Shein Is Even Worse Than You Thought
thecut.com
thecut.com
Comparative advantage: outsource your industry to someone that can do it cheaper, so you can focus on what you can do better. Both come out ahead.
That your trading partner is doing it cheaper because they're literally selling you poison is not part of the model, and doesn't stop economists from extolling the virtues of liberalizing trade.
Because the premium EU and US markets pay for clothes that don't poison customers doesn't seem to come strictly from societal values (we still permit some amount of pollution and harmful compounds in our products and environments, just not obvious or acute ones), but a healthy respect of the mechanisms and agency these groups have to affect a business's revenue.
"Values" could also reasonably be euphemism for "finance".
In the timeframe of human history we haven't evolved at all.
No mater the amount of noise[1] made about the evils of historical slavery in the West when given the choice been expensive and cheap but slave made people still reach for cheap.
Regulation, whether it's environmental concerns, worker conditions or even originality, costs you money. If you don't know why one product is so much cheaper than another you should probably assume the worst.
1. I don't wish to diminish that but I really wish we would put more effort into stopping slavery going on right now in our lifetime.