Travels of a T-Shirt

We north Americans seem to have a thing about T-shirts.  Most of us have several, some of us have dozens.  And they aren’t just white undershirts—they make statements!  Over time you can learn a lot about a guy just by noticing what his T-shirts say. 

But who would have thought the actual life history of a T-shirt would be so interesting?  I just finished reading a book that my son gave me for Christmas:  Travels of a T-Shirt in the Global Economy: An Economist Examines the Markets, Power and Politics of the World Trade by Pietra Rivoli.  I loved this book.  By examining in detail the story of the humble cotton T-shirt, this book told me everything I didn’t know about the global economy—and I really didn’t know much, it turns out.  I learned about cotton seeds and ginning, about slavery, about Texas cotton research, about price supports, about the global race to produce the cheapest cotton shirts in the world, about world markets, and about the incredibly, arcanely, highly regulated “free trade” import of T-shirts into the U.S. from China, Burma, Nicaragua and just about anywhere.  I learned that those imported T-shirts are made from the same raw cotton that had been exported from the U.S. just months before. 

This book is about the process of making money in the cotton industry, but it’s also about poverty.  It’s about incredibly hard work for long hours in underpaid sweatshops, but work that also provides a path off the rural farms and out of desperate poverty for thousands upon thousands around the world and over the centuries.  To think of the sweatshop as a gateway out of poverty was a mind-bender.

Before I started reading the book I told my son I hoped it would include a discussion about the sales of used T-shirts in Africa, a phenomenon I personally witnessed in Tanzania. I was not disappointed. To me this was perhaps the most interesting part of the T-shirts’ travels—how barely used T-shirts make it from suburban closets to the open air markets of Africa and all the steps in between. When I was in Tanzania, I thought “what a shame, the sale of used clothing from America has driven all the textile makers of Tanzania (if not all of Africa) out of business.” That’s what I thought then. But after reading the book it’s not so clear. There are many factors that “drove” the textile business out of Tanzania, not the least of which would certainly include (to mention just a few reasons) the lack of cheap and reliable electricity, corruption at all levels, and, very significantly, U.S. trade laws and policies governing the import of cotton clothing. Did you know that as recently as 5 or 10 years ago there were regulations about where the cotton came from that was sewn into the pockets of men’s pants imported into the U.S.? But the import of really cheap used U.S. (and European) clothing has had a positive effect in Africa—villagers who once had nothing but rags to wear (because local suppliers couldn't meet demand at low prices) can now wear colorful, quality clothing bought at very inexpensive prices. And while there aren't many cotton growers or textile factory workers left in Tanzania, there is a whole new crowd of entrepreneur merchants in the clothing business.

Travels of a T-Shirt is not an economics tome, nor does it “preach” about the evils of the T-shirt industry.  It just tries to tell the story and let the reader draw his or her own conclusions about global trade.  It will inform, and it will make you think.  It is eminently readable.  If you want to learn a lot about globalization and its effect on poverty, read Travels of a T-Shirt.