What T Shirts Can Teach Us About Trade

By Jyoti Thottam

"Who made your T shirt?" A speaker at a 1999 Georgetown University student protest against sweatshops turned that question into an accusation. Pietra Rivoli, a professor of business, heard something more: a challenge to find the answer. A few weeks later, she bought a T shirt and began tracing its path from Texas cotton farm to Chinese factory to charity bin. The result is an engrossing new book, The Travels of a T-Shirt in the Global Economy (Wiley; 254 pages).

Following a T shirt around the world is a gimmicky narrative device, but it frees Rivoli from the usual debate over global trade. She goes wherever the T shirt goes, and there are surprises around every corner. In China, Rivoli shows why a clothing factory, despite its harsh conditions, represents a step toward personal freedom for the women who work there. In the kaleidoscopic used-clothing bazaars of Tanzania, she realizes that "it is only in this final stage of life that the t-shirt will meet a real market," where the price of a shirt changes by the hour and can vary by its size and even color. Rivoli doesn't allow the charts and capsules of economic history to drain the book of its color. It is full of memorable characters and vivid scenes, like the "sensory assault" of a textile mill--deafening noise, suffocating air and the "musty-sweet smell of the cotton," she says. "Here in the factory, Shanghai smells like Shallowater, Texas."

Rivoli excels at making those sorts of unexpected connections. She even finds one between antiglobalization activists and free traders. The opportunities opened up by trade are vast, she argues, but free markets need the correcting mechanism of political activism to keep them in check. True economic progress needs them both. --By Jyoti Thottam