Saving Our Brand Expertise: How to make Trump’s tariffs redundant

 THE ISSUE OF tariffs is a serious one when we consider the impact it will have on employment in India. I, for one, know that the apparel sector, which is one of the largest employers in our country, is today reeling under these tariffs. It is quite easy for many in the government to suggest that they move markets and relocate geographies, but it isn’t an easy thing to do because in the process what one does is damage Brand India’s expertise, capability, and experience in one fell blow.

To my mind, while companies that are operating in the textile and apparel business in India need to recalibrate and reorganise themselves, it is equally critical for the government in this period to do what the government brilliantly did during Covid— to introduce a set of incentives and sops that would prevent the haemorrhaging that is today occurring in the textile and apparel sector, not to mention the damage that it has caused to the jewellery and diamond business of India.

While Donald J Trump will continue to be the bully that he is, we as a country have to recognise that in the interim we need government support, and this support must be without conditions. Because it is the government that has been forced into this corner for which you can’t actually blame private enterprise. And private enterprise today has been held to ransom by the bully of an American president because he believes that it is important for the US to establish not only its hegemony but a really unfair environment of trade practices.

Operation Sindoor was launched by India to defend its borders and stand up for the innocent people killed in Pahalgam in April 2025. It wasn’t the doing of anyone but Pakistan, and when Operation Sindoor was launched, it was launched with firmness and vigour, something that the American president hasn’t been able to stomach because he generally believes that it was an operation that was halted by him, which is of course untrue.

To use Operation Sindoor and to garner for himself the prize of a peacenik, Trump then went on to unleash a set of tariffs which are not only unfair but a body blow on years of relationships between the US and India.

In that context, it is even more critical for private enterprise to be supported in ways that are both ingenious and beneficial, not just for people who own these companies but also for the labour force that works in these organisations, the same labour force that is part of a vibrant electorate which brings governments to power.

So it is in this context that we must analyse what the government of India needs to do. To my mind, there are three things that need to happen.

First, the government needs to have a more benign tax regime for sectors which have been hit with these unfair tariffs.

Second, we need to recognise that the labour cannot be let go of and we need to have some government intervention or support as it provided did during Covid.

Third, Trump will only be in office for a few years; but it is in these few years that the government needs to come out as not only the white knight but also a knight in shining armour so that India does not lose its prime place in the world to countries like Bangladesh, Cambodia and Vietnam.