Fibers and Fabrics

God forbid, protect your own industry it needs protecting. I realise that mass production at cheap prices means that a lot of goods are outsourced, but we are suppoting economies that exploit the worker and make a lot of people very rich. The economy there is a lot like the economy in the UK during victorian times at the industrial revolution. There has yet to be a cultural and social revolution where people are not exploited, this should not be the case, level the playing field for all and then see which economy is actually cheaper.

If the playing field of global trade is to be leveled for all, then all should play by the same rules, which, of course, they don't. If China, India, Turkey, Vietnam, etc. have policies that support and promote their textile industries, then the U.S. should stop playing the fool and support not only textiles, but all of its manufacturing industries, just like we're doing for the U.S. automakers.

OK. Go ahead and protect all your industries and very soon there will be nothing left for you to protect. Being an American you of course wouldn't know this, but your biggest supplier of oil is Canada. Yes it is Canada by a wide margin, not Saudi Arabia. Check it out.

So if you escalate blocking Canadian products at your border (some blocking of Canadian products is already happening) we will have to do something about it - ship our oil to some one who has told us they really want it and isn't blocking our products at all - China and/or India.

Our national railway (CNR) has developed a way to transport bulk oil by rail car at about the same cost and quantity as by pipeline. We have main rail lines going to our west cost sea ports which are already set up to serve oil tankers. So it would take about a week to cut off Canadian oil shipments to the US and start shipping our oil to Asia.

Some Canadians would love to see this happen but most (including me) would not. However, most would support it if the US escalates it's protectionism as you are wanting to do.

Dear Guest,

I applaud your protectionism of Canada, I am based in the UK and can now only wish that our government had had the foresight to protect its industries. I happen to hold Canada in some esteem because you have the healthiest economy in the world at present! There are many reasons for this, but maintaining your industry is one of them.

I would seriously doubt that the US would cut off the oil from Canada, and that isn't what we are talking about. If the US were to allow its industry to fail, then there would be mass unemployment on a scale not seen since the 1930's Nowadays the Chinese economy is on the rise and there is a tendency to think that they can manufacture anything, this is not the case. The far eastern economy seems to think it can manufacture anything, but usually makes a pigs ear of it in the end. From a textiles perspective, I am constantly asked questions by retailers and suppliers on how to dye a product or how to fix what has been done. I always advocate the simple principle that if you don't know what you are doing before you start, then don't start! But the far eastern economy simply demands that it will be done, no matter how badly.

As previously stated, I actually applaud Canada for how it has dealt with the global recession, I also applaud Canadian attitudes to textiles which tends towards paying for a quality product rather than a cheap one. Should textile protectionism happen, yes, why? Because these are simple skills that have been built up over the years with a wealth of local knowledge, what does a company many thousands of miles away understand about your matket? What hope does an innovator have if they outsource their process to a country with little or no laws about copyright or intellectual property theft? The other question is for the world at general, if outsourcing has reduced costs, why is it that high end textiles are more expensive year on year? I will use waterproof jackets as an example, the likes of Gore Tex fabrics are manufactured in China and shipped all over the world, why is it that they still retail at more than the cost of when they were manufactured in EU, American or even Canadian factories?

Just a thought

Again, I cannot agree more, well said