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.<p>Lets take a look at one guy making jeans in the US: <a href="http://www.roydenim.com/video" rel="nofollow">http://www.roydenim.com/video</a> (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.
This is where, and bear with me on this HN, Donald Trump is right.<p>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?<p>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.
Jeans are a weird phenomenon. Ugly, heavy, unflattering fabric. They only look good on people who would look good no matter what they wore.<p>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.
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."<p>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.<p>[1]<a href="http://www.alternet.org/story/13095/levis%3A_made_in_china" rel="nofollow">http://www.alternet.org/story/13095/levis%3A_made_in_china</a><p>[2]<a href="http://apparel.edgl.com/news/Reshoring-Success-Stories--What-s-Branding-Got-to-Do-with-It-104291" rel="nofollow">http://apparel.edgl.com/news/Reshoring-Success-Stories--What...</a>
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?
The explanation behind the title is summarized in this line from the article: "With rock-bottom wages and government assistance, the industry boomed."