Tariffs could bring the end of cheap clothes

The big picture: Should the era of cheap and fast fashion start coming to an end, MAGA won't mourn its passing.

• Interestingly, neither will much of the left, which has spent decades bemoaning the social and environmental toll of cheap fashion.

Zoom out: "The infrastructure for domestic manufacturing at every level of the supply chain, from fiber through to fabric through to garments, has been methodically dismantled over the last 30 years to maintain low prices for North American customers," garment industry veteran Karuna Scheinfeld says.

• "We do not have the infrastructure anymore to vertically manufacture in North America, and we're not going to rebuild that infrastructure in the next four years."

Zoom in: While there is some apparel employment in the U.S., it tends to be found in relatively small-scale operations like Mel Gambert shirtmakers in New Jersey, or Waterbury Button Company in Connecticut.

• "I import everything except for my corrugated boxes," according to Mitch Gambert, who runs the shirt company, explaining that there's no reliable domestic production of thread, sewing machines, high-quality fabrics, or anything else he needs to buy.
• Apparel margins are thin, so any tariff-driven percentage increase in input prices would force Gambert to raise his own prices by a similar amount, he says.
• The only way for tariffs to help U.S. manufacturers would be if they were inconsistent, for instance, if the tariffs on fabrics were lower than tariffs on finished shirts. Across-the-board tariffs, such as those proposed by the Trump administration, wouldn't help.

How it works: As inflation-adjusted garment prices have dropped by roughly 50% over the past 20 years, unit consumption has roughly doubled, according to Kristy Caylor, CEO and founder of textile companies For Days and Trashie.

• That marks the legacy of fast fashion, as originally invented by H&M and Zara, and then turbocharged by Shein and Temu.

• By raising prices, tariffs might force the U.S. consumer to buy less and discard less. "Everybody could be more thoughtful and mindful," Caylor says.

The intrigue: Some items can be created by 3D printers, like the Adidas Climamog "Off White" shoe.

• Those kind of items could easily be produced in the U.S., says Phil DeSimone, chief product officer at 3D-printing company Carbon. But don't expect the new technology to create much in the way of jobs.
• "The days of having 80 people touch a pair of shoes before it hits the end of the manufacturing line are over," he says.
• "The factories that come back won't look like what we all think a factory looks like, won't have thousands of jobs."

The bottom line: Higher tariffs mean more expensive clothes. But not everyone is convinced that would be a bad thing.