under the clear blue skies, surrounded on all sides by mountains, some snowcapped. Mpolai Sementhe, tucking into a lunchbox of pap, a mealie meal staple food, has sewn the quintessential American jeans for years. She's never owned a pair though.
The jeans made in Lesotho aren't intended for the local market – ironically, people have to buy them back second-hand. The markets here are full of vendors selling the West's discarded garments.
Another Levi's worker, Makuotso Sebatane, said while she's not sure why the U.S. has imposed these tariffs on Lesotho, she thinks maybe it's because Trump said "no-one knows where Lesotho is." He made the comments earlier this year, when explaining his USAID cuts to Congress.
A Taiwanese manager who comes out the factory gates, but doesn't want to be named because he isn't authorized to speak for the factory, tells NPR he too is worried for the industry here.
A number of cottage industries in makeshift tin shacks have sprung up on a field next to the Levi's factory. In one, with country and western music blaring from the radio, cobbler Tumelo Rakoti, 34, fixes workers' shoes. But he says business is slow these days as no-one wants to spend money during such uncertain times.
The trade minister says 12,000 garment workers stand to lose their jobs because of Trump's tariffs, but that's not all – and Lesotho already has 49 percent youth unemployment.
"The spillover effects, it's around 40,000 – those are people who are going to be touched one way or another," Minister Shelile told NPR. People like the cobbler, the taxi drivers who take the workers to and from the factories, and others.
Near the cobbler's shack, two teenage girls run a tuckshop selling vetkoek, a deep-fried bread. Their business is also suffering since the garment workers started purse-tightening.
Ntsoaki Heqoa, 19, says she's often seen Trump on TV and used to like him, but since he targeted Lesotho with the tariffs she's changed her mind.
She appeals to his transactional-style of politics, saying if she could speak to the U.S. leader, she'd say: "President Trump, if only you knew how many of us depend on America…can we offer him something to stop whatever he's doing?"
Her friend and fellow tuckshop worker Mapaseka Mohale says simply that she'd tell Trump: "We are going to die, because we don't have food, we depend on factories."
'Short time' and Trump shirts
In another Maseru district, Precious Garments – which produces Trump-branded golf shirts – is among the factories still operating, though it's not clear for how much longer. Workers have been told it too could fold in September.
It's the end of the day and throngs of women chat and laugh as they head for home, some wrapped in traditional Lesotho blankets, their breath visible in the cold winter air.
Maboitumelo Ramakatane, 48, has been sewing golf shirts at Precious Garments for 18 years. Does she know who wears them? Of course, she says, the U.S. president.
She says she found the work hard at first, but has mastered it. "I do it perfectly," she says beaming. "I'm proud of my work….It's supported my family. It's an achievement to me."
Her children have all graduated high school now, she says, and she hopes they will have a better life than she's had. She wouldn't like them to work on the factory floor like she does, but if they got a managerial position, she says, that would be ok. But now Ramakatane is worried about the dreaded "short time."
That's what workers here call being put on part-time work. Since Trump's tariffs announcement, Ramakatane is already only working two weeks out of every month and earning half her salary – about $80 a month now.
She also notes that many women working in the factories have HIV – in a country with high rates of infection. The US government through USAID have been supplying the country with anti-retrovirals.
There used to be lots of tents set up near the factories, where workers could go to get tested and get access to other services like contraceptives. One, with Pepfar signage outside, is still operating but the local NGO worker inside, who doesn't want to be named for fear of losing his job, tells NPR all the nurses were sent home after Trump's USAID cuts. Now all he can do is give out self-testing kits for HIV. There are no contraceptives anymore, or HIV-prevention injections known as PrEP, he says.
Ramakatane is worried people could die: from loss of work, hunger, or HIV. And if she loses her job entirely, Ramakatane says, she doesn't know what she'll do.
"We are on our knees, we are on our knees…now our hope is only to God, to change Donald Trump's mind," she says.
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