As someone who has the skills (cutting, sewing, buttons, rivets) to make a pair of jeans there is a really simple reason that we (the USA) don't make jeans any more: cost.
Lets take a look at one guy making jeans in the US: http://www.roydenim.com/video (video is a great place to start, you get a sense of what the work looks like). But for $225 a pair, its an indulgence.
You can get USA made jeans for under $40. Round House and Union Line both have them. Roy charges $225 because people will pay. You can get a pair of $200 designer jeans that were made in India or Tunisia.
FTA: there are 200,000 people employed in Xintang, making 300M jeans/year. That's an average of 1500 jeans/employee. Assuming an average wage of 30K/employee, that's $20/jean extra. Surely not a bank-breaking sum? Jeans vary in prices from about $30 - $300, so an additional $20/jean isn't outside the realm of possibility.
Despite all the effort involved, when I look up online, most of the $225 jeans is markup. One website mentioned for a $200 pairs of jeans, $21 for the materials, $6 for labor and $8 for for overseas factory profit. So really a lot of it is markup, middlemen, branding, etc. Yet is is convenient to blame it on the high cost of labor to manufacturer it.
I am guessing you made jeans before, if so can you share and estimate the cost of materials and time it takes for one pair of jeans? Am curious because $225 for time and materials seems like too much to me.
Perhaps these guys in the video run too small of an operation to have the costs spread around and to invest in tech to speed up the process.
This is where, and bear with me on this HN, Donald Trump is right.
We in the west, especially us smart folks, cherish our environment, and we think it is shameful to force people to work in inhumane conditions. How fair is it, then, to force our fellow westerners who didn't win the intelligence lottery to compete with labor in countries that don't care one whit about either?
It isn't right. The multinationals will shriek bloody murder about it, because they've made a killing engaging in moral arbitrage, but it's time to tariff the hell out of products produced in ecological and human conditions we would find deplorable in our own countries.
Trump is beating a populist drum to pander for votes from the disenfranchised Republican base. As a textbook narcissist there is no way he actually cares about the downtrodden and would leap at the opportunity to offshore labor if it was ever to his advantage. Witness today's flip -flop on taxing the wealthy. He's cribbing from Sander's playbook to try and attract more left leaning voters. There's no way he would ever push for such tax reform if he were actually put in office.
Do you think that by using tariffs for political pressure, we can force China to raise their standard of living to developed-country levels? Otherwise, this just amounts to a transfer from the Chinese poor to the American poor, which seems like a big net loss morally.
Well consumers won't be able to buy their $30 jeans if they're produced locally... This problem is just as much about consumers wanting lower prices as it is about corporations wanting to make more money.
Trump isn't against free trade because of environmental issues or or labor disparity. He's against free trade because he feels China is artificially deflating their currency.
Trump has absolutely no concern for America's labor force.
I recommend the book "23 things they don't tell you about capitalism" which looks at how tariffs protect local economies. When economic networks flatten, single entities dominate.
I want to upvote this comment but I have no idea what "moral arbitrage" means. Is that like Apple being a green company but its factory works in Asia kill themselves?
You claim to be "a smart folk", while supporting Donald Trump and referring to the working class as "people who didn't win the intelligence lottery". I am sorry to be the bearer of bad news, but you sir, are clearly not a smart folk.
The economy follows the path of least resistance and offshoring jobs is that path in the short term. Many actors in our society get rewarded in a short-term basis, e.g: bonuses are given in a per-quarter or fiscal year basis. Short-term strategies are not necessarily good for the long-term.
Jeans are a weird phenomenon. Ugly, heavy, unflattering fabric. They only look good on people who would look good no matter what they wore.
Worse still, they are like a disease. I was in a bar/restaurant recently, and I couldn't help but notice how many people were wearing jeans. So I did a visual survey, and as far as I could tell, out of about 40 people, only myself and one other lady were not wearing them. Even my wife was in a pair.
What would be your alternative ?
You think that people look better in working casuals ? Suits ? From your comment I would suppose that you are living in the US.
I personally wear jeans pretty much exclusively and have no problem with it. I prefer and search for heavy jeans.
In my opinion people always look better in fitting clothes. If they are wearing unfitting jeans, they are going to look bad in it. If they are wearing unfitting suits, they gonna look bad in it. If they wear fitting clothes nearly everything works.
Many years back I've worked with an American company (I am from Europe) and they really didn't like us wearing jeans all the time (a totally normal thing to do in Europe where I am living). They said it didn't look professionel enough if you aren't wearing working casuals.
I find this interesting timing for the documentary/article, as this is certainly not a new phenomenon [1] and if anything is beginning to reverse with "re-shoring."
What does seem to be happening is more discussion about the impacts of many of the free trade agreements of the 70's/80's/90's - more specifically how goods made in the US were off-shored as a result.
I understand the economic reality (aka greed) that led to this. But if production was made local again, how does one handle the environmental impact? Or is there no way to make a durable good pair of jeans without destroying the environment?
There is always a way. However, taking care of the environment would add expenses to the production process and, as a result, the cost of the pair of jean would have to increase, as would the price. Once that happens, we would then skip that environment-conscious product for one that did not have that cost embedded.
I was reading an article about the price competition in airlines. People would spend 30 minutes looking for a better deal, to get a flight that would be $5 cheaper.
If we do that for a product that basically flies you through space, imagine what you would do with a product that is disposable.
I guess the hypocrisy is that we don't want to talk about that issue. We would rather not have immigrants picking tomatoes, or sewing jeans. We can always just transfer that production to China, where the environmental and human effects are invisible to us.
It isn't clear to me that there is a significant environmental impact from producing jeans.
The article itself says almost nothing. It quotes a Greenpeace report, from 2010, that says that there is blue dust in the streets (oh no!), that dye is released into rivers (oh no?), and that producing one pair of jeans uses 3625 liters of water.
(For comparison, producing a pound of beef takes 7000 liters of water, and a pound of almonds 4000 liters. [1])
The water usage might be a difficult one, but much of the impact in China is probably apathy instead of technical difficulty. They simply aren't making any effort to give people masks, reduce dust, and so on.
It's much smaller. It's not quite artisinal anymore, but it's not where the mass-produced jeans the world prefers come from. It's where the high-quality $300-a-pair jeans come from.
It's alive and well! But in size and scale, it won't compete with US/China just because of the fact that most people don't care about the quality of their jeans. Like most things, the premium market is much smaller than the "good enough" market. The top brand names for raw denim enthusiasts are still chiefly Japanese companies.
I've bought 5 pairs of Japanese denim from 5 different manufacturers over the past 7 years. If anyone has questions about raw denim, feel free to leave a comment or send me a message.
[+] [-] zer00eyz|10 years ago|reply
Lets take a look at one guy making jeans in the US: http://www.roydenim.com/video (video is a great place to start, you get a sense of what the work looks like). But for $225 a pair, its an indulgence.
[+] [-] gnopgnip|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] discardorama|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] pkaye|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] airplane|10 years ago|reply
Perhaps these guys in the video run too small of an operation to have the costs spread around and to invest in tech to speed up the process.
[+] [-] theklub|10 years ago|reply
Same thing though, basically a luxury product.
[+] [-] unethical_ban|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] carsongross|10 years ago|reply
We in the west, especially us smart folks, cherish our environment, and we think it is shameful to force people to work in inhumane conditions. How fair is it, then, to force our fellow westerners who didn't win the intelligence lottery to compete with labor in countries that don't care one whit about either?
It isn't right. The multinationals will shriek bloody murder about it, because they've made a killing engaging in moral arbitrage, but it's time to tariff the hell out of products produced in ecological and human conditions we would find deplorable in our own countries.
[+] [-] kevin_thibedeau|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] evanpw|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] paulddraper|10 years ago|reply
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deadweight_loss
[+] [-] tma-1|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] mozumder|10 years ago|reply
Trump has absolutely no concern for America's labor force.
[+] [-] hellbanner|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] kelukelugames|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] draw_down|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] partycoder|10 years ago|reply
The economy follows the path of least resistance and offshoring jobs is that path in the short term. Many actors in our society get rewarded in a short-term basis, e.g: bonuses are given in a per-quarter or fiscal year basis. Short-term strategies are not necessarily good for the long-term.
[+] [-] adamconroy|10 years ago|reply
Worse still, they are like a disease. I was in a bar/restaurant recently, and I couldn't help but notice how many people were wearing jeans. So I did a visual survey, and as far as I could tell, out of about 40 people, only myself and one other lady were not wearing them. Even my wife was in a pair.
[+] [-] brusch64|10 years ago|reply
I personally wear jeans pretty much exclusively and have no problem with it. I prefer and search for heavy jeans.
In my opinion people always look better in fitting clothes. If they are wearing unfitting jeans, they are going to look bad in it. If they are wearing unfitting suits, they gonna look bad in it. If they wear fitting clothes nearly everything works.
Many years back I've worked with an American company (I am from Europe) and they really didn't like us wearing jeans all the time (a totally normal thing to do in Europe where I am living). They said it didn't look professionel enough if you aren't wearing working casuals.
[+] [-] lpsz|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] AndrewKemendo|10 years ago|reply
What does seem to be happening is more discussion about the impacts of many of the free trade agreements of the 70's/80's/90's - more specifically how goods made in the US were off-shored as a result.
[1]http://www.alternet.org/story/13095/levis%3A_made_in_china
[2]http://apparel.edgl.com/news/Reshoring-Success-Stories--What...
[+] [-] anu7df|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] hyperliner|10 years ago|reply
I was reading an article about the price competition in airlines. People would spend 30 minutes looking for a better deal, to get a flight that would be $5 cheaper.
If we do that for a product that basically flies you through space, imagine what you would do with a product that is disposable.
I guess the hypocrisy is that we don't want to talk about that issue. We would rather not have immigrants picking tomatoes, or sewing jeans. We can always just transfer that production to China, where the environmental and human effects are invisible to us.
[+] [-] greeneggs|10 years ago|reply
The article itself says almost nothing. It quotes a Greenpeace report, from 2010, that says that there is blue dust in the streets (oh no!), that dye is released into rivers (oh no?), and that producing one pair of jeans uses 3625 liters of water.
(For comparison, producing a pound of beef takes 7000 liters of water, and a pound of almonds 4000 liters. [1])
[1] http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/10/13/food-water-footprin...
[+] [-] nitwit005|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] HillaryBriss|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] induscreep|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Kalium|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ericdykstra|10 years ago|reply
I've bought 5 pairs of Japanese denim from 5 different manufacturers over the past 7 years. If anyone has questions about raw denim, feel free to leave a comment or send me a message.