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Planet money did a fantastic series on the textile industry several years ago when they decided to make a t-shirt and wanted to trace the whole thing. Turns ou
by milesvp 4y ago
Planet money did a fantastic series on the textile industry several years ago when they decided to make a t-shirt and wanted to trace the whole thing.
Turns out textiles is sort of the cheapest industry. It’s unique in that it requires capital in the form of machines, but doesn’t require a high skill labor force and the machines tend to be highly portable. So it ends up being an industry to follow if you want to know where the cheapest labor is. Basically what happens with textiles, is that every so often the standard of living in a country goes up, and the factory owners look around to try to save on labor, and hope to find a cheaper place to move to. What’s sort of interesting is that there aren’t many places left that have enough political stability that owners are willing to risk moving equipment to that are cheaper than bangledesh. This was like 10 years ago though, I’d be curious where textiles are located now.
- alephnerd 4y agoVietnamese textile manufacturing is moving towards Cambodia and Laos (both figuratively and literally - lots of garment factories starting to open in Tay Ninh and Gia Lai). The Bangladeshi textile industry will continues to remain for the foreseeable future, but textile manufacturing has started to return to India now that unskilled manufacturing wages are starting to reach the $150-200/month mark globally. When Bangladeshi and Indian unskilled labor starts going for $300-400/montn it will move to Nepal and then Eastern Africa (or Pakistan+Myanmar if their politics stabilizes).
- kranke155 4y agoThis is not at all what happens but ok. This is sort of the capitalist fable on what’s happening. Read “How Asia Works” for how things actually work in industrialising a country and its stages. Countries actively choose to seek to develop an industrial base and they start with textiles. Then they evolve their industrial base to a higher income industry, and they let go of textiles over time. That’s how it happens in an organised industrial development plan. In disorganised industrialisation, you have everything going on at once and you get Brazil.
- namaria 4y agoThis narrative doesn't falsify or go against the one you're replying to. Both things can be true - investors follow incentives and some countries try to manage incentives in a certain way.
- scrlk 4y agoFWIW, I recently purchased a pack of Kirkland Signature T-shirts from Costco, which were made in Ethiopia. It's the first time I've noticed my clothing coming from Africa.