How Does A T-Shirt Reflect The Trend Of Free Trade And Protectionism?

By one piece

How does the refraction of free trade policy and protectionism change the world?

Strictly speaking, the book tells

It only refers to what Americans wear.

。

Pitrira Rivoli, Professor of the business school at Georgetown University, is trying to reveal what is worn on Americans.

Hidden behind the history of change, the trade process, the interests of the parties in the chain of interests, thereby giving people a free trade, trade protectionism, labor protection, genetically modified species and other major proposition of the truth.

According to Pitrira Rivoli's narration, one piece.

The global economic journey includes six steps: the first step, making

etc.

The raw material of cotton is harvested from cotton fields in Texas, USA, and sold to American cotton traders. In the second stage, American traders sell their products to textile and garment manufacturers represented by China; the third step is to do well.

Then the Chinese enterprises will be pported to the US WAL-MART and other vendors at a low price; the fourth step, WAL-MART will sell T-shirts to American consumers; in the fifth step, American consumers will treat old clothes at low prices or without compensation to charity organizations and old clothes traders; sixth, the old clothes traders in the United States will carry out

The two sale of clothing is targeted at consumers from many poor countries in Africa.

Using carbon footprint, water footprint and other tools to measure such an economic journey, it can be said that it is not environmentally friendly.

In recent years, many books advocating low carbon and energy saving have noted that raw material production - industrial production -

The "use recycling" chain is too long and too complicated to advocate "localized consumption".

This kind of advocacy will surely be regarded as the gospel by the textile and manufacturing industries of the developed countries such as the United States and so on. Under the circumstances that American protectionism can no longer provide them with more protection, it is fashionable and more convincing to play the "low carbon" brand.

Back to the truth, Pitrira Rivoli's definition.

The six step, the completion of every step, is derived from the tradition of free trade formed by the globalized trading system since modern times. It is also related to the partial and phase competitive advantages of various interested parties in the selective or unconscious violation of free trade principles.

In other words, in the same fact and its causal relationship, free trade and trade protection are "perfect" integration and compromise.

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

Take the first step, for example, the output of cotton produced in Texas is exported to China, which is naturally benefited from free trade worldwide. Pitrira Rivoli also cited the fact that American cotton growers have higher technical level and management efficiency. If we look at these narratives alone, it is natural that the free trade is absolutely right.

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 United States has provided huge subsidies to cotton and other agricultural products, which has effectively enhanced the competitiveness of domestic 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 prices 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. The Chinese made T-shirts 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 collecting high tariffs on China's manufacturing, and advocate the adoption of quotas and other mechanisms to control imports.

This leads to a strange equation: free trade + trade protection = profit maximization.

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 raw material cost 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 coordination and tariff 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 rapidly changing and unpredictable fashion taste 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 the "life cycle" and economic journey of the T-shirt, makes clear the historical and realistic problems of goods and trade globalization, free trade, trade protection, and trade regulation. It is especially worth mentioning that there is no empty, narrow or narrow affirmation of the right or wrong of free trade or trade protection, but reveals the truth of the two converged in the same goods and the same trade process, and helps people understand the essence of trade more clearly, thereby deepening the understanding of economics and related trade politics.