The Shirt on My Back
It’s a race to see who can impose the restrictions first: China or the EU/USA. So if you are wondering why your clothes were cheaper for a couple of months before they became more expensive again, this is the answer: because countries are competing over trade barriers, not on products and price.
I’m not really concerned with the price of my t’s and undies. (Although the girls are wearing out their clothes faster than we can buy’em.) The real losers in this exchange are neither the Chinese nor the EU/USA, but countries like Morocco, the Philippines and Indonesia, who where slowly building textile economies on the waves of the first international deregulations. Industries who are now being swept away by even cheaper Chinese exports.
Unlike many European producers, these budding economies didn’t have the time to switch from production to creation.
