Fraying Fabric

How Trade Policy and Industrial Decline Transformed America

James C. Benton

• Publisher: University of Illinois Press
• Year: 2022
• ISBN:
  9780252053665
• Topic: Politique et relations internationales
• Subtopic: Politique

The decline of the U.S. textile and apparel industries between the 1940s and 1970s helped lay the groundwork for the twenty-first century's potent economic populism in America. James C. Benton looks at how shortsighted trade and economic policy by labor, business, and government undermined an employment sector that once employed millions and supported countless communities. Starting in the 1930s, Benton examines how the New Deal combined promoting trade with weakening worker rights. He then moves to the ineffective attempts to aid textile and apparel workers even as imports surged, the 1974 pivot by policymakers and big business to institute lowered trade barriers, and the deindustrialization and economic devastation that followed. Throughout, Benton provides the often-overlooked views of workers, executives, and federal officials who instituted the United States' policy framework in the 1930s and guided it through the ensuing decades. Compelling and comprehensive, Fraying Fabric explains what happened to textile and apparel manufacturing and how it played a role in today's politics of anger.

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Contents
• Acknowledgments
• List of Abbreviations
• Introduction
• 1. From Free Trade to Populism: How Did We Get Here? 1974–2016
• 2. Clashing Aims: The New Deal, Labor, and Tariff Reform, 1933–45
• 3. New Challenges: Labor’s Limits, International Recovery, and Industrial Decline, 1945–60
• 4. New Domestic and International Frontiers: John F. Kennedy, Labor, and Trade, 1961–63
• 5. Winds of Change: Trade Deals, Rising Imports, and Shifting Political Alliances, 1964–69
• 6. Fighting to Win: Organized Labor and the Battle to Shape Trade Policy, 1969–70
• 7. Labor Strikes Out: The Mills Bill, Burke-Hartke, and the Trade Act of 1974
• Epilogue: Where Do We Go from Here?
• Notes
• Bibliography
• Index
• About the Author
• Back Cover