Le Jeu Sont Fait

This post over at Kos about "The Coming Trouser War." I think this war's over, at least in the US. The January 1 lifting of quotas on textile imports, particularly Chinese ones, was just the final nail in the coffin. Since then imports of cotton trousers from China have jumped 1,521% percent; overall imports from China went up 62.5% year on year.

This means a lot to me. I come from a textile family.  My father has been in the business since he was 15, from unloading garments off trucks to running his own manufacturing business.  He's gone from seeing 60 giant sweater mills in Philadelphia to 0.  In fact, he lobbied Congress to please save the American textile industry.  He was told "we're going to have to give it up for world peace."

That was in 1979.

A friend of his recently traveled to a medium-sized city in China, less people than in Philly.  There were 235 sweater mills there.  Le jeu sont fait, to quote Ferris Bueller's principal.  The game is over.  We've laid down our arms in this trouser war, and there's nothing that will be done about it.  There are a few things that CAN be done, but by now the textile industry is too small to be saved.  It's Grover Norquist's dream realized; make the industry so small that it can be drowned in a bathtub.

Many US textiles manufacturers support CAFTA because at least they could get in on Central American manufacturing and eat into China's market share.  But that's a stopgap solution.   The real solution, according to my father, the only one that would work, is protectionism.  I have another idea, which I wrote about on this site back in January.  Tie buying American to port security.

We all know that port security is woefully incomplete. A recent report by the Department of Homeland Security shows much of the (paltry) money supplied in grants for protecting ports is squandered on low priority problems rather than actual vulnerabilities. This was at least a minor issue during the election campaign. And both candidates agreed that nuclear proliferation was the biggest issue facing American security; basically, the prospect of terrorists getting their hands on nuclear weapons. When the port and container security issue was brought up in the debates, Bush complained, "I don't know how we're going to pay for all this... there's a huge tax gap."

This was an opening that has not nearly been exploited enough. The President is unwilling to pay to protect America. Well, there are 2 solutions that don't raise taxes on ordinary Americans (not that it'd be a problem if they did; I believe my security is worth paying for):

1. Raise quotas and/or increase incentives for American manufacturers, so that we are less reliant on the nation's ports to deliver practically every good to market. This can be framed as a security issue. American manufacturing makes Americans safer. The National Association of Manufacturing could run with that one.

2. Add a "security tariff" to importers, specifically designed to pay for port security grants. This will increase competitiveness from stateside manufacturers, and give multinationals less incentive to purchase/manufacture everything from overseas.


These basically play out as corporate taxes and protectionism, but tying them to national security is a way to get them sold to the public. The decline of the manufacturing base will eventually catch up with this country as it has with all consumer-based societies in history. Here's a way to stop the bleeding. Or, here's a way to strengthen ports without it being paid for by taxpayers.

I don't know, I'm working on it...