The travels of a t shirt in the Global Economy by Pietra Rivoli

During a 1999 protest of the World Trade Organization? Rivoli? an economics professor at Georgetown? looked on as an activist seized the microphone and demanded? "Who made your T-shirt?" Rivoli determined to find out. She interviewed cotton farmers in Texas? factory workers in China? labor champions in the American South and used-clothing vendors in Tanzania. Problems? Rivoli concludes? arise not with the market? but with the suppression of the market. Subsidized farmers? and manufacturers and importers with tax breaks? she argues? succeed because they avoid the risks and competition of unprotected global trade? which in turn forces poorer countries to lower their prices to below subsistence levels in order to compete. Rivoli seems surprised by her own conclusions? and while some chapters lapse into academic prose and tedious descriptions of bureaucratic maneuvering? her writing is at its best when it considers the social dimensions of a global economy? as in chapters on the social networks of African used-clothing entrepreneurs.

In “The Travels of a T-Shirt in the Global Economy” Pietra Rivoli accomplishes what few have even attempted — she presents a balanced view of the impact of globalization. Where most have authored books of dogma vehemently opposed? or rabidly in favor of what has become business reality? Rivoli presents a journey that is at once both real and figurative as she describes the transformation of raw cotton into a t-shirt? and beyond? as she also presents her changing perception of the workings of global economy. In the final analysis? Rivoli admits to her initial position? in keeping? she tells us? with traditional thinking among economists? that globalization was positive? and proclaims her realization as she researched the subject in writing the book that unfettered free trade represents a mixed bag. Despite the fact that free trade can be seen as the source of much economic good? Rivoli concludes that without strident efforts by protesters and non-governmental organizations (NGOs)? such benefits would generally result at the expense of exploitation of disadvantaged workers in third-world sweatshops.

The protagonist of this highly informative and entertaining book is a $6 T-shirt purchased in Fort Lauderdale? Florida. Georgetown economist Rivoli uses her T-shirt as a vehicle for telling an analytic story about its life--from the cotton fields of Texas to either its proud purchase by a Tanzanian villager or its sale as mattress filler? depending on its condition when discarded by its American owner. Along the way? she explores the history of cotton production and the cotton textile industry and evaluates the misguided and often absurd U.S. textile policy over the past half century? up to the end of 2004? when the multilateral Multifiber Arrangement (which inadvertently created many more jobs in not-quite-competitive developing countries than it preserved in the United States) expired. Rivoli draws heavily on her own interviews and on anthropological as well as economic literature? which gives her tale a human touch. She shows how despite the awful working conditions in ...