Well that's the story. Already the value of secondhand clothes in Africa has gone way down as people have access to the internet and can see they are not the latest fashion.
Clothes that won't be worn should be recycled in the country of origin, not sent to Africa to be dumped in landfill.
> If used clothing is the problem, why not prohibit it altogether? The answer is that countries tried. In 2016, a group of East African countries joined forces to ban imports of secondhand clothing. In retaliation, the Trump administration threatened to remove the countries from the program that is at the core of U.S.-Africa trade policy if they followed through. No surprise that a lobby group representing used clothing sorters backed the move. The only country that stood firm was Rwanda and, to this day, its duty-free apparel benefits under AGOA remain suspended.
I don’t have a subscription either yet I managed to read it directly via the posted link. Please do so as well before asking more questions, unless of course, you’re just grinding an axe and the details would get in the way.
> So someone is sending free textile shipments to Africa?
Trash clothes are bundled with good clothes because proper disposal would be more costly.
> How is the demand "artificial", is someone masquerading as buyers?
There are no ultimate buyers for the trash clothes. They are imported only because they are bundled into good clothes. The importer has no export-side employee vetting the shipment. And the importer has no homeland authority with the power to ensure that the importer doesn’t eventually offload the disposal costs onto the environment and future generations. The exporter knows this and happily takes advantage (along with a little help from government power and threats to revoke “free-market” incentives, ironically).
> So is it about environmental issues, is it about protectionism, both?
It’s about protectionism and environmentalism as a reaction to the use of power in service of greed to offload home-grown externalities onto desperate third-world countries. Or, if you choose not to read the article, it’s just about environmentalism and protectionism and their evil anti-market ways. Your choice.
I'm asking because even after reading the piece[0] it's not clear.
There's no data on how "often" the clothes are soiled garbage, how does this whole value chain work, who is paying for what, and so on. But of course there's a call for AI investment to sort the threads/fibers. WTF.
Nominally the text beings by talking about this trade agreement (AGOA) which is set to expire in 2025, and then just completely nosedives into bullshit.
The only datapoint is that there was an attempt to ban import - which presumably was a violation of the agreement anyway - then the fascist monkey administration started throwing shit.
Protectionism for protectionism's sake is bad. I recommend this recently released interview with Anne Krueger, who did the study on rent-seeking in 1974 (which demonstrated how the whole import licensing was nothing more than very expensive legalized smuggling).
Yet the world is also getting more complex, and externalities are important. Like waste, dumping, or market-distorting subsidies (as on Chinese EVs). Hence tariffs on imports have their place.
In Southeast Asia there are many markets selling used clothing like this. It provides a good business for the vendor and a great option for many locals to get much nicer clothes than they could otherwise obtain. Googling, it appears similar in Africa.
I'm not sure it's quite as evil as the author implies, though, I don't doubt dealing with the junk is a problem and there should be some recycling infrastructure setup to deal with the junk clothing.
> If you’ve donated clothing to a local charity or tossed your stained shirts in a drop-off bin, chances are your discarded items will be dumped in Africa
or more like it ends up in Eastern Europe where it
runs some rounds first in 2nd hand shops.
“german 2nd hand cloths”, “english quality used cloths” and shops like these are extremely common in Slovakia, Hungary, Romania etc. all over the countries
Ya as far as I've seen from traveling they end up in every "2nd/3rd world" countries. Not sure if Africa is really any more likely than other places for donated clothes to end up.
I'm sure the flood of clothes could be seen as an issue to some but it sure does help keep the cost of living down. I cloth my kid for pennies on the dollar thanks to pacas here in central america.
2nd word means allied with the soviets, so not really a term you can use today. 3rd world meaning free for the talking... i mean, unaligned and developing (into one or another alignment)
Isn't the problem with all these donated clothes that the textile industry in Africa keeps getting undercut by this massive influx of basically free and decent quality garments? It's the "give a man a fish, teach a man to fish" situation
There are documentaries showing the huge industry in Africa of cutting worn clothes at the seams, choosing the best parts of the resulting panels, trimming them down, and reformulating a new good-looking garment of a smaller size. Other than manufacturing raw textiles, I'm not sure much is cut out of the supply chain here.
how is that a feasible industry? southern African countries produce cotton but don't have a textile industry even for their army uniforms.
it's the usual colonial triangle of extraction and forced consumption.
they just moved the frame. before it was enslaved to America, ag produce to the empire, goods to Africa.
now it's ag produce to the empire, goods to the periphery of the empire, and garbage to Africa and south America. (vast majority of those clothes are literal garbage. donation is a very small percentage. same with selling refurbished electronics which won't even receive updates and are already out of support/vulnerable)
Why does Africa need a textile industry? Any more than Iowa needs a microchip industry, or Connecticut needs a cattle ranching industry? (For those not familiar: those places don't have these.)
If Africa doesn't need to get into the textile industry, that frees up labor and investment for more productive industries and everyone wins.
And it's not like there's some strategic geopolitical reason why Africa needs to become self-sufficient in textiles.
> If Africa doesn't need to get into the textile industry, that frees up labor and investment for more productive industries and everyone wins.
If you look at the development of East Asia (presumably the same elsewhere) post-WWII, the high-GDP societies have generally started at the bottom of the value chain and moved up and maybe out of manufacturing into services. Not many investors are going to, say, pour foreign capital and education investment into a society to develop, say, a finance industry or tech industry just because they have textile workers out of a job, even though those are among the most "productive" industries.
amusingly, north korea makes most of their clothes from polyvinyl formal because self-sufficiency for strategic geopolitical reasons (juche) is their official policy. historically, self-sufficiency in textiles for strategic geopolitical reasons (khadi) was a major pillar of gandhi's independence movement in india, because selling indian cotton back to india in the form of finished textiles was a major money pump from india back to england; khadi remains a prominent symbol of national pride and self-sufficiency today
africa of course is nothing like north korea or british-raj-era india, being an enormous, diverse continent rather than a country. it's more like europe, and as such is really at no risk of being non-self-sufficient in textiles. and giving a country free textiles is the opposite of forcing them to pay for imported textiles they can't afford
most of those textile are disposed, not donated. they are also not free. people buy it. there's a small ecosystem, the countries I've seen the locals but bulk textiles in a "Chinatown". most African countries lost their cotton export markets after end of slavery, ironically, because they never managed the investment for machines so the cotton fields just withered or were covered to something like corn with manual labor.
wonder why you think they are on Europe level situation. even further Yugoslavia post war was much better off
ah i see. but it's diverse in the sense that arbitrary lines were drawn by the invaders if we're taking about state economies. so more like Balkans for your meaning than Europe.
Not sure if you're from the US but the government here (US) does plenty to protect American industries. I can't read the article, but whatever African countries they are talking about might have more economic strength if they don't have a hand-me-down textile industry.
Its more like: monopolize fishing with economy of scale. Then give the locals just enough of the worse fish so they don't starve. Now they owe you. You won!
The local production of anything cannot compete agaisnt a rich country's surplus. It is a well known problem of poor countries that such "aid" kills agriculture, textiles, milk production.
not that easy:
Rich countries have subsidies for some industries. Agriculture is always a pain point when dealing "free trade agreements". Pain for the poorer country. Imagine the US not having neither subsidy nor insurance for farms. Won't happen. Wheat from the US might be of better quality, and cheaper, but it poisons the poor country's economy.
About used clothes. It is the same situation. Cheaper good (it comes for free from donors), maybe better good. Local industry can't compete.
About new clothes. Well, yeah. Products must compete.
yes, that's why it makes sense to put compensatory tariffs on subsidized products. (and one argument is that US agricultural subsidies are to compensate for low cost of labor elsewhere)
> Local industry can't compete.
if local cheap labor cannot compete with used overseas clothing, then they shouldn't. focusing on comparative advantages is important.
and now because there's a very unproductive sector someone figured out banning imports is a "solution", but it only conserves the problem.
>If local cheap labor cannot compete with used overseas clothing, then they shouldn't.
People overseas always forget basic facts: if the unemployment rate of a country is 80%, How possible do you think it is to put the workers to do "something else"
>that's why it makes sense to put compensatory tariffs on subsidized products.
That's the whole point of a "free" trade agreement. It is usually a rich country which wants to get rid of import tariffs. And it (rich country) usually leverages its heavy influence on something else to force the agreement.
Keep in mind I am not bashing at world order because - reasons. Just pointing out helping the wrong way does more harm than good.
Regarding unemployment. Calling out the US for protectionism -- especially after Trump's 2018 "trade war" that completely backfired -- is much easier than discussing developmental economic policies for Kenya, mostly because things were really fucking bad between 1946 and 1993. Import substitution was tried as a policy, and it failed. Current unemployment is 2.98%.
I'm not sure what the proposed answer is. Not that anyone will care but not donating used (non-soiled etc.) textile is actually a violation of the law in a state like MA as I understand it.
For individuals though, it pretty much means you're supposed to take them down the street to a "donation" dumpster rather than toss them in the trash. Almost certainly, no one is going to come to your house and arrest you/fine you because they found an old t-shirt in your trash but they maybe could.
> Textiles means clothing, footwear, bedding, towels, curtains, fabric, and similar products, except for textiles that are contaminated with mold, bodily fluids, insects, oil, or hazardous substances.
Apparently it's also legal to jizz on your used clothing and then toss them in the garbage. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ I don't make the rules!
The country where I live receives this kind of "aid" All the commoners are happy with "American Brands" sold so cheap in local currency
It is impossible to buy a locally made shirt, nor pants, nor anything. Except "traditional" / indigenous clothes for tourist, but that doesnt count.
Obviously, very few people would, like me, buy locally made new clothes because they would be more expensive and "Not American". And I understand and accept why that happens as described in the article.
Do you want to help a poor country? Buy their products at fair price. Don't dump powder milk surplus because the kids.
my bike coop will take any non-biohazard unusable clothing for use as shop rags
thankfully my mom is around for me to drop off some stuff and ask her to "stitch up this rip" and she'll not only do that, but re-inforce the other side to prevent the inevitable
burning the cotton/wool stuff as fuel is probably fine, but less and less of that comes off the manufacturing line
all in all, plastics waste from clothing isn't much kg/year/person compared to everything else
maybe a post-ozempic world will reduce some clothing waste (while initially increasing it)
In my opinion this isn't really the problem.
While one sector might be slightly affected, this is something many more benefit from. For the sake of argument, imagine that Santa was real and gave kids free toys, magically produced, during Christmas time, destroying this industry.
Sure thing, that'd be a pity and would generate some unemployment. However, overall we'd be better off: people would be freed from the costs of buying toys for kids and would have their resources available for other industries and endeavors...
Don't get me wrong: if this happened overnight, it'd be catastrophic for many people, but still, on the long run, we'd be better off.
A real problem, though, is that we're still wearing a lot of low quality clothing.
We, as a society, would really benefit from a shift to buying higher-quality clothing that would stay good and last for longer.
This is the case with nearly all trade restrictions. It benefits some at a cost to a great many others. The people who benefit most, disproportionately so, are business owners, which is why you see so much lobbying for trade restrictions.
Another benefit of higher-quality clothing is that it can be easily resold if you get tired of it or grow out of it, instead of dropping it in the dumpster or donation bin. Brands like Patagonia, stores like REI, and consignment stores will give you credit or money for your used stuff if it's from a known brand. But it's still more work than most people want to do, and it's still going to cost more than buying the cheapest possible item.
This is a cultural problem. Local consignment and thrift shops are great (though avoid giving to Goodwill; prefer either consignment shops that pay you or charities like St. Vincent de Paul). I even know people who are middle/upper middle class who like to visit consignment stores on occasion to see if there's something nice for sale. Those who have been know you can often find very nice and interesting things for a very good price. I emphasize "local" as this does not have the negative economic impact of mitumba, and there is market feedback based on actual need, not coercive practices like those involving mitumba.
Unless there's a disaster or crisis, it is better to act locally instead of feeding into the glamorous, if cliche, resume-padding abstraction of "helping Africa".
I think you're trivializing the economic problem and failing to show an appreciation of how economies work. It is most certainly a problem that the cotton and textile industries in Africa were wrecked by the influx of free or cheap second hand clothing. Textiles are the entry point into industrialization. So not only does that particular industry get hit, but you kill the seed from which other industries are developed. Expertise, technological know-how, an industrial culture, and economic independence are stifled. We're also talking about a basic good here on probably the most resource rich continent on the planet, not some rare substance that only exists in one place on earth.
I’m not trivializing it, and there is nothing wrong with price dumping.
Furthermore, it’s a myth that a specific industry is the entry point to industrialization, period. It might have been historical in most or even all places, but that doesn't mean that it's a required stepstone.
As always, the problem isn't consumer action but government policy:
> If used clothing is the problem, why not prohibit it altogether? The answer is that countries tried. In 2016, a group of East African countries joined forces to ban imports of secondhand clothing. In retaliation, the Trump administration threatened to remove the countries from the program that is at the core of U.S.-Africa trade policy if they followed through. No surprise that a lobby group representing used clothing sorters backed the move. The only country that stood firm was Rwanda and, to this day, its duty-free apparel benefits under AGOA remain suspended.
Some East African countries wanted to impose tariffs on US exports, and were told that would mean losing duty-free trade with the US. Rwanda decided it was worth it to protect local industry. Stripped of all the paternalism and Trumpenfury, that's the whole story.
Interesting, isn't it? You MUST take in used clothing.
Africa is still in the grips of foreign agents that smother its economies and make a profit while exploiting the riches of the continent. Neocolonialism is not the colonialism of the 19th century.
Backing off would go a long way toward helping these countries to become prosperous.
Capitalism demands there to always be a lower class to exploit and Africa is getting the short end of the stick, both from western countries and even China whose itching to support their state-ran capitalism as much as they can.
