As per the US Department of Commerce affiliated Office of Textiles and Apparel (Otexa), Bangladesh's apparel exports to the United States grew by 6.73 percent in the first quarter of 2020 year-on-year, strengthening the country's position as the third-largest supplier to the American market, after Vietnam and China.

Bangladesh fetched about $1.67 billion from apparel exports to the US during the January-March period in 2020, against $1.56 billion earnings during the corresponding period of 2019. However, the country's apparel export earnings witnessed over an 85 per cent decline to $375 million in April 2020, which was $2.54 billion in the same period last year.

Experts and exporters opined that the growth happened since Bangladesh had not been affected by the novel coronavirus till March. At that time, Chinese factories faced closures and supply chains had been disrupted due to the Covid-19 outbreak. The US also witnessed a tough phase of the outbreak, resulting in retail store closures. As a result, their imports fell by 12.07 per cent to $17.84 billion in the first quarter of 2020.

Exporters believe that Bangladesh's apparel exports will observe the effect the outbreak of coronavirus for the next two to three months as most factories were closed for the last one month – March 26 to April 26.

Between January and March 2020, Bangladesh shipped 602.98 m. sq. mt. of apparel goods to the US. But apparel exports from Cambodia and Pakistan saw growths of 14.4 per cent and 13.8 per cent, respectively. According to the BGMEA, cotton products constitute a share of 74.14 percent of Bangladeshi apparel exports. Against an increased demand for cotton, import of the item from the US has increased over the last few years.