Travels of a T-shirt in the Global Economy
Patrick Rodriguez
The Preface of the book begins with organized student protest at Georgetown University, where the author Pietra Rivoli, is a professor of finance and international business. University students take turns speaking at the microphone explaining how the Big Corporations, Globalization, The World Trade Organization (WTO) and the international Monetary Fund (IMF) are exploiting workers all around the world. One female speaker especially caught the attention of Rivoli by exclaiming, “Who made your T-Shirt”. This instance sparked Rivoli’s intrigue, she began traveling thousands of miles and across three continents to find out who did make these T-Shirts that we all wear without giving a second thought about the journey each T-Shirt had to go through to make it here to the United States. This sets the foundation for the rest of the book and explains its purpose. Her first stop isn’t on foreign soil, but rather right here in the United States at the Reinsch Cotton Farm in Smyer, Texas. The Reinsch Cotton Farm competes with farmers form over 70 different countries. Its 6000 acres can produce 500,000 pounds of cotton which can yield around 1.3 Million T-Shirts. Most Cotton farms receive Government subsidies allowing them to pump out even more cotton without fear of losing profit. These subsidies pose a threat to smaller developing countries who complain that it’s impossible to compete with U.S. cotton because farmers are receiving government assistance which their own governments could never match. These unhappy countries reported to the World Trade Organization claiming that the U.S. has an unfair advantage over the cotton industry. The U.S. defended itself by claiming that its cotton industry was dominant before government subsidies came into play. Also, according to Rivoli ”U.S. farmers have better production methods, marketing, technology and can respond to supply and demand”, showing that the argument posed to the World Trade Organization was
The Preface of the book begins with organized student protest at Georgetown University, where the author Pietra Rivoli, is a professor of finance and international business. University students take turns speaking at the microphone explaining how the Big Corporations, Globalization, The World Trade Organization (WTO) and the international Monetary Fund (IMF) are exploiting workers all around the world. One female speaker especially caught the attention of Rivoli by exclaiming, “Who made your T-Shirt”. This instance sparked Rivoli’s intrigue, she began traveling thousands of miles and across three continents to find out who did make these T-Shirts that we all wear without giving a second thought about the journey each T-Shirt had to go through to make it here to the United States. This sets the foundation for the rest of the book and explains its purpose. Her first stop isn’t on foreign soil, but rather right here in the United States at the Reinsch Cotton Farm in Smyer, Texas. The Reinsch Cotton Farm competes with farmers form over 70 different countries. Its 6000 acres can produce 500,000 pounds of cotton which can yield around 1.3 Million T-Shirts. Most Cotton farms receive Government subsidies allowing them to pump out even more cotton without fear of losing profit. These subsidies pose a threat to smaller developing countries who complain that it’s impossible to compete with U.S. cotton because farmers are receiving government assistance which their own governments could never match. These unhappy countries reported to the World Trade Organization claiming that the U.S. has an unfair advantage over the cotton industry. The U.S. defended itself by claiming that its cotton industry was dominant before government subsidies came into play. Also, according to Rivoli ”U.S. farmers have better production methods, marketing, technology and can respond to supply and demand”, showing that the argument posed to the World Trade Organization was