Many reporters place trust in economists from prestigious posts, often accepting their information as gospel. This is referred to as authority bias, which can lead to systemic errors in reasoning. That reasoning often trickles down to how state and local policymakers think, and what consumers believe when making a purchase, with real consequences for people and habitats around the globe.
Yet, it was the well-crafted NPR stories that led me to believe global trade is good (gasp!), and any attempts to halt global trade are, well, evil.
There’s a catch. The excessively cheap skirts, pants, and socks on the shelf require a chessboard of countries with sufficiently low labor costs, lax workers’ rights regulations, and weak environmental protections. If this was not the case, those cheap garments would be produced in Baltimore, San Francisco, or London. But they’re produced in Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, and Lesotho—cheap textile producers of the world. There, an abundance of social and environmental impacts provide a heavy counterbalance to pro-globalization stories.
Clothing waste translates not only to pressure on landfills, but higher energy consumption, higher carbon emissions, more polluted water, and habitat loss—with no clear benefit to humans.
The air of Bangladesh is the second most polluted on Earth.[13] Factory hazards are frequent in the textile industry. Over 80,000 safety issues were found in just one quarter of Bangladesh’s textile factories.[14]
80% of garment workers in Bangladesh run out of money before receiving their next monthly paycheck,[15] as industry wages are far below a living wage.[16]
In Sri Lanka, a waning textile giant, wealth inequality is among the highest in Asia.[17] In Bangladesh, over 30% of wealth is held by the top 5% of households, and that gap is widening.[18]
Child labor is attractive to textile manufacturers because they’re cheap and obedient, and are usually paid less than the minimum wages. (Lambert, 2014)Gender-based violence and sexual harassment affect women disproportionately in many fast fashion factories.[19]
Laundering polyester clothing (the dominant material in fast fashion) sends over half a million tons of microplastics into oceans annually.[20]
Fast fashion comes in many forms, from shoes to hats, and belts to shirts. 30% of textiles produced are never purchased.
Photo by J.H. Giordanengo.
Click on the image to enlarge.
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Unintended impacts to Americans
Global market capitalism has no doubt provided an abundance of cheap goods to developed nations, but there are a few details to weigh with respect to human well-being in consumer nations like America:
The percentage of clothing manufactured in America decreased from 56.2% in 1991 to 2.5% in 2012, coinciding with the loss of 1.2 million jobs.[21]
Relative poverty rates in the U.S. actually increased between 1970 (21%) and 2023 (23%), not accounting for government aid programs (pre-tax), and when accounting for changes in spending patterns for essential items.[22]
Homelessness and mental illness have been on the rise since the 1970s in the U.S. (and E.U.) according to the National Library of Medicine, the European Parliament, and many peer reviewed research articles.[23]
Of course, the exorbitant wealth gap between rich and poor has struck developed nations like the U.S. and E.U. as well, placing downward pressure on the perceived quality of life of low-income families.(Giordanengo, 2025)
Consumer awareness of the environmental and social impacts of fast fashion have risen, but the emotional response pales in comparison to the lure of cheap, trendy clothes. Sales of fast fashion grew more than 10% in 2024, to a record $150 billion, and are projected to increase.[24]
Can a Global Trade System Ever Reach a Just Balance?
The basic rules of complex self-regulating ecosystems would imply that the globe is a highly unnatural scale for trade to occur.(Giordanengo, 2025) In our economic systems, basic financial realities imply the global marketplace can never reach balance between corporate needs and social needs. In an interconnected sea of competition, corporations must take advantage of nations offering the cheapest production options, before their competitors do. However, the cheapest option is everchanging. As producer nations evolve economically, their costs of production typically rise (e.g., labor and land costs). Much of Sri Lanka’s textile production began shifting to Bangladesh in the past decade, where labor costs are lower.(Giordanengo, 2025) Today, several African nations are the low-cost producers du jour, attracting fast fashion producers from around the globe.[25]
It appears irrational to believe nations can enact policies stimulating global trade, without creating a commensurate rise in social and environmental externalities across the Earth. Regardless, global market capitalists lean on several theories to justify the outsourcing of manufacturing to low-cost producer nations, such as the theory of comparative advantage.[26] A more recent theory is the flying geese paradigm,[27] a form of trickle-down economics. Both theories fail to account for the monstrous complexity of a global market economy, generating impacts that cannot simply be wished away.
In textile-producing nations such as Honduras, El Salvador, and Mexico—intended beneficiaries of the Washington Consensus—mass migrations to the U.S. and elsewhere have reached historic levels, with migrants claiming economic hardship. Record migration is also occurring from Africa to Europe. A large number of Bangladesh citizens are also fleeing—to Saudi Arabia, Malaysia, and United Arab Emirates—to find better social and economic conditions.
Is it rational to believe that global market capitalism, which benefits from poverty and environmental degradation, will work actively to reverse those conditions?
Policy & Programming Implications
Tariffs are one tool for rebalancing global trade, by providing a financial edge to domestic producers in countries like the U.S. Like any tool, however, tariffs can damage the user when used carelessly. The Trump administration, rather than use tariffs as a coercive weapon, must employ them a restorative tool. Tariffs on textiles can be used to rebuild America’s textile industry. Tariffs on manufactured items can be used to build a circular manufacturing economy, built on efficient use of energy and materials. Tariffs on steel can be used to rebuild a circular steel industry, etc. Abundant technological and organizational innovations exist to enact such a transformation, summarized in Ecosystems as Models for Restoring our Economies (To a sustainable state).
Several state and local policy and program tools also exist to shift trade to more regional and local levels, summarized in this Eco-Nomics article. When trade thrives at regional and local scales, externalities are minimized by design. The greatest shifts, however, might come from consumers who vote with their dollar. For textiles, consumers can support the slow fashion movement:
Pay more, purchase less: purchase more quality clothing, made in your country, and wear it more often.
Shift a large portion of your fashion purchases to secondhand clothing.
Avoid fast fashion trends, which shift so quickly as to be rendered meaningless.
Book Now Available
For a deeper dive on restoring your economy, you can find a copy of the 2nd edition of Ecosystems as Models for Restoring our Economies to a Sustainable State, available at Anthem Press and just about anywhere else you shop for books.
Notes and Literature Cited
[1]
NPR. 2025. ‘Why Trump's tariffs may hit low-income households hardest.’ NPR, Economy, Morning Edition. July 16, 2025 12:22 PM ET. https://www.npr.org/2025/07/15/nx-s1-5467331/trump-tariffs-low-income-households
[2]
Bartlett, K. 2025. ‘We are on our knees: U.S. tariffs devastate Lesotho's garment workers.’ NPR, Weekend Edition. July 20, 2025 7:00 AM ET. https://www.npr.org/2025/07/20/nx-s1-5468516/lesotho-tariffs-africa
[3]
Phakela, K. 2025. ‘Lesotho’s textile factories face closures despite US tariff cut.’ Seattle Times. Accessed August 18, 2025. https://www.seattletimes.com/business/lesothos-textile-factories-face-closures-despite-us-tariff-cut/
[4]
Serra, N. and J.E. Stiglitz (eds). 2008. ‘The Washington Consensus Reconsidered: Towards a New Global Governance, Initiative for Policy Dialogue’. Oxford, 2008; online edition, Oxford Academic, 1 May 2008. Accessed on 05 August, 2023. https://doi.org/10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199534081.001.0001
[5]
Arrighi, G. 2010. The Long Twentieth Century: Money, Power, and the Origins of our Time. Verso Books.
[6]
ACEH. 2021. ‘Thread Together’. Australian Circular Economy Hub. Accessed on 18 August, 2025. https://acehub.org.au/knowledge-hub/case-studies/thread-together
[7]
Giordanengo, J.H. 2025. Ecosystems as Models for Restoring our Economies (To a sustainable state). Anthem Press.
[8]
van Elven, M. 2018. ‘People do not wear 50 percent of their wardrobe, says study’. FashionUnited. Accessed 06 February, 2020. https://fashionunited.com/news/fashion/people-do-not-wear-at-least-50-percent-of-their-wardrobes-according-to-study/2018081622868
[9]
Yarrow, K. 2014. Decoding the New Consumer Mind: How and Why We Shop and Buy. Jossey-Bass, A Wiley Brand.
[10]
EPA. 2018. ‘Textiles: Material-Specific Data.’ U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. Accessed on 21 August, 2025. https://www.epa.gov/facts-and-figures-about-materials-waste-and-recycling/textiles-material-specific-data
[11]
De Groote, A. 2021. ‘How does textile recycling work?’ COSH! Accessed 22 on August 22, 2025. https://cosh.eco/en/articles/how-to-recycle-second-hand-clothing#:~:text=What%20percentage%20of%20the%20donated,fast%20fashion%20chains%20would%20suggest.
[12]
Externality: A negative social, environmental, or economic impact resulting from the production of goods and services. The concept of externalities stems from Pareto Optimality, arguing that no good can be produced, delivered, or disposed of without making one or more individuals or their environment worse off.
[13]
IQAIR. 2025. ‘Air Quality in Bangladesh.’ IQAIR. Accessed on 28 August, 2025. https://www.iqair.com/us/bangladesh
[14]
Evans, B.A. 2014. Accord on Fire and Building Safety in Bangladesh: An International Response to Bangladesh Labor Conditions, N.C. J. INT'L L.40(2),7. 597. https://scholarship.law.unc.edu/ncilj/vol40/iss2/7
Lambert, M. 2014. The Lowest Cost at Any Price: The Impact of Fast Fashion on the Global Fashion Industry. https://core.ac.uk/download/pdf/48614342.pdf
[15]
Worker Rights Consortium. 2023. ‘Bangladesh Minimum Wage Negotiations Put Brands’ Living Wage “Commitments” to the Test.’ Accessed on 15 08, 2025. https://www.workersrights.org/commentary/bangladesh-minimum-wage-negotiations-put-brands-living-wage-commitments-to-the-test/#:~:text=A%20recent%20research%20survey%20by,well%20above%20Bangladeshi%20workers'%20wages
[16]
Saxena, S.B. 2023. ‘Achieving a living wage for garment workers needs price-squeezing to stop.’ IHRB. Accessed on 18 August, 2025. https://www.ihrb.org/latest/achieving-a-living-wage-for-garment-workers-needs-price-squeezing-to-stop#:~:text=This%20figure%20is%20still%20significantly,while%20others%20by%20120%20percent.
[17]
LankaNewsWeb. 2023. “UNDP ranks Sri Lanka among South Asia’s top wealth inequality nations.” LankaNewsWeb. Accessed 16 Nov, 2024. https://lankanewsweb.net/archives/48390/undp-ranks-sri-lanka-among-south-asias-top-wealth-inequality-nations/
[18]
Haider, A.A. 2024. The Daily Star. ‘A concerning rise in income inequality.’ Accessed on 18 August, 2025. https://www.thedailystar.net/opinion/views/news/concerning-rise-income-inequality-3511381
[19]
Global Labor Justice. 2018. Violence Against Women and Men in the World of Work: Executive Summary of New Research on Asian Garment Supply Chains and Recommendations for an ILO Convention, May 2018. Global Labor Justice. Accessed 08 August, 2025. https://asia.floorwage.org/violence-against-women-and-men-in-the-world-of-work/
[20]
European Parliament. 2020. ‘The impact of textile production and waste on the environment.’ European Parliament. Accessed on 21 July, 2025. https://www.europarl.europa.eu/topics/en/article/20201208STO93327/the-impact-of-textile-production-and-waste-on-the-environment-infographics
[21]
Thomas, D. 2019. Fashionopolis: The Price of Fast Fashion and the Future of Clothes. Penguin Press. https://unmhonorsart.files.wordpress.com/2020/08/thomas_fashionopolis__price_of_furious_fashion.pdf
[22]
Greenstein, R. 2025. ‘Changes in the safety net over recent decades and their impact.’ Brookings Institute. https://www.brookings.edu/articles/changes-in-the-safety-net-over-recent-decades-and-their-impact/
Wimer, C., R. Vinh, J. Lee, and S. Collyer. 2024. ‘2023 Poverty Rates in Historical Perspective.’ Center on Poverty and Social Policy at Columbia University. https://povertycenter.columbia.edu/sites/povertycenter.columbia.edu/files/content/Publications/2023-Poverty-Rates-in-Historical-Perspective-CPSP.pdf.
[23]
While writing this article, I walked past a man yelling profanities at the top of his lungs at a woman who had stolen his money, and committed several other unforgivable acts. He was stabbing at the ground where she was, only there was no woman there. Sadly, this scene has become commonplace in over the past two decades in Fort Collins and abundant other communities around the U.S.
[24]https://www.uniformmarket.com/statistics/fast-fashion-statistics#:~:text=Fast%20fashion%20is%20now%20a,CAGR%20from%202024%20to%202032
[25
Yamama, S. 2021. ‘Fast Fashion in Africa.’ Infomineo. Accessed on 08 August, 2025. https://infomineo.com/fast-fashion-in-africa/
[26]
Ricardo, D. 2011. The Principles of Political Economy and Taxation. Dover Publications. Original work published in 1817.
