Ivanka Trump talks about championing working women, but her brand collides with that idea
Her father urges companies to ‘buy and hire American’
Ivanka Trump published a book this spring declaring that improving the lives of working women is “my life’s mission.” Her father continually urges companies to “buy American and hire American.” But her fashion line’s practices collide with those principles — and are out of step with industry trends, The Washington Post found.
Trump’s brand does not disclose the countries where its goods are made or the factories that produce them, but an examination by The Post has revealed the extent to which her company relies exclusively on foreign factories in countries where low-wage laborers often aren’t able to advocate for themselves.
Since 2010, millions of pounds of Ivanka Trump products have been imported into the United States in more than 2,000 shipments, illustrating how her business practices collide with some of the key principles she and her father have championed in the White House.
Like many U.S.-based apparel companies, the Trump brand signs deals with suppliers, which, in turn, contract manufacturing work to factories around the world. The system allows products to be sold to consumers for lower prices and creates economic opportunity — and risks — for workers in poor regions.
The Post used data drawn from U.S. customs logs and international shipping records to trace Trump-branded products from far-flung factories to ports around the United States.
- In China, where three activists investigating factories making her line were recently arrested, assembly-line workers produce Ivanka Trump woven blouses, shoes and handbags.
- Laborers in Indonesia stitch together her dresses and knit tops.
- Suit jackets are assembled in Vietnam.
- Cotton tops are assembled in India.
- Denim pants are assembled in Bangladesh, a country with a huge apparel industry where garment workers typically earn a minimum wage of about $70 a month and where some have recently faced a harsh crackdown from factory owners after seeking higher pay.
- In Ethiopia, where manufacturers have boasted of paying workers a fifth of what they earn in Chinese factories, workers made thousands of pounds of Ivanka Trump shoes in 2013, shipping data shows.
Although Trump now works full time in the White House and has stepped away from daily operations of her business, she still owns the company and has the power to veto new deals. Abigail Klem, who has been a top executive at the brand since 2013, became its president in January.
Trump’s company lags behind many in the apparel industry when it comes to monitoring the treatment of the largely female workforce employed in factories around the world.
From big brands such as Adidas and Kenneth Cole to smaller, newer players like California-based Everlane, many U.S. clothing companies have in recent years made protecting factory workers abroad a priority — hiring independent auditors to monitor labor conditions, pressing factory owners to make improvements and providing consumers with details about the overseas facilities where their goods are produced.
But the Trump brand has taken a more hands-off approach. Although executives say they have a code of conduct that prohibits physical abuse and child labor, the company relies on its suppliers to abide by the policy. The clothing line declined to disclose the language of the code.
In the wake of Trump’s departure, the brand has begun to explore hiring a nonprofit workers’ rights group to increase oversight of its production and help improve factory conditions, the company’s executives told The Post.
Trump did not respond to requests for comment about what efforts she made to oversee her company’s supply chain before she joined the administration.
Trump’s attorney Jamie Gorelick told The Post in a statement that Trump is “concerned” about recent reports regarding the treatment of factory workers and “expects that the company will respond appropriately.”
Klem said she is planning her first trip to tour some of the facilities that make Ivanka Trump products in the coming year, and the company is exploring ways to produce some goods in the United States but that “to do it at a large scale is currently not possible.”
If Ivanka Trump’s company followed the president’s exhortations to move production to the United States, its prices would rise dramatically, potentially pushing buyers away and dragging down company profits, according to industry experts.
Low-cost products are often produced by low-wage laborers. The Post interviewed workers at three garment factories that have made Trump products who said their jobs often come with exhausting hours, subsistence pay and insults from supervisors if they don’t work fast enough.
“My monthly salary is not enough for everyday expenses, also not for the future,” said K., a 26-year-old sewing operator at PT Buma, a factory in Subang, Indonesia.
Financial insecurity is a constant companion for the predominantly female workforce at PT Buma. Shipping records show that the factory produced a batch of Ivanka-branded knit dresses.
Labels on jeans from the Ivanka Trump denim collection show they were made for G-III Apparel in Bangladesh. (Trump’s brand licenses some of its production from G-III, an established New York-based clothing distributor.)
The garment industry in Bangladesh has weathered a series of deadly factory disasters, including a 2013 building collapse that killed more than 1,100 workers. In the wake of that tragedy, brands such as Walmart and Gap vowed to pay for safety training for factory managers.
Shipping records do not reveal which factories in the country produce Ivanka Trump goods, and both the brand and G-III refused to say which facilities make her products.
G-III spokesman Chris Giglio said the company’s supply chain is “routinely audited by us and by independent third parties. When issues arise, we work with our local partners to find and implement safe, fair and sustainable solutions.”
Along with facing safety risks, Bangladeshi garment workers toil for one of the world’s lowest minimum wages.
“We are the ultra-poor,” said Kalpona Akter, a Bangladeshi labor organizer and former garment worker who was first hired by a factory at the age of 12. “We are making you beautiful, but we are starving.”
In December, thousands of workers seeking higher pay went on strike outside the capital city of Dhaka. In response, police rounded up and arrested several dozen labor organizers, and factory owners filed criminal complaints against hundreds of workers, according to Human Rights Watch. An estimated 1,500 garment workers were suspended or fired.
At a Dhaka apparel summit in February, U.S. Ambassador Marcia S. Bernicat described the mass firings and arrests as “a giant, disappointing step backwards on labor rights” and warned that international buyers “have to ask themselves how they will sell garments made in a country where large numbers of workers and union leaders are suddenly arrested, fired or suspended simply because they or their fellow workers asked for a wage increase.”
Trump’s brand and G-III have not publicly addressed the crackdown. Klem said that the company’s code of conduct gives workers in its supply chain “the right to freely associate in accordance with the laws of the countries in which they are employed.”
Fear of retaliation
The dangers to workers who try to seek better labor conditions are especially acute in China, where activists say heavy surveillance and police presences are used to protect company profits and the country’s lucrative reputation as the “factory of the world.”
Ivanka Trump’s products have been made in more than two dozen factories across China since 2010, shipping data show.
Yen Sheng, a Hong Kong-based company with factories in Dongguan where workers are paid between $190 and $289 a month, has shipped thousands of pounds of Ivanka Trump cowhide-leather handbags and other items since 2015, customs records show.
Employees in Dongguan told The Post that the company withholds sick pay unless they are hospitalized and avoids paying overtime by outsourcing work to the unregulated one-room factories that dot Dongguan’s back streets. But pressing for change is not an option, they said.
“If you don’t work, other people will,” one woman at the company’s Dongguan subsidiary Yen Hing Leather Works said. “If you protest, the company will ask the police to handle it. The owner is very rich. He can ask the police to come.”
Trump brand executives said its products are not made at Yen Hing. A manager at the Dongguan factory, Huang Huihong, told The Post that its workers have produced Ivanka Trump goods in the past.
While consumers unhappy with the current administration have called for boycotts of the first daughter’s products, Klem said the controversies have not hurt sales. She declined to disclose figures, but said that the brand’s business is “growing rapidly.” Revenue was up 21 percent in 2016, with continuing growth in 2017, executives said.
In 2016, G-III told Forbes that the Ivanka Trump clothing line had generated $100 million in retail revenue in the past year.
Gold and Harwell reported from Washington and New York; Sattar reported from Dhaka, Bangladesh; and Denyer reported from Dongguan, China. Alice Crites and Julie Tate in Washington; Andri Tambunan in Subang, Indonesia; Paul Schemm in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia; and Luna Lin in Beijing contributed to this report.
