Cantwell's cheaper shoes are pinching
Sens. Maria Cantwell and Patty Murray have a proposal to lift tariffs from imported shoe wear, saving consumers (or shoe companies) close to $1 billion annually. But what's in it for shoemakers in sweatshops?
On the sensibility spectrum, it's hard to top a title like Sen. Maria Cantwell's "The Affordable Footwear Act." The words tumble out bourbon-smooth: affordable footwear.
The bill's name even bigfoots the evocative Barefoot Schoolboy Act of 1895, the Washington law that established school-levy equalization. Americans sympathize with suffering barefoot schoolboys, but bargain shoes? That one transcends gender, race, and all manner of hoof-related wants.
Cantwell has teamed with Senate colleague Patty Murray and Republicans Pat Roberts and Roy Blunt to craft the legislation that knocks down onerous duties on imported footwear, a legacy of 1930s-era protectionism. The Tri-City Herald reports that the bill would have saved Americans $800 million last year, presupposing shoe distributors and retailers passed the attendant savings along to consumers.
Cantwell's bill also throws light on the collapse of the nation's shoe-manufacturing sector. Duties on imported shoes affect all Americans, because almost all shoes are imported nowadays. In a global economy, spookily cheap labor and often-Dickensian working conditions in China, Vietnam, and India are a windfall for American shoppers.
And so the Cantwell bill snaps into place: Erase an outmoded, regressive tariff, and save consumers millions on the price of shoes. Could there be enemies of affordable footwear, organized opposition to something so grossly obvious?
Cantwelll's bill will pass Congress with the kind of ease that should immediately arouse suspicion in the hearts of Northwest Hobbesians. Life is solitary, poor, nasty, brutish and, well, you know. This good bill could be a great, substantive bill, one that also addresses some of the less-savory aspects of human nature.
Here's a modest proposal: Somewhere in the Affordable Footwear Act embed a human rights carrot. Duty waivers would only apply to overseas factories that meet a specific human rights or anti-sweatshop benchmark. Receive the waiver and spur additional business.
Paul Wolfe, a legislative aide for Cantwell, said that such a provision is technically possible. However, various labor and environmental standards are already codified in NAFTA and other free trade agreements. Linking tariff reform to labor and human rights could be redundant or worse, toothless and ineffective.
The potential hitches are significant. Trade acts are dense and arcane, with industry lobbyists whispering to bill scribes and bill scribes scribing away. The central question of government, qui bono? (who benefits?), would reach from Nike's Phil Knight to poor families hunting for affordable kids' shoes. The benefits would not, however, extend to drained Vietnamese sweatshop workers (nor should they, many economists would argue).
We live in the post-GATT World Trade Organization era where fiddling with tariffs is a big no-no. This bill, however, offers a rare exception. It's about eliminating, not creating a trade barrier. Lawmakers can be as innovative and nettlesome or as inspired and meretricious as they want.
There is at least one non-amending option: Sen. Cantwell and company could ape LBJ and convene a come-to-Jesus meeting with America's shoe barons. We'll do this, but you'll be expected to demand X from foreign producers. The philosophy behind a closed-door shakedown is as transactional and crude as it is simple: When you've got 'em by the, er, aglets, their hearts and minds will follow.
In the coming years, Vietnam, China, and other developing countries will reach a tipping point. Something will give, worker discontent will manifest itself politically, or universal standards will ultimately shame the shameless.
Kwame Anthony Appiah, last spring's Solomon Katz lecturer at the University of Washington and the author of The Honor Code, How Moral Revolutions Happen, posits that appealing to a nation's honor is one of the most effective catalysts for advancing human rights. Tinkering with international trade could, however, produce a Niebuhr-esque outcome, underlining American hubris and the limits of prescriptive power. Would a human rights benchmark appeal to a country's sense of national or cultural honor or would it have just the opposite effect?
In the end, a re-jiggered Affordable Footwear Act would attempt to harmonize men-are-no-angels American realism with the Judaic notion of Tikkun olam, to repair the world. Okay, yes, it's a pretentious-sounding argument. Advocates should nix any reference to Federalist No. 51 or Jewish mysticism. How about this: Cheaper shoes for fewer sweatshops?
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Comments:
Posted Fri, Jul 8, 1:46 p.m. Inappropriate
I read an earlier piece on this legislation. Full disclosure: I am a Shoe Queen; I've occasionally been called Imelda, so you'd think I'd be in full favor of cheaper shoes. However, in reading the proposal, I found the justification to be feel-good rhetoric. Regressive tax? Maybe. Typically (& put simplistically) that means a tax that imposes a higher level of taxation on poor rather than rich; this can also include a fixed tax that represents a higher percentage of income to poor than rich. However, the thing in question here is not a tax but a duty; that is, it's levied on the commodity, not the consumer. It might be assumed that this cost is included in the bottom line, but it's an important distinction: any cut could simply be absorbed into the seller's profits. As you point out here, this presupposes any savings will be passed on to consumers. (I'd bet a pair of shoes the affordability aspect will not materialize.) In my opinion, this is simply a "gimmee" to the industry- and not, as the smokescreen might suggest, a poor mother struggling to put shoes on her children; but incentiving purchases by those who have spending money. I could locate no analysis of what the ~$1.8B revenue currently funds, nor how that funding would be replaced if this duty is removed.
Lastly, let me come to the point of this article. I am all for humane workplaces in foreign countries. Believe me, I understand the sweatshop issue. But without knowing a lot more about how this duty functions, it's difficult to envision how such reforms could be meaningfully integrated into this particular legislation. Now, if we talk about whether shoes from sweatshops can be imported *AT ALL*...
Posted Fri, Jul 8, 3:33 p.m. Inappropriate
A tariff can protect a home grown industry. Since I know of only one or two USA shoe manufacturers left, I'd assume that instead of lowering the tariff it should be raised.
Last I looked the economy lost jobs both in the government and the private sector. We should be looking at ways to increase jobs here for our own citizens other wise, no matter how cheap shoes are we won't be able to buy them at all.
Posted Fri, Jul 8, 5:24 p.m. Inappropriate
There are quite a few USA manufactures of shoes remaining. Among them: Magdesians (women's shoes), SAS Shoes, Kepner Scott (children's shoes), Allen Edmonds (men's shoes, Munro and Company (women's shoes), Soft Star Shoes (women's and children's shoes) and Friedson Bros. (riding boots for both men and women.
I have a closet full of SAS and Munro shoes for my problematic, narrow feet.
Posted Fri, Jul 8, 10:41 p.m. Inappropriate
Quite a few, eh? Let's all rejoice that we can choose between sweat-shop and prison labor for our shoes. We are a nation clad and shod in adequate and mediocre vestments. I am astonished that so many accept the WTO status quo without challenging its world view: China is a brutal, Communist dictatorship, and rather than condemning its violations of human rights we as a nation aid and abet their crimes by giving them and their western investors most-favored-nation status. I look forward eagerly to a reply from those who think the republic is healthier for the glut of prison labor goods in the American economy. Character still matters, right?
Posted Fri, Jul 8, 11:07 p.m. Inappropriate
I just wonder how much longer the USA will be able to get all sorts of things from the rest of the world in exchange for dollars, which we create by the trillions out of nothing. I guess it will go on until one day it doesn't.
Posted Mon, Jul 11, 9:57 a.m. Inappropriate
Ok, so who here has complained to the good Senator? If you have time to write a comment here, you have time to let Senator Cantwell know as well.
http://cantwell.senate.gov/contact/
Posted Wed, Jul 13, 11:08 p.m. Inappropriate
She is being baught by the lobbist. If those tarrifs are removed the price of shoes will remain the same, the savings will go to the CEO/Wall Street never will make it to main street. Instead of removing tarrifs they need to do everything they can to bring the shoe manufacturing back here tarrif free. This is non sence that tarrif money could go toward the national deficeit that the children cannot afford shoes will be paying for if nothing id done now. Furthermore those children cannot afford shoes because the jobs went to China and so the parents took lower wage job at fast food joints etc. So this is the real problem. Outsource America comes poverty. By the way their is Goodwill, try buying the shoes there.
Just think when industry was triving in America in the 1960s the father of the house was the sole breadwinner and bought shoes for the whole family, now since free trade detroyed our industry it also destroyed out standard of living, both parents working and cannot earn a living thanks to tarrif free trade. This senator is an idiot. Maybe the senator jobs will be outsourced to Red China, we need to save the American tax payers money so they can buy shoes for their children. We can reduce Congrees pay from $200,000 a year to $20 per years, wow look at all the shoes that money could buy. And the congreess decisions are tarrif free.
We could replace Senator Cantwell with Senator Chang, indeed saving the tax payers money for theses overpaid, anti-American law makers, we can get a lot more anti-American lawmakers for a buck inRed China.
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