Small factories with tiny profit margins have played a central role in China’s international competitiveness. Many could now face disaster.

Clothing factory managers fret about a spate of orders from American customers being cancelled at the last minute, saddling them with losses

President Donald Trump’s rapid-fire trade war has set in motion a commercial rupture without precedent, which is rippling through the global economy in unpredictable and costly ways. The triple-digit taxes that the president has imposed on Chinese products — and China’s retaliatory measures — are expected to shrink trade between the world’s two largest economies from a recent annual peak of nearly $700 billion to almost nothing.