Book Review : “The Travels of a T-Shirt in the Global Economy” by Dr. Pietra Rivoli
Book Review : “The Travels of a T-Shirt in the Global Economy” by Dr. Pietra Rivoli, Professor of Economics at Georgetown University.
The Travels of T-Shirt is a very intriguing story of a T-shirt from its birth to death, through the eyes of Georgetown University professor, Pietra Rivoli. She once saw a protest at Washington DC where there were placards mentioning that Globalisation is bad and the t-shirts we wear are creating sweatshops and killing local jobs and overall workplace quality. She wanted to know the truth and went on the journey of finding out where exactly her T-Shirt came from. She took a t-shirt from her wardrobe, a white one with a Florida beach scenery printed on it and went to the shop to find out where it came from.
The author follows the t-shirt journey through a T-shirt manufacturing plant in China, and finds out the raw cotton needed for the shirt comes from Lubbock, TX, where she goes next.
Through Chapter 1 and 2, she goes in depth about Cotton production in the US, its history, the political background that led to the leading production of cotton in the US, the amount of subsidies that pour into this industry, and how it was able to sustain the competition from other low cost labor markets around the world including Asia and Africa.
Author provides many facts to substantiate her data, which shows her thorough research in this topic, before she put them in the book! Most of them very fascinating and eye opening to know.
She touches the topics of Slavery and imported mexican workforce that were the cornerstone in the US cotton industry. She also points out the inadequacy of India, China and Africa to improve their cotton production through government policies or mechanisation which made it lag behind the US. In Chapter 3 she goes in deep to the current state of Texas cotton production, and how it is still a world leader. One interesting anecdote is about the suicide of 500 cotton farmers in Andhra Pradesh, which was due to poor support from government during bad crop seasons. The US political scenario was in great favour for cotton farmers by providing non-market based labour policies and heavy subsidies on production and cotton trade.
Part 2 of her book is mainly on China’s role in cotton and textile industry and how it is at the top of the trade through its race to the bottom in terms of manufacturing costs. In Chapter 4 she talks about the textile industry work culture and workplace conditions at China and also the state and mindset of its employees. In Chapter 5, which I found very interesting, she talks about the history of textile industry right from its origin in China before 18th century, which then shifted to the British during the period 1700 to 1830s. Colonisation also played a part in systematically destroying many local mills in India and exporting many British made clothes to India and other places in Asia and the US. Early 1800s saw US trying to push a lot of local mills predominantly at the N and S Carolina area. Mid 1930s saw Japan enter the game which had about 40% of world’s textile export. Due to WW2 and the race to the bottom, the industry shifted to Hong Kong Korea and Taiwan and finally to China who is the current leader in textile manufacturing.
In Chapter 6, she talks about how the cotton manufacturing brought women empowerment in all the parts of the world where it travelled. She also shows that the places which were once boomed with cotton industry and moved on after the industry left the place, are all rich with other industries, including Manchester, UK, Charlotte, NC, Alabama, Japan, Hong Kong, Taiwan and South Korea all currently world leaders in many industries including high tech, manufacturing, automobiles etc. By being part of the cotton industry once, the cities and countries led themselves to urbanization, industrialization and economic diversification that followed. It also led to economic and social liberation of women from the farm.
Part 3 of her book is heavy on US import rules on textile imports from many specific countries, just to help the local US cotton industry to survive. She shows that by breaking the regular market to take over, creating these unequal rules causes unintended consequences to the whole industry and nations worldwide which she describes in detail in Chapter 8.
She mainly talks about the Multi Fiber Agreement, MFA, started in 1974 until 2005, which was supported by many US Presidencies to get the votes of the cotton farmers in the US. Chapter 9 talks about the world after the MFA
and how the world’s textile industry rearranged itself to make China the clear leader, many countries losing a lot in the process.
Chapter 11 is by far the most informative of the whole book, where she writes about “Mitumba” — Resale trading of used t-shirts from US in Africa. She visits many part of Africa to find out its history and also the journey of the used t-shirts from US to Africa and other poor countries of the world. She also writes about the implications of Mitumba to the industry and largely to the African society as well.
Overall I find this book with a lot of facts and interesting anecdotes of the whole cotton and textile industry right from its history, origin, societal and economic impacts in the world. Before reading the book, I had never imagined that, a simple commodity as a T-shirt affects almost every part of the world’s society and rewrites the history of the people.
I totally recommend this book for those who have a lot of patience to run through interesting facts about economics, trade and history. In the end, you will end up much more intrigued than before!
Further Reading: