Vietnam's US tariff position moved twice in six months. In late July 2026, new tariffs of 10–12.5% landed on 60 trading partners tied to forced-labour compliance checks, and Vietnam ended up outside the mechanism that could have softened the impact on textiles specifically. Around the same time, the temporary 10% Section 122 baseline tariff, in place since February, lapsed. Layer on a 7.2% regional minimum-wage increase that took effect in January, pushing production costs up

Two things are happening in music merchandise at the same time, and they point production planning in the same direction. Universal Music's merch arm, Bravado, recently converted more than 400,000 obsolete tour shirts into recycled cotton blanks for new stock, a sign that oversized, one-shot print runs are increasingly seen as waste rather than efficiency. At the same time, fans are treating merch less like a souvenir picked up on the way out of a venue and more like a collec

On 19 July 2026, the EU's Ecodesign for Sustainable Products Regulation came into full effect for large enterprises operating in the bloc. Two changes matter immediately for any brand manufacturing apparel in Vietnam and selling into Europe: unsold clothing can no longer be destroyed, and textile products require a Digital Product Passport, tied to a public registry, before they can legally be sold. Most of the coverage since has framed this as a compliance story, something f