Travels of a T-Shirt Parts 1 and 2

 Part 1 of the book opens with an interesting discussion establishing the United States as the cotton producing superpower of the world. This is mainly because the cotton producers receive vast subsidies from the American government, some even bigger than the entire GDP of smaller cotton producing nations such as Benin. This point is important because it establishes the beginning of the scale of this network that goes into making a t-shirt. It is also important because it demonstrates the inequalities between countries at the global scale. Smaller nations like Benin are outspoken critics of the US getting massive subsidies because it takes away their ability to compete. However, nothing changes because the US has so much power in determining the regulations. The advent of slavery in the United States allowed them to supersede other nations as Britain's top cotton supplier in the mid-1800s. The book also discusses that the US had a much higher incentive to become the dominant producer of cotton, which is also why they stayed on top as the cotton industry began to focus more heavily on mechanization and automation. 

There was a section about GM cotton that really stood out to me, and I think an analogy can be drawn from it. it discussed how Monsanto created GM cotton that could withstand their powerful herbicide. Over time, they needed to keep coming out with new cotton and new herbicides, creating an endless cycle and forcing farmers to impose new regulations to meet the criteria for their products. The analogy I'm drawing here is once again to the relationship between large and small nation at the global economic level. Monsanto created a problem so they could profit from selling the solution, just like the big nations who profit from small nations' resources in the globalizing world. Another important point is that the access to these new and constantly improving herbicides and fertilizers is primarily restricted to developed nations, which creates even more reliability and feeds into the power dynamic.

Part 2 of the book focuses heavily on the next step of creating the t-shirt: spinning the cotton into threads and creating textiles. The significant issue in the section has to do with employment and labor, and its relationship with the greater processes. Much of the labor used in textile mills in China and the rest of Asia is done through women, and it is almost always out of need rather than a free choice to work. This created a business strategy where mills could afford to pay very little for labor since these needy people would work regardless of whether they were actually paid fairly for their work. During this time period China's economy skyrocketed with the growth of the textile industry, which established a cycle of overall advantage compared with smaller-scale labor disadvantages. It also established a global cycle where the US relies on China for its cheap labor and China relies on the US for its supply of cotton to drive the economy.