Table of Contents
Preface ix
Prologue xvii
Part I King Cotton 1
1 How America Has Dominated the Global Cotton Industry for 200 Years 3
2 The History of American Cotton 9
3 Back at the Reinsch Farm 24
4 All God’s Dangers Ain’t the Subsidies 49
Part II Made in China 75
5 Cotton Comes to China 77
6 The Long Race to the Bottom 92
7 Sisters in Time 105
8 The Unwitting Conspiracy 120
Part III Trouble at the Border 141
9 Returning to America 143
10 Dogs Snarling Together 156
11 Perverse Effects and Unintended Consequences of T-Shirt Trade Policy 171
12 45 Years of ‘‘Temporary’’ Protectionism End in 2009—Now What? 196
Part IV My T-shirt Finally Encounters a Free Market 213
13 Where T-Shirts Go after the Salvation Army Bin 215
14 How Small Entrepreneurs Clothe East Africa with Old American T-Shirts 227
15 Mitumba: Friend or Foe to Africa? 239
Conclusion 253
Epilogue: Developments 2009–2014 262
I: American Cotton Is Still King 262
II: The Race to the Bottom Speeds Up 270
III: The Alphabet Armies March On 277
IV: Competition Heats Up in the Used Clothing Business 282
Acknowledgments 286
Notes 288
Bibliography 310
Index 335