USA has been leading the world with the highest number of COVID-19 cases. The country has gone through intense lockdown to contain the spread of the virus.
This shutdown greatly impacted people’s lives and industries including fashion apparel shrunk drastically.
Most of the retail outlets were closed as a consequence, apparel manufacturing countries witnessed a sharp drop in apparel export to the USA.
According to the up-to-date US OTEXA data between January and May this year, Bangladesh’s largest readymade garment (RMG) export destination – has dropped by 12.50% year on year to USD 2.32 billion.
At the same time, China’s garment export shipment to the US dropped by 43.87% year on year to USD 7.66 billion, India by 23.00% to USD 2.79 billion, and Mexico by 31.32% to USD 1.26 billion, Vietnam’s RMG export dropped by 9.45% year on year to USD 5.14 billion. While Pakistan, South Korea, Indonesia, and Turkey also showed drops in RMG shipment to the US during the first five months this year, compared to the previous year.
A recent data of statista.com shows, in December 2019, U.S. apparel retail store sales amounted to approximately 23.6 billion U.S. dollars. In April 2020, clothing store sales fell to 1.8 billion U.S. dollars due to the impact of the coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic.
