Whoops ... the biggest winner in Trump’s tariff war isn’t who he had in mind (2025)

There’s something about reading the words “Trump” and “sustainability” in the same sentence that feels inherently wrong. Probably because he’s wasted no time pausing, axing or vowing to roll much on United States climate policies since returning to the White House in January.

But now it seems the president might have inadvertently issued a win for the environment thanks to its tariff war against China.

In the US, fashion accounts for 21 per cent of all online sales – the single biggest category in the American ecommerce space. Within this are fast fashion giants such as the Chinese-owned Shein, a brand often criticised by sustainable fashion advocates due to its low quality, low price, high turnover business model (the average Shein item costs around $US10 ($16), and the company introduces roughly 1 million new clothing styles every year).

Shein is the highest-selling online fashion brand in America, pumping out $US14.4 billion worth of fashion products directly to the US annually and recording an estimated $US38 billion in global sales in 2024, outselling US competitors such as Walmart and Amazon by substantial margins.

But if you think Trump’s close friend, Amazon founder and executive chair Jeff Bezos, is cheering at the news of a 145 per cent tariff applied to his biggest competitor, you’d be wrong.

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Under the new tariffs, any product with a country of origin label (the tag inside a garment saying where it was made) reading “Made in China” will be subjected to a 145 per cent rate, even if the company producing the items is American owned. For UK-owned fast fashion giants such as Boohoo and ASOS, the COO tag means they too will face the China rate, not the UK rate of 10 per cent.

The tariff changes will also massively disrupt the cost-effective “drop-shipping” model of fast retail, where stores such as Shein and Amazon partner with third-party manufacturers (often in China) to have items shipped from centralised warehouses directly to consumers, bypassing the traditional third-party.

Trump has also closed another remaining loophole by announcing the “de minimis” exemption will stop. Until recently, this allowed items coming into the US with a value less than $US800 to be imported tax-free, but from May 1 onwards, this too will be gone.

Combined, drop-shipping and the de minimis exemption made things more affordable to US consumers, but they also sent travel miles and product packaging waste through the roof, with much of the poor quality products ending up in landfill shortly thereafter. All of this put a serious strain on the environment.

The hope that tariffs will “kill” fast fashion entirely is probably a pipe dream; 41 per cent of Gen Z and 29 per cent of Millennials in the US buy from Shein (Australians purchased $1 billion worth of their goods in 2023). But what they will likely do, as Business of Fashion pointed out, is slow consumption. Because where once you could buy at least two items from Shein for $US20, that will now become the price of one.

In economic boom times, that might make people willing to spend more money, but with the US teetering on the brink of a recession, that’s unlikely.

Reducing fast fashion consumption, delivery miles and the number of poor-quality products in one fell swoop, whether Trump knows it or not, sounds like pretty excellent climate policy.

Though this triple attack probably won’t kill fast fashion entirely, as many sustainable fashion advocates are hoping, will it drive manufacturing back to America, which seems to be Trump’s end goal?

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As French luxury fashion house LMVH has learned, it’s a little more complicated than that. In 2019, LMVH received a $US29 million tax incentive from the US government to open a Louis Vuitton workshop to Texas. Six years on, it is the label’s “worst performing factory”, with up to 40 per cent of its Texas-made stock reportedly destroyed due to poor quality due to struggling to train workers in the artisan skills required for high-end fashion.

If a company backed by billions of euros selling $US1500 handbags can’t make American manufacturing work over a six-year period, what hope does a company selling $10 tops on paper-slim margins have?

One thing is for sure – companies already working with US factories are likely to flourish, as will the more sustainable second-hand market. While everything, including fashion, is about to get a lot more expensive in the land of the free, the environment will be all the happier. But no one tell Trump that.

Bianca O’Neill is a freelance writer based in Melbourne.

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