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fast fashion
The US Leads the Global Race to the Bottom—and Still Pretends to Be the Victim
Trump’s tariffs are not a departure from business as usual; they are an extension of it and will overwhelmingly benefit the world’s financial elite.
Apr 28, 2025
Global trade systems are not free, nor are they neutral. They were built to facilitate capital transfer and to transfer wealth upward—benefiting the rich while harming workers worldwide. This arrangement can feel too big, too abstract, and too disconnected from our experience. For these reasons, and as a sociologist across decades and schools, I have facilitated this race to the bottom activity to help students understand the problems inherent to our complex global reality.
In the Transnational Capital Auction: A Game of Survival simulation, students role play as leaders of countries with less wealth than GDP leading nation states. They are instructed that they rely on trade and economic development from wealthier countries such as the United States and powerful transnational corporations.
Capital flight occurs when transnational corporations move their factory or industry from one geographical area to another in order to seek better conditions for their bottom line, profits, or for shareholders. These moves highlight the antagonism between the working class and the owning class. For example, in the activity, teams gain points when they satisfy corporate demands: being lax on child labor laws and environmental regulations, maintaining a low minimum wage and corporate tax rate, and suppressing unionization of workers. This is not just a game with hypothetical conditions, it is a microcosm which echoes real-world socioeconomic and political dynamics.
Rather than denying our power and privilege in order to justify more bad behavior, we need to do our part to realign around policies that are internationally, socially, and environmentally sustainable.
We have seen this play out domestically and internationally. Sociologists have documented how corporations leave the United States to go to places more favorable to capital. For example, when an area develops unions, industry can flee to what it considers a safer space for business. In this way, capital for transnational corporations can accumulate faster when workers’ rights and environmental policy is lax. These conditions have led to countless deaths, especially among women and people of color, and have fueled global climate destabilization. These corporations are helped by policies and loopholes such as international tax havens like Nauru.
The human cost of this system is staggering. Body-catching nets were installed around Foxconn buildings because workers were unaliving themselves by jumping off their job site. Women, including mothers, leave their families and countries in order to work in other locations where the wages are higher.
The unjust arrangements are often complex by design. There are free trade zones or “special economic zones” in places like Jamaica, which allow companies to operate under a different set of laws than the rest of their country—sometimes with fewer worker protections. Meanwhile, local markets neglect or dispose of their natural resources because of the flux of imported goods dictated by trade agreements.
To be sure, the global working class harmed by these lopsided systems includes American workers who have lost their jobs, houses, and communities through capital flight. And yet, American consumers love the low prices these systems enable. The products we rely on—the food, the technology, the entertainment—these things are not created in a vacuum, and they are also not free. We have access to fast fashion and too soon obsolete technologies because people spend their lives working in conditions and receiving wages that we would consider un-American. Yet they are so very American.
The United States is no one’s victim. It helped create the race to the bottom and continues to benefit from its downward spiral. Trump’s narrative, justification, and chaotic enactment of tariffs are more than problematic. They are not a departure from business as usual, they are an extension of it and will overwhelmingly benefit the world’s financial elite.
Change is needed. The United States needs to reevaluate its relationship with itself and as part of a global community. We need reciprocal, resilient, and renewable structures in place. We will not get there by the same policies of violence, domination, and extraction that got us to the asymmetrical and disproportionate power that we have now. Rather than denying our power and privilege in order to justify more bad behavior, we need to do our part to realign around policies that are internationally, socially, and environmentally sustainable. We can all start by reflecting on our personal commodity chains, which tether us to global enterprise and its bottom rungs.
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This Peak Buying Season, It's Time to Rethink Fashion's Growth Obsession
Moving beyond growth and the mentality that "more stuff is better” could help reshape the fashion system—and make us happier in the long run.
Dec 08, 2024
Fast fashion is a poster child of capitalism. Over the past 20 years, fashion production, consumption—and textile waste—have doubled in volume. The current neocolonial status quo is characterized by labor exploitation and cultural appropriation, overproduction, resource depletion, and unprecedented waste generation.
The environmental and social impacts of fashion choices in the Global North are disproportionately affecting vulnerable populations in the Global South. Material throughput of the fashion system should be cut at least in half to stay within the planetary boundaries—but the industry is programmed for growth, mostly in synthetic or plastic garments, on a trajectory to take up to a quarter of the global carbon budget.
Looking good does not have to mean contributing to a broken system.
Our society's addiction to growth fuels this cycle, prioritising profit over all else. While offering consumers the illusion of choice, the current linear fashion business model leads to wardrobe clutter, constant pressure to keep up with trends that causes the feeling of exclusion—and exacerbates further the class divide.
But looking good doesn't have to mean fueling a destructive and exploitative growth model. Moving beyond growth and the mentality that "more stuff is better" could help reshape the fashion system—and make us happier in the long run.
The Beyond Growth Vision
What would it mean to move beyond growth in fashion—in practice?
For Citizens
Addressing the constant push for "more" would be a good start. Why do we seek more stuff? If we zoom into the basic needs behind our overconsumption, we'll find the needs to belong, to be part of a community and respected by our peers, and the needs for self-expression and feeling safe in our environment. But what if there were other ways to fulfil these basic needs instead of buying more stuff?
Buying more consciously—prioritizing quality, longevity, circularity, ethical and local production—is important. But we cannot buy our way out of the crisis of overconsumption by buying "green." The only consumer-citizens' action that can make all the difference is to simply buy less new stuff.
Before we rush to defend our right to shop as if there's no tomorrow, as enshrined in the "constitution" of capitalism, let's take a moment to talk about "less." More isn't always better, and less isn't always worse. Think about war. Production of weapons contributes positively to the growth of GDP—but are weapons a good thing? Could it be possible that too much fashion is not a good thing? And if so, how much fashion is enough? Consider this:
- A Parisian woman in the 1960s had a wardrobe of 40 garments, including shoes and accessories.
- An average Dutch wardrobe today contains 175 garments.
- A wardrobe to stay under the 1.5°C limit of the Paris agreement should contain 80 garments.
- People who voluntarily chose to downsize their wardrobes and only keep garments they love report higher levels of subjective well-being.
It turns out that, not only can we do with less, but living with a curated "less" makes us happier, more conscious about style and more in control of our spending. And—it is also great for the planet. Importantly, moving beyond the "buy more" mentality could help us take back creative control over our self-expression and encourage more diverse personal styles and empower true uniqueness.
Scaling down our irresponsible and wasteful buying habits can have a long-term reinvigorating effect on individuals and on our communities. Instead of buying new things online, alone, to feel better in a crazy world we live in, we could join mending and repair workshops, swaps, upcycling or creative clubs—meet like-minded people, make friends, and become part of a community.
For the Fashion Industry
There is no easy way to replace centuries of growth-oriented business logic overnight. For businesses, moving beyond growth would mean experimentation with ownership structures, new business models and revenue streams to move toward circularity and sufficiency. Profits are not wrong per se, but how they are distributed makes a major difference. The ordeal that Patagonia went through to transform its ownership model to create an environmental fund to replace its shareholder structure indicates that our legal systems are so tailored to growth models that even moving from shareholder to stakeholder capitalism is difficult.
It would also require rethinking the current overproduction strategy. The majority of items today do not sell: An average sell-through rate is 40-80%. Which begs the question: Does this strategy even work in a saturated market? The industry should take a look at how to reduce stock keeping units (SKUs) and focus on developing more products for circularity as opposed to more products overall. Extending responsibility of brands to what happens to their product after the sale, all the way to the end of life, could be the critical mindshift point opening up doors for responsible circular practices that have not existed before. These would include designing for the next use, repair, and re-manufacture.
Citizens are more than just consumers, and we can advocate for change and shift the narrative toward a beautiful fashion future in which less is more.
However, these changes cannot occur in competition with the dominant unsustainable and unethical growth-oriented industry practices. To move beyond growth and let post-growth business experimentation flourish, it is critical to even out the playing field through regulations. Governments could take the first step by banning or restricting business practices that constitute fast and ultra-fast fashion models. A great example is France that sets a tax for companies that put more than 2,000 styles on the market daily.
Another example is Amsterdam. They city made an effort to go beyond GDP by applying Doughnut Economic Frameworks to align the fashion industry with well-being economy principles, such as reducing waste and promoting sustainable practices. One initiative encourages citizens to mend their clothes through repair cafes, fostering a culture of reuse and reducing the demand for fast fashion.
Other options could be tax incentives for sustainable practices, restrictions on harmful materials, monitoring for transparency, support for circular economies, and education (e.g. learning how to repair your clothes). It is also crucial to regulate planned obsolescence, reinforce the right to repair, as well as implement non-for-profit extended producer responsibility. Side policies could also include banning some advertising, especially that of fast fashion brands, as well as the use of algorithms and tracking consumer data by brands.
Fashion Forward
Looking good does not have to mean contributing to a broken system. Citizens are more than just consumers, and we can advocate for change and shift the narrative toward a beautiful fashion future in which less is more. Choosing to recognize our core needs and find alternatives, as well as finding creative and joyful ways to fill them other than shopping for clothes, is an act of empowerment that can heal us, our planet, and the very system that is very, very sick.
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All Fast Fashion Workers Want for the Holidays Is a Living Wage
Bangladeshi garment workers have demanded a modest $205 a month, but pay increases offered by the country’s manufacturers totaled barely half that.
Dec 09, 2023
’Tis the season for holiday sales. But on the other side of the planet, there’s a high cost for those low prices. This is especially true for “fast fashion,” the clothing equivalent of a Big Mac: attractive, affordable, and throwaway.
The Bangladeshi women who toil as underpaid garment workers so we can wear disposable outfits are making their voices heard loudly enough to reverberate across oceans. Mass protests for higher wages have roiled the South Asian country.
Bangladesh is the world’s second-largest exporter of apparel in the world, after China. Recognizable name brands like H&M, Zara, Calvin Klein, American Eagle, and Tommy Hilfiger, among others, rely on Bangladeshi garment factories.
A survey of about 1,000 factories in Bangladesh, published in early 2023, revealed that companies like Zara and H&M underpaid factories for garment purchases, making it harder for them to pay their workers.
The country’s 4 million garment workers, most of whom are women, until recently took home a meager pay of just $75 a month and hadn’t gotten a raise in years. By one estimate, the cost of living for a single person in Bangladesh is about $360 a month, not including rent.
Workers have demanded a modest $205 a month, but pay increases offered by the country’s manufacturers totaled barely half that.
As protests intensified, Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina—once hailed as a liberal leader—unleashed security forces that have intimidated and attacked union organizers. Police recently fatally shot a 23-year-old mother and sewing machine operator named Anjuara Khatun after firing at protesters.
On the surface, U.S. brands who purchase their inventories from Bangladesh’s factories appear to be on the right side of the fight. The American Apparel and Footwear Association (AAFA), an industry trade group, wrote a joint letter urging Hasina to “raise the minimum wage to a level… sufficient to cover workers’ basic needs.”
The AAFA even asked the government to avoid retaliating against unions and to respect “collective bargaining rights.” The U.S. State Department issued a statement saying, “We commend the members of the private sector who have endorsed union proposals for a reasonable wage increase.”
Further, global retailers are offering to eat into their profits by increasing the price they pay factories to help them offset increased wages. Currently, the cost of the labor to produce garments is a mere 10% to 13% of a product’s total manufacturing cost.
But are companies really committed to raising garment workers’ wages?
A survey of about 1,000 factories in Bangladesh, published in early 2023, revealed that companies like Zara and H&M underpaid factories for garment purchases, making it harder for them to pay their workers. And when the Covid-19 pandemic led to global shutdowns, large retailers canceled orders and delayed payments.
“Only when suppliers are able to plan ahead, with confidence that they will earn as expected,” one industry expert told The Guardian, “can they deliver good working conditions for their workers.”
It’s been more than 10 years since the deadly collapse of Bangladesh’s Rana Plaza, the world’s worst garment industry disaster. The eight-story compound in Dhaka was filled with thousands of workers when it crumbled under the weight of government neglect and worker exploitation in April 2013. More than 1,100 workers, most of them women, were killed.
In the wake of the disaster, North American brands refused to join other global companies in signing on to the Accord on Fire and Building Safety in Bangladesh. Citing high costs, they chose instead to form their own alliance for inspecting factories, one that applied lower safety standards.
It was a stark indicator of where these companies’ priorities lay—and suggests their latest comments about higher wages are just lip service.
Fast fashion is expected to more than double its market size over six years, growing from $91 billion in 2021 to a projected $185 billion by 2027. Meanwhile, the workers who fuel the profits behind that expansion are facing starvation.
This holiday season, perhaps the best gift we can give is a commitment to force the industry to pay up.
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