Cambodian seamstress shows sector resilience

Cambodia’s garment industry is one of those sectors that looks huge in the aggregate and fragile at ground level. Nearly a million jobs depend on it, most held by women, and a lot of those households live on wages that only really work when overtime is available. That is why a tariff number out of Washington turned into a street-level story in Phnom Penh this summer. When the U.S. cut Cambodia’s threatened tariff rate to 19% from earlier levels of 36% and 49%, workers did not celebrate abstract trade policy. They talked about whether factories would keep orders coming and whether managers would post extra shifts. ### Why did one tariff number matter so much? Cambodia sells a huge volume of garments, footwear, and travel goods abroad, and the U.S. is one of the markets that really matters for factory demand. A 36% or 49% tariff would have made Cambodian production much harder to price against regional rivals. Sun Chanthol, Cambodia’s top trade negotiator, put it bluntly — he said the higher rates could have collapsed the garment and footwear industry. At 19%, the country stayed much closer to a survivable range. ### What were workers actually saying? The Reuters video is revealing because the workers did not frame this as a geopolitical win. Hem Mech, a 32-year-old jeans factory worker, said she hoped the lower tariff would save the factory and bring more overtime. Eighteen-year-old Sreang Sreynich said much the same thing. Another worker, Uy Sovun, tied the news directly to supporting family. Basically, the workers’ metric was simple — not export value, not market share, but hours on the clock. ### Why is overtime the key detail? Because base wages are not the whole story in Cambodia’s garment economy. For many workers, overtime is the margin between scraping by and being able to send money home. That is why even “good news” still sounded cautious. Nobody in the Reuters footage was talking about raises or long-term security. They were talking about enough work next week and next month. That tells you how narrow the buffer is. the sector already under pressure? Yes — badly enough that tariff fears hit an exposed industry, not a comfortable one. Better Factories Cambodia said nearly half of surveyed factories might not sustain operations beyond three months under then-current order conditions. Fifteen percent had no confirmed orders or only a few weeks of work booked. So the tariff issue landed on top of a preexisting problem — buyers were already hesitant and factory visibility was already short. ### So why call this resilience at all? Because the sector was not collapsing in a straight line. Cambodia’s garment, footwear, and travel goods exports hit an all-time high in 2024 — about $13.6 billion to $13.92 billion, depending on the reporting basis — after rebounding from a weaker 2023. Better Factories Cambodia also noted that 65% of factories still felt optimistic in the short term. That is a strange mix, but a real one — strong headline exports, weak order visibility, and workers still hanging on for more shifts. ### What does this say about Cambodia’s model? It says the country is still highly competitive in labor-intensive manufacturing, but the cushion is thin. Cambodia’s garment sector employed more than 918,000 workers in 2024, and officials say each worker often supports several relatives. So a tariff shock is not just a trade problem. It turns into a household-income problem almost immediately. It is not that a seamstress or one workshop “solved” Cambodia’s garment problem. It is that a lower U.S. tariff bought the industry time. And for workers in Phnom Penh, time means orders, overtime, and one more month of income. In this sector, resilience is not glamorous. It looks like a factory gate at breakfast and a worker hoping the next shift is still there.