A T-Shirt In The Global Economy Summary

Everyday across the world, people wake up in the morning and get ready for the day, they look in their closet and think for a second about what to wear, but has anyone ever stopped to think about where their t-shirt came from. The author of “The Travels of a T-Shirt in the Global Economy” Pietra Rivoli has pondered over that question and in order to thoroughly answer it, she traveled across the world to track down where her t-shirt came from and the life it had before it came into her hands at a local convenient store. In this well thought out book, she discusses a wide range of information regarding the production of cotton which resulted to the teaching of economics and key terms associated with it.
By beginning her book with a thesis,

she immediately introduces the main topic of the book by saying:
The shirt’s journey, we shall see, is a testament to the power of economic forces to overcome obstacles. To arrive here, the shirt fought off the U.S. textile and apparel industries, Southern Congressmen, and a system of tariffs and quotas so labyrinthine that it is hard to imagine why anyone would take the trouble (Rivoli 15).
The story continues as the author, Pietra Rivoli, travels to a convenient store to purchase a t-shirt at random in which she would track down its origin. She started with the foundation of the t-shirt, the cotton, which was grown at cotton farm in Texas that is owned by a darling married couple, Nelson and Ruth Reinsch. Once the cotton is ready to be picked, machines are used to pick the cotton which allows the cotton to avoid human contamination. After the cotton is picked then the next issue arises for cotton production, exporting. Once the cotton is exported into china by a boat, workers immediacly get to work in order to transform the grimy and dirty cotton into soft and smooth cotton that will be made into t-shirts and other products that will eventually be sold back into American; however, several organizations do not want that to happen and fight against the government in order to ensure that farmers o not originally sell to other countries and also America does not try and buy products from other countries that could be made in America.
Cotton products undergoes a large amount of obstacles and entering America can be difficult since only a certain amount of imports can be brought in from other countries, although after entering America the clothes are purchased all over the nation by individuals; however, since people do not keep their clothes forever the result is donations. Businesses such as Goodwill resell donated clothing to people in need, but since there is not a need for all the clothing donated there are companies that travel around to places such a Goodwill and purchase the left over donated clothing. After the clothes are gone through carefully to determine their quality they get shipped to other countries such as Africa where they will be sold to residents at a fairly low price. Rivoli explains thoroughly how the process of t-shirts are made from the cotton farmers to textile industries across the globe to the history of cotton and finally ends with where t-shirts end their long journey after fighting government employees and American textile workers.
Reading this book made it impossible to not come across economic principles, there are three located inside the book that were taught in class.

All three principles were taught in the beginning of the ear when the class learned about the economics way of reasoning. The three principles are: people gain when they trade, choices have consequence in the future, and every choice has a benefit. The most predominant one is that people gain when they trade and it can be seen throughout the whole book; however, a great example is located on page 162 when stated that because of cotton trading it could have resulted to an economical gain in 1996 of over ten billion dollars if the government decreased the number of American textile industries and instead traded internationally (Rivoli). Second, every choice has a consequence in the future and on page 202 it is explained how clothes that are donated get taken to other countries to be sold and these companies receive an incredible large profit by selling donated clothing, “if Americans only knew what they wrought by throwing away their clothing, fewer people would be lined up outside the Salvation Army trucks” (Rivoli). Finally, every choice has a benefit and providing subsidies has definitely helped America grow in the cotton production, “the primary effect on U.S. government subsidies is to increase the supply of cotton grown in the United States and therefore decrease the world market price of cotton” (Rivoli 51). This book did not just teach about economic principles, but also economic key terms as

well.
While reading this book I learned a lot regarding the history of cotton production, the challenges farmers go through, and many more, but a few of the information I learned while reading this book were terms discussed in class. Subsidies is the first term I learned about while reading this book and in class I learned that subsidies is money given to farmers or other business from the government. In the book, the cotton farmers receive subsidies if there were terrible weather conditions that led to a poor season and the US provides large subsidies to cotton farmers compared to other countries, “the poor countries pointed out that U.S. cotton subsidies exceeded the entire GDP of a number of poor cotton-producing countries in Africa” (Rivoli 6). The second key component of economics I learned was Supply and demand and in the first week of economics, our class went over the definition of the two key terms. The supply line is the relationship between quantity and price of supplies; the demand is the relationship between price and quantity of the consumer demand. “American cotton growers have adapted their production methods, their marketing, their technology, and their organizational forms to respond to shifts in supply and demand in the global marketplace” (Rivoli 7). Finally, globalization is one of the key main topics throughout the book, “according to conventional economic wisdom, globalization and free trade offered salvation rather than destruction to the world’s poor and oppressed” (Rivoli 8) From class I learned that globalization is the interaction of different nations that allow trade and other beneficial interactions. In class, I learned loads of information regarding economics, but this book made it easier for me to truly understand key terms that are necessary for understanding economics.
There are many things I learned while reading this book and although it was not something I was enthusiastic about, I am pleased that I read this book because I enjoyed the amount of information I learned. The author did a fantastic job explaining key economic terms such as what subsidies are and I also would want to compliment her for the way she described her surroundings, for example, when she was in China at a cotton factory and described the noise inside the factory as a metal blanket that makes it hard to even think or when she said “for breathing, there is not air, but a dusty steam” (Rivoli 65). The way she worded her experience made it feel like I was standing there right next to her; however, there were a couple of things I did not like about the book. The first one is that although she did an incredible job telling a story, I feel like she could have gone into further depth about slavery, because slavery is something big that occurred in our history and with a book that discussed a lot about cotton history I would imagine it would have gone into more depth about slavery. Another issue that I did not like about the book was the constant graphs and tables, for example most chapters have at least three graphs in each chapter, although I understand that they help illustrate what the author is trying to say; however, I feel that they are too redundant. All in all, the Rivoli did an incredible job writing this book and illustrating the several obstacles cotton farmers and others must undergo in order to manufacture t-shirts.