Harris Tweed, the centuries-old fabric woven by islanders in Scotland’s Outer Hebrides, faces new global headwinds. Trump-era tariffs on wool imports are raising costs for textiles prized by luxury fashion houses worldwide.

In December 1957, Reverend Murdoch MacRae traveled from his parish on Lewis and Harris—one of the Outer Hebridean islands off the northwest coast of mainland Scotland—across the Atlantic to confront the US Federal Trade Commission in Washington.

At the time, President Dwight D. Eisenhower’s tariffs on woolen imports threatened to trigger an exodus of island workers whose livelihoods depended on producing hand-woven tweed jackets, trousers and caps—garments long cherished by Americans, from Wall Street bankers to the Kennedys and Hollywood actors. MacRae’s mission to protect the islanders from US protectionism ultimately succeeded.

Yet nearly 70 years later, his achievement is being undermined by the trade policies of another figure with Hebridean roots: Donald Trump.

“Trump might portray himself as a man of Scottish heritage; he might have used the family Bible at his inauguration,” says Iain Martin, a fourth-generation weaver, but “that man doesn’t care. He’s out for himself, nobody else.”

Martin is one of just 150 weavers of Harris Tweed, a fabric made from coarse, woven wool. It has been his life. He started winding bobbins—a now semi-automated part of the process essential for loading yarn onto the loom—when he was five. Now, at age 57, he weaves about 8,000 meters of tweed each year, in addition to managing a 15-acre farm and caring for 600 sheep. He still uses a loom purchased by his grandfather in 1926, housed in a workshop alongside his own stack of family Bibles, a collection of colorful bobbins and a heavy blanket hand-woven by his grandmother.

The distinctive diagonal-patterned Harris Tweed, unique to the Hebrides, has become part of the collateral damage caused by the US president’s sweeping tariffs on global trade—measures he defends as necessary to protect American jobs. Though tweed exports are small compared to the £59.3 billion total value of UK goods shipped to the US, the island’s crofters and weavers still face the same 10% tariff rate imposed on much larger exporters, even after Trump’s deal with the UK government reduced levies for some other sectors. They now compete under the same terms as major companies such as automaker Jaguar Land Rover Ltd, Diageo Plc, the consumer products group, and fashion brand Burberry Group Plc.

Islanders warn, as MacRae did seven decades ago, that these tariffs threaten a way of life rooted in the 18th century, on remote islands that today are home to around 26,000 people—most of them living on Lewis and Harris.

The US president’s mother, Mary Anne MacLeod, was once one of those islanders. She grew up in Lewis before emigrating to New York at age 17 in 1930.

“A lot of islanders go to work elsewhere and they never return home, but for people like me, crofting, weaving—it’s in the blood,” says Martin. “That’s what draws me to keeping these traditions alive.”

Nike sparks a tweed renaissance

A 1993 British act of Parliament protects the manufacture of Harris Tweed, stipulating that producers must use pure sheep’s wool dyed and spun in the Outer Hebrides, weave it by hand at home and finish it in the Western Isles. They then export the fabric to around 55 countries—the US, France, Germany, Italy and Japan are the biggest markets—where designers use it in everything from luxury suits to sneakers and even whisky flasks.

The industry has long been sensitive to the whims of American buyers, whose preferences have had an outsized impact on the sector. In the post-war era, purchasing a tailored tweed suit was a rite of passage for many young men. However, when US consumers turned away from wool in favor of lighter fabrics in the 1980s, Hebridean tweed-makers experienced a sharp downturn. Years later, a limited-edition tweed sneaker by Nike Inc. introduced the fabric to a younger audience, sparking a renaissance in the 2000s.

The once-derelict Shawbost mill, dating back to the 1920s, was reborn as Harris Tweed Hebrides Ltd. in 2007 to capture some of that renewed US interest. Now the largest of the island’s three mills and its biggest private-sector employer, the company generated a turnover of around £9 million in 2023, according to company filings. The US remains its top export market. Approximately 1 million meters of the fabric are produced annually, with the Shawbost mill accounting for about 65% of that total and supplying international brands such as Ralph Lauren Corp., Brooks Brothers and Christian Dior SE.

Margaret Ann Macleod, chief executive officer of Harris Tweed Hebrides, describes the 10% tariff as “hugely concerning,” particularly as it comes on top of higher employment taxes in the UK and against a backdrop of slowing global luxury demand.

Demand for the fabric also risks being affected by the high levies the Trump administration imposed on European Union exports. Although the tariffs do not directly impact the Hebridean mills, any increase in the final retail price of garments made with Harris Tweed could prompt US clients to reconsider using the fabric.

Last week, the US Court of International Trade declared the Trump tariffs illegal. However, a successful appeal by the White House has delayed a final decision, leaving those affected by the measures still awaiting clarity.

“The worst thing for buyers is being unsure,” Macleod says. “When there are unknown costs that we can’t quantify, it can make the difference between them selecting a British heritage textile or not. They may choose to delay that purchase, reduce the quantity or opt out entirely.”

About 15% of Harris Tweed Hebrides’ annual fabric production is already sold to Asian clients. The mill is now working to strengthen ties with markets such as South Korea—its fastest-growing market—and Japan, which Macleod will visit later this year as part of a British trade delegation. The company is also reviewing its prices—the cloth retails at £55 per meter for individual consumers—in response to the tariffs.

Yet quickly pivoting to new markets is not easy for a “slow fashion” business, where completing an order can take up to three months. The industry must also step up efforts to combat counterfeiting and raise brand awareness in newer markets like China.

“We’re not going to offshore production; we legally cannot do that even if we wanted to,” says Calum Iain Maciver, interim chief executive officer of the Harris Tweed Authority, a statutory body responsible for protecting the cloth’s reputation. “Returning manufacturing plants to the USA is Trump’s goal, but so many industries are caught up in that. It’s quite a blunt instrument to try to solve a domestic American problem; it really is a sledgehammer.”

From the sheep to the shop

Producing Harris Tweed is a complex, months-long process that begins with bales of blended pure sheep wool sourced from across the UK, not just the Hebrides. Millworkers dye the wool fibers using one of 60 base colors and then spin them to achieve the fabric’s rich hues. They weigh and blend different colored wools according to precise recipes created by the mill’s designer to produce a wide range of shades.

Next, they send the wool through carding—a mechanical combing process that disentangles and mixes the fibers—creating a candy-floss-like yarn in shades ranging from pinkish red to soft brown or earthy green. Workers then spin the yarn to strengthen it, preparing it to be wound onto bobbins. They arrange thousands of warp threads—a term derived from the Old Norse varp, meaning “the cast of a net”—side by side lengthwise on the fabric. They then separate the threads into parallel strips and wind them onto a large beam.

The mill delivers the prepared yarn and a pattern card to one of the island’s self-employed weavers. The weaver introduces the weft colors—the horizontal threads woven through the warp—that create the fabric’s distinctive zigzag pattern. After weaving, the mill washes, dries, steam-presses and crops the cloth before preparing it for inspection. If the cloth meets quality standards, the mill stamps it with the Orb certification mark of the Harris Tweed Authority (HTA) and readies it for export.

This intricate process employs 300 millworkers and weavers, many of whom live in remote villages across the island. The HTA estimates that the sector also indirectly supports another 100 jobs in restaurants, bars and shops, along with about 1,000 registered local artisans who use Harris Tweed fabric to create and sell clothing and small accessories.

“Harris Tweed is literally woven into the community,” says Macleod. “The economic fortunes of the islanders have always depended on the sector.”

Retailers selling Harris Tweed garments, such as Peter Christian—a £10 million British tailoring brand—are already adapting to the new tariff regime. With US customers accounting for nearly 70% of its tweed suit sales, the company offered a 10% discount labeled “reverse tariffs” in early April and scaled back advertising at the start of 2025 after a slowdown in US sales growth that predated Trump’s measures.

Tweed also supports the islands’ £75 million tourism sector. Stornoway welcomed a record 57,000 cruise ship passengers last year. Many of these visitors tour weavers’ workshops, where they learn about crofting and the craftsmanship behind Harris Tweed. They also dine in local restaurants and pubs and purchase Harris Tweed jackets or small souvenirs, such as pouches, key chains and hats.

For now, says the HTA’s Maciver, lobbying Washington as MacRae did in 1957 would be pointless given the current “uncertainty and movement” surrounding the tariffs.

Miriam Hamilton, 32, a weaver in Crossbost, a picturesque village 10 miles from Stornoway, says she does not plan to lower her prices to offset the higher tariffs for US customers. “I can’t absorb the extra costs,” she says.

FashionNetwork.com with Bloomberg