Why shouldn't the US be interested in being able to clothe its own people?
Unless China (or another supplier) chooses to pay the tariffs to make their products more competitive. I've heard allegations that they do sometimes export products below cost.
If there are no tariffs they won't cost more. They could use other means to onshore jobs without causing a huge shock to the economy, then raise tariffs.
Almost literally, as the goal of the tariff is to change buyer behavior. At least, of the tariff even has a coherent goal.
There are plenty of made-in-USA clothing companies: what do those items (shoes, shirts, pants, underwear, coats, etc) cost compared to the same items made not-in-USA? How much do you want your citizens spending on such items compared to other things? Do you want them to spend 3-5% on apparel:
* https://www.aei.org/carpe-diem/spending-on-clothing-and-foot...
* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Personal_consumption_expenditu...
Or 10%? More?
Most people have a finite income, so whatever they're spending on clothing they're not spending on something else (which could include services). How important is making clothing as an industry compared to something else?
Yes, manufacturing is important, but given that a country has a finite population it may be prudent to be more focused:
> Democratic countries’ economies are mainly set up as free market economies with redistribution, because this is what maximizes living standards in peacetime. In a free market economy, if a foreign country wants to sell you cheap cars, you let them do it, and you allocate your own productive resources to something more profitable instead. If China is willing to sell you brand-new electric vehicles for $10,000, why should you turn them down? Just make B2B SaaS and advertising platforms and chat apps, sell them for a high profit margin, and drive a Chinese car.
> Except then a war comes, and suddenly you find that B2B SaaS and advertising platforms and chat apps aren’t very useful for defending your freedoms. Oops! The right time to worry about manufacturing would have been years before the war, except you weren’t able to anticipate and prepare for the future. Manufacturing doesn’t just support war — in a very real way, it’s a war in and of itself.
* https://www.noahpinion.blog/p/manufacturing-is-a-war-now
Do you want people operating sewing machines or (say) welders?
It produces an immense amount of ecological damage and human suffering to support prices so low that even poor people have way more clothing than they need.
The garment industry in Southeast Asia has some of the worst working conditions in the world, comparable without cynicism to modern day slavery.
Of all the things that I would like to see taxed, the garment industry is absolutely one.
Yes, it would be worth it to pay more per item of clothing if it was created by someone with human rights. Super worth it. Please tax the likes of Vietnam and kill fast fashion brands like Shien. The world would be 100% better.
In general I think these tariffs are terrible but taking the side of fast fashion is pretty much always morally wrong.
I'm not taking the side of fast fashion: I'm saying that US people would potentially spend less in aggregate when all items are suddenly more expensive, which can have domestic economic effects. Especially with the suddenness of all this (the day after which Trump went golfing).
If you want to deal with the specific issue of working conditions, then (e.g.) a treaty mandating working conditions (with international monitoring?) could be a better idea, with violations imposing tariffs for violations after a transition period so changes have time to be implemented.
Adequate clothing is actually a very important in war. Frostbite, sunburn, heat exhaustion, cuts and scrapes (which can lead to infection), trench foot, etc. are all conditions that can be mitigated through clothing.
Which is why all US military clothing is mandated to be domestically produced (Berry Amendment).
But how much industrial capacity do you want to take up making clothing? Or do you want to concentrate your finite workforce in perhaps being able to produce (say) artillery shells or cruise missiles?
Which is another ironic/sad part of Trump and Ukraine: a large portion of the US money 'sent' to UA actually went to the American military industrial complex. Helping UA was actually helping the US in being better prepared from a military supply chain POV.
Similarly, by alienating NATO allies, they're now less inclined to purchase US military gear, and so there will be lower economies of scale for fighters and missiles and such.
The icebreaker agreement (ICE Pact) would have caused investment in US shipyards:
* https://canadiandefencereview.com/davie-will-soon-establish-...
* https://gcaptain.com/polar-icebreakers-may-be-key-to-jumpsta...
Cool.
> But how much industrial capacity do you want to take up making clothing?
I actually want the market to decide that. But that is fundamentally what we do not have. It has been more or less the result of conscious trade policy (by all governments involved) to incentivize production in other countries.
But that is The Market™ deciding that.
The American (and other) consumer wants cheap(er) stuff. The way to get that, while also allowing companies to have a profit margin, is to lower input costs—one of which is labour. So the consideration of desired low retail prices and margins have The Market deciding to move production to lower-wage areas.
And "lower" wage is relative: it is lower than what Americans/whomever would perhaps be willing to work for, but the wages may be pretty good for the location where the work is being done.
If you personally are willing to pay more for (perceived?) "quality" of 'Made in the USA' (or wherever), then there may be market for products in that market segment. But not everyone may want, or have the resources, to partake in that higher-price segment. Why should they have to pay more? One can buy a DeWalt or Ryobi or Harbor Freight drill: why should be forced to by DeWalt prices if all they need/want is HF?
We have better things to do, and others will do it faster, cheaper, and better than we can.
One major reason why it is cheaper to make these clothes overseas is because we have such a stringent regulatory regime for worker and environmental protections, and using foreign manufacturers is essentially a loophole through those regulations. Whether those regulations are useful or not is entirely beside the point: if they are good, then moving manufacturing over to lower regulation countries is bad and we should impose tariffs on all of those goods. If those regulations are bad, then we should just repeal them and let domestic manufacturers compete on an even playing field.
As such, Americans don't make many of their own clothes.
We don't make our own clothes because:
1. The regulatory burden on manufacturing is much higher here than foreign countries
2. Those foreign countries have a deliberate policy of maintaining a trade surplus in order to improve their own industrial capacity at the expense of our own
I would absolutely expect that even in a more level trade environment there would still be some foreign manufacturing of clothes. But what we are seeing is not the happy accident of the free market, but the result of very deliberate government policy.
3. American workers have more productive uses of their time.