The delusion of 'Made in America'

Hello from rainy and cold New York, where 100,000 people — possibly more — flooded the streets of Manhattan for a Hands Off! protest resisting the Trump administration. Similar demonstrations erupted in over a thousand cities, all the way down to small, rural towns. Organizers estimate that the total tally of protesters is in the millions.

A lot has happened since Donald Trump’s second term began, but the staggering tariffs announced this week may be eliciting the biggest response. Perhaps it’s because tariffs impact literally everyone — not just global trade, not just our trading partners, and not just big businesses. Tariffs, which are a tax on imported goods, affect you, me, the stores we shop at, the brands we buy, the companies that advertise their products, and everyone else at every level of the production process.

Trump swears that tariffs will “bring back” manufacturing jobs to the US; his administration has gone from promising tariff-driven prosperity on day one of his presidency to asking Americans to endure periods of “detox" and “pain” before the good stuff. Making physical things is much harder than you think, especially in the US, but there’s a persistent fetishization of Made in America products. I want to talk about what it really costs to make things here and why it will be nearly impossible to reshore the millions of manufacturing jobs abroad Americans benefit from.

Making a T-shirt

Let’s play a game: look inside a pair of sneakers you have to see where they were made. Chances are the label says they were made in China or Vietnam. More than 95 percent of footwear purchased in the US is imported — we rely on factories in other countries for the shoes we wear. Even something labeled “Made in Vietnam” or “Made in Portugal” has likely touched many hands around the world: it’s not at all uncommon for cotton to be grown in the US, spun into yarn and knit into fabric in India, and dyed, cut, and sewn in China, for example. Nearly every item in the average American home is the result of delicate, complex supply chains that are only possible because of trade agreements. You are the globalist the Right likes to make a boogeyman, with your imported coffee machines and sneakers and sofas.

An estimated 97 percent of apparel is imported, and we’ve been on this trajectory for decades. It is the reason we can buy an average of 53 items of clothing a year costing $16 a piece. Our insatiable need to consume props up big companies the pollute the earth and abusing human labor (including employing children). An army of influencers who hawk these cheap products then profit on the other side when we buy goods from them.

The MAGA rhetoric around buying “Made in USA” has always been fascinating to me because we already make things here — the problem is that few people buy the products. Big Bud Press, a clothing company I’ve followed for years, is a perfect example of going above and beyond to source and manufacture in the US: the company says that as of 2022, all of its fabrics are made domestically, as are the zippers, snaps, elastics and labels in their clothing. Garments are made in Los Angeles, and factories are audited every 90 days to ensure ethical manufacturing. I have a few pieces of clothing from Big Bud Press and found them to be good quality.

An H&M 100% cotton T-shirt made in Bangladesh is currently retailing for $9.99. An equivalent product from Big Bud Press? $55. American cotton fabric is expensive. Wages in the US are relatively high. Shoppers have the freedom to either pay up to support that work, or buy five shirts for the price of one from a big conglomerate. Would you pay $55 to support this work? Would Trump’s voter base? Because that’s what it costs.

Small business owners and people sourcing materials and labor intentionally have long had to justify their costs to angry consumers who are outraged at higher prices. The reality is that people think the work of creating physical things is easy (far from it), that AI robots are sewing seams and adding finishes (they aren’t), and that the correct price for any given item is what the consumer, personally, wants to pay — not a penny more.

As someone who willingly sews her own clothes, I’ll be the first to say that it is not a glamorous activity. Even at a domestic level it is messy, time consuming, and often physically exhausting. There are sharp needles, hot irons, and heavy scissors, and at an industrial level, the working conditions can be brutal. From a story I wrote in 2020:

It is no surprise that throughout history, workers in the American garment industry have fiercely resisted their repressive working conditions: the first-recorded strike fatalities happened in 1850, when two tailors in New York were killed by police. In Los Angeles, the heart of garment manufacturing in the US today, workers fight to recover stolen wages that only in the last few years have been reformed to be more fair (workers and organizers in California won better pay and working conditions through legislation, though similar bills elsewhere have stalled). And even with the wage theft, the labor violations, and the immigrant workforce that manufacturers take advantage of, it is still cheaper — and more efficient — to manufacture things abroad.

I try to buy American-made products whenever possible, but sometimes it simply isn’t. I sure as hell do not want to do the difficult, skilled work of fabricating all the products I take for granted — and chances are Trump and supporters of tariffs wouldn’t want those jobs, either, even if they did return stateside.

What I made

Speaking of making things, I have been busy sewing the last month. As soon as the weather gets a little warm, I tend to switch from knitting to sewing. My project over the last few weeks has been making a toile (essentially a practice run sewn before the real thing) of a 1930s-inspired dress. Part of the reason the “Made in America” discourse has been on my mind is because I have been struggling with this sewing project — it is cut on the bias, which gives it beautiful drape but uses a lot of fabric that can be harder to sew. The curved seams were especially frustrating, and I opted to hand sew the neckline. Anyway, here is what I ended up with:

I used vintage cotton fabric for the main material and the contrast brown skirt. Ironically the fabric was probably produced in the US — I’d date it to the late 1970s, and the selvedge edge is marked Cranston Print Works, a Rhode Island-based company that used to manufacture its fabrics in the US. I bought the fabric at a thrift store a few years ago for 50 cents or so, no doubt from the stash of someone who never got around to using it.

The curved seams were so difficult that now I’m considering not making the dress in the actual fabric I have set aside for it. That’s how hard sewing is! I spent many, many hours on this practice dress — and for now, I kind of think that’s enough for me.

Reading list

• In 2013, NPR’s Planet Money did a fantastic series about the making of a simple T-shirt and all the places you have to go to to source materials. The players may have changed a bit since then, but the main point remains the same: we depend on resources and labor from around the world.

• I loved this piece about the life, work, and home of Japanese American artist Ruth Asawa.

• If you’re in New York, I highly recommend a tour at the Tenement Museum — specifically one called 100 Years Apart, which follows garment workers in NYC spanning a century. And if you won’t be in New York any time soon, check out this story about a historic Chinatown garment workers strike in the 1980s.