In A T-Shirt's Journeys in the Global Economy, business professor Pietra Rivoli takes the reader on a fascinating adventure around the world to reveal the life story of his six dollar T-shirt. Traveling from a West Texas cotton field to a Chinese factory, and from trade negotiations in Washington to a second-hand clothing market in Africa, Rivoli examines international trade through the history of this simple product. Its fascinating history shows that globalization's critics and supporters have oversimplified the world of international trade. Cotton first became popular in England mainly because it was cooler and more comfortable than wool, plus it could be dyed in many colors and patterns. However, English manufacturers had to fight against Indian cotton textiles, which were much cheaper. Consequently, the British government adopted protectionist tariffs and barriers against Indian cotton, which allowed the fledgling British textile industry to grow and sustain itself. The United States did the same thing to develop its own textile industry in the northeast of the country. The American government adopted tariffs to protect its fledgling industry from British textile imports. The textile industry sparked the Industrial Revolution in the United States. When American cotton is sent to China, it is made into T-shirts in China's sweatshops by workers working 12-hour days and earning a living wage. When finished T-shirts come back to the United States, they are protected by the government through subsidies, tariffs, taxes, and protectionist policies that ensure that these foreign products will not compete too much with shirts made in the States -United. Government regulations control the quantity of T-shirts that can be imported from various countries...... middle of paper ...... into Salvation Army bins. The American textile recycling industry allows Africans to dress well for very little money. In 2003, used clothing was by far the largest U.S. export to Tanzania, and that country ranked fourth in the world as a customer for U.S. scraps, with competition from countries like Beijing and the Republic of Congo. the conditions of a garment worker. She described a Vietnamese child chained to a sewing machine, without access to food or water, and spoke of a young Indian girl who earned 18 cents an hour and was only allowed to go to the bathroom. only twice a day. This young girl lived in a room with 12 other girls; she shares a bed and only has gruel to eat. She is forced to work 90 hours a week, without overtime pay, and lives not only in poverty, but also in filth and disease...