> 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.
