Zheng Yuchuan: A Global Tour Of T-Shirt

What economic benefits are hidden behind a T-shirt's six step global journey?

In a strict sense, the T-shirt in the global economic trip of a T-shirt refers to T-shirts worn by Americans.

Pitrira Rivoli, professor and professor of the Business School of Georgetown University in America, intends to reveal the hidden history of change, trade process and interest relationship among the parties in the American T-shirt, thus giving people the truth about major issues such as free trade, trade protectionism, labor protection and genetically modified species.

According to the author's account, a T-shirt's global economic journey includes six steps: the first step is to produce raw materials such as T-shirts and other garments, and harvest them from cotton fields in Texas, Texas, and sell them to US cotton traders; in the second step, American traders sell their products to textile and garment manufacturers represented by China; the third step, the clothes that are made are pported to the United States by Chinese enterprises at a low price.

From the six step of the T-shirt defined by the author, we can see that free trade and trade protection are perfectly integrated and compromised.

This makes it quite difficult to evaluate free trade or trade protection.

Take the first step, for example, the cotton produced in Texas Texas can be exported to China, naturally benefiting from free trade. The author also points out the fact that American cotton growers have higher technical level and management efficiency. If we look at these narratives alone, they are absolutely right examples of free trade.

Is it true? The reason why the US cotton exports (rather than staying in the US) is because there are specific agricultural product politics and cotton politics in the US Congress political system, which are heavily subsidized through export to cotton farmers and Cotton Traders' interest groups (equal to us taxpayers subsidized cotton farmers and cotton traders).

Does this mean that free trade can only be achieved on the basis of trade protection?

The US's huge subsidy to cotton and other agricultural products has effectively increased the competitiveness of its products in the international market, and has also led to many years of trade disputes between the United States and other cotton exporters.

But Pitrira Rivoli hinted that the United States subsidized cotton exports and made the international price of cotton cheaper. In such a low price of raw materials, China and other countries could further form a highly competitive export garment processing and manufacturing industry. "China made" can sell the world at high quality and low price.

Can it be said that a trade protection has created two free trade?

Again, the third, fourth step in the six step of the T-shirt journey, that is, the process that China's processed and manufactured clothing products are being sold back to the United States, is also full of entanglements between free trade and trade protection.

American cotton traders who benefit from the cotton export subsidy policy often hold or directly run their own textile and garment industries. They often participate in two interest groups at the same time, encourage cotton exports and defend export subsidies first, and then insist on imposing high tariffs on "made in China" and advocating the adoption of quota system to control imports.

This leads to a strange equation: free trade +

But it needs to be pointed out that this strategy combination is the root cause of the decline of the competitiveness of the American textile and garment manufacturing industry. Pitrira Rivoli pointed out that the US cotton agriculture interest group successfully built up the import barriers of the lint, which increased the cost of raw materials of the American yarn Association; the American yarn Association in turn lobbied for the import and quota of yarn imports, and also restricted the ability of the US fabric producers to get the best yarn at the best price; finally, the quotas and tariffs applied to the fabric increased the cost of the American apparel producers, and also restricted the ability of the clothing manufacturers to respond to the fast changing and intangible fashion quality of the American consumers.

The combination of every tiny victory has become the deadliest straw in the American textile and clothing industry.

In general, the global economic journey of a T-shirt, through the analysis of its "life cycle" and economic journey, can help people get a clearer understanding of the essence of trade and deepen their understanding of economics and related trade politics through common T-shirts.