When Raj Arora, an Indian immigrant who runs Bazar Fabrics in New York City, got home to Long Island on Wednesday—also known as “Liberation Day”—he had to break some bad news to his wife. “Things are going to be bad with the tariffs,” he recalled telling her. “I will not be able to buy anything nice for you.”
That gloom was reflected on Saturday by a handful of business owners I spoke to in the city’s Garment District, many of whom said their shops had been in their family for three generations. As the rain poured outside, they told me they were verging on a “panic attack” over the t-word: President Donald Trump’s newly announced tariffs, running as high as 46 percent for imports from Vietnam, the second largest exporter of apparel to the U.S. behind China.