Under a sea of warehouse lights, workers at Lesotho’s Precious Garments snip, sew and press fabrics into 10,000 units of clothing each day. Among their most popular items: Trump-branded golf shirts.
The polo stripe, sold by former professional golfer and Donald Trump superfan Greg Norman, is the product of a vibrant textiles industry in the mountain kingdom of 2.3mn that also manufactures for brands such as Levi’s, Wrangler and Foot Locker.
Recently dismissed by Trump as a country “nobody has ever heard of”, Lesotho is the largest African garments exporter to the US and a rare success story born out of Washington’s 25-year-old African Growth and Opportunity Act (Agoa), introduced under then-president Bill Clinton to offer tariff-free access to the world’s poorest continent.