Editorial of Marcus Garcia, Haïti en Marche, October 3, 2025
MIAMI, October 3 – Bad news. (VBI) Announced suspension of Hope–Help. The end of the HOPE/HELP program threatens thousands of textile jobs. The end of the preferential HOPE/HELP regime plunges Haiti’s textile industry into uncertainty. This sector, which represents 90% of the country’s exports, risks collapse, local actors warn.
Further, “The Codevi industrial park, at the Haitian–Dominican border, concentrates most of the sector, with 18,000 of 26,000 jobs. Fernando Capellán, president of the complex, told the Wall Street Journal of his concern: ‘Without these jobs, we will see more people on the streets, more people drawn to crime and gangs.’”
“In 2021, the textile industry still employed 60,000 people. But violence, political instability, and uncertainty surrounding the program had already weakened the sector. The Caracol park, inaugurated in 2012 in the north with $300 million in U.S. and multilateral funding, now has only 2,000 jobs out of the several thousand initially announced.”
Etc.
The information will make headlines for a day or two, then silence; moreover, so far, there has been no public comment from the real decision-makers, whether economic or political.
Why end the Hope–Help agreement?
First, what exactly is it?
According to the news agency Vant Bèf Info (VBI):
“The Haitian Hemispheric Opportunity through Partnership Encouragement Act (HOPE) and the Haiti Economic Lift Program (HELP) are two U.S. laws adopted respectively in 2006 and 2010. They aim to support Haiti’s economy by offering preferential access to the American market for locally manufactured garments.
“These provisions allowed Haitian companies to export duty-free, attracting major textile groups and contributing to the creation of tens of thousands of jobs. After the 2010 earthquake, the HELP program extended and strengthened this framework, becoming a pillar of Haiti’s economy.
Further: “Today, their expiration would be a severe blow for the country, whose textile industry is the main driver of exports and one of the few formal employment sectors.”
Why would the Trump administration end this program?
It is not the U.S. government that decides on the renewal but Congress. However, Congress is now Republican-controlled in both chambers.
It also results from a campaign (…) of awareness led by both the companies benefiting from the measure and the country concerned.
If such a campaign exists, it has so far been limited to a very small circle—until the sudden news of a possible end to the programs broke.
But why would the current U.S. administration want to end the Hope–Help conditions… while it (President Trump himself) speaks constantly of reviving American industry in the face of the massive influx of imported goods—especially from Asian countries? Hence his policy of raising tariffs on imports from those countries.
Unless products made in Haitian factories are now classified as purely imported goods… whereas they are, in fact, part of the same American production chain—or at least, they were until now.
Why do we need to hear more from Haitian officials in the sector—both political and economic?
Because this is what is called: the public’s right to know.
The issue does not concern only those in power or the big players in the so-called subcontracting sector.
These actors, traditionally, keep everything to themselves—starting, of course, with the economic returns of a sector long treated as a private preserve.
But let’s go back to the beginning.
What we call “small industry,” or “factories,” or more directly the “assembly sector,” was born in Haiti in the early 1970s as a sort of boost for the young dictator Baby Doc, whose choice had been approved by the star-spangled power.
It was a boom. Haiti, thanks mainly to the talent of its female workers, won international awards—for baseballs, fashionable bras, and more.
But by the 1990s, Washington began turning its interest toward other regions, likely more profitable—first and foremost, Asian countries with even larger and cheaper labor forces.
Today, however, a new change—full reverse gear. Trump calls for bringing production back home. Thus appears the sudden policy of heavy import tariffs, which the current occupant of the White House uses as a real weapon of pressure: Do you want it or not?
Have Haiti’s political and economic assembly leaders understood the new game—or did they, as the Creole saying goes, arrive there “with both hands and both feet,” meaning without having done any homework?
Probably!
In fact, we always talk about “renewal” but never “renegotiation.”
That is to misunderstand Mr. Trump, who gives gifts to no one—that’s his least flaw, as the fable would say.
From the height of their majesty—or should we say their “millions-twenty,” as the Creole puts it—they land in Washington as if walking into a windmill.
And it’s always the same faces. No change whatsoever. You know what I mean.
But Haiti in 2025 is far from the Haiti of the years X or Y—you see again what we mean.
That’s why we are almost certain the question was probably misframed…
And that, as we used to say in school, we “assumed the problem was already solved.”
With the current occupant of the White House, nothing is less certain…
Nothing is ever too certain.
So—it’s back to square one.
Marcus Garcia, Haïti en Marche, October 3, 2025
Translation by Lorquet, Joel (Port-au-Prince)
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