The Travels of a T-Shirt in the Global Economy: An Economist Examines the Markets, Power, and Politics of World Trade. New Preface and Epilogue with Updates on Economic Issues and Main Characters, 2nd Edition

11Perverse Effects and Unintended Consequences of T-Shirt Trade Policy

No More Doffers

What have been the effects of the dominance of politics over markets in world trade in apparel? The stated purpose of the protectionist regime was and remains to protect manufacturing jobs in the Western textile and apparel industries, and judged against this benchmark the regime's success has been quite limited. But the influence of politics in redirecting trade has had a number of other consequences—mostly perverse and unintended—but both positive and negative, for rich and poor countries alike. In addition, despite the limited success of the regime in protecting employment, the American public remains much more sympathetic to trade protection than we might expect. In mid-2008, barely half of Americans surveyed had a generally positive view of international trade.¹

In the battle for the 2008 Democratic nomination, Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama seemed to be engaged in their own race to the bottom in anti-trade rhetoric as each candidate called for a cautionary approach to new trade-liberalizing initiatives and derided companies who ‘‘ship jobs overseas.’'² Both met sympathetically and photogenically (and repeatedly) with laid-off factory workers, and promised to ‘‘save jobs'’ if elected. Though these conversations were compelling in campaign soundbites, the truth is that while the protectionist trade regime has indeed saved thousands of jobs, the employment effect has largely been in ...