In defense of the sanctimonious women's studies set || First feminist blog on the internet

Yet Another Way To Get Screwed Over

zuzu

Didja know that tariffs for imported men’s clothing is lower is different by item than that for women’s clothing?

‘strue!

Take the article in The Times by Michael Barbaro that detailed the disparities in the fees levied on imported apparel. There is an 8.5 percent duty on an imported wool suit for a woman, but none for a man’s, a 10 percent duty on women’s hiking boots and an 8.5 percent levy on men’s. A vast majority of these tariffs go back to 1930, preserved in round after round of trade-liberalization talks by politicians who won exemptions for their most favored constituents. The reasons for many of them are as forgotten as the factories they were meant to protect.

Yeah, I can’t imagine how we could have forgotten any reasons why men’s clothes would have been subject to a lower different tariff than women’s clothing for the same items — particularly when that clothing has to do with economic or recreational freedom. Or, for that matter, why clothing from countries full of brown people would have to pay higher tariffs than clothing from countries full of white people:

There’s a similar effect abroad. The Progressive Policy Institute, a Democratic research group, found that the American tariff system is “uniquely tough” on poor countries in Asia and the Muslim world that produce labor-intensive goods. It said the United States imported $2.2 billion worth of goods from Cambodia last year and goods totaling $36.8 billion from France. Both paid $367 million in duties.

So good on the Times for calling this shit out. There’s no reason at all that we should be living with the tariff structure of 1930, when girls were girls and men wore hats and nigrahs the people in the colonies knew their place.

Edited because several people pointed out the original article to me, showing that the tariffs aren’t higher for women’s clothing across the board. That’s what I get for tossing off a post late at night just because I felt like I needed to post somethng. I still think that there’s no reason we should be differentiating between the two, though, and in a postcolonial world, there’s no good reason to keep higher tariffs on goods imported from developing nations than for goods from the industrial world.

Carry on.

11 thoughts on Yet Another Way To Get Screwed Over

  1. We’ll make a libertarian free-marketeer of you next week!

    It makes no sense at all for rich countries to impose tariffs on imports of anything. All it does is make things more expensive for the inhabitants of the rich countries – and guess which inhabitants of the rich countries suffer the most? yep the poor ones.

  2. Didja know that tariffs for imported men’s clothing is lower than that for women’s clothing?

    True, but not entirely accurate. According to this article, the tariff is 28% on men’s bathing suits, and only 12% on women’s, for example. I think the differences are based more on the piecemeal, and not entirely logical, nature of the tariffs, and not sexism inherent in the system.

    Also, I suspect that our higher tariffs on goods from low-wage countries are protectionist, not racist. If your goal is to protect American jobs, then you’re going to put higher import tariffs on products from countries with lower wages, so that (theoretically), there’s no net gain (or even a net loss) to importing goods instead of making them domestically.

    I’m not saying it’s right, I think it’s just the way politicians’ minds work.

    K

  3. Did you miss the orginial article?

    Men’s clothing is not uniformly tariffed lower than women’s! In the article we learn that the tariff on woven wool shirts for men (18%) is twice that for women, on woven cotton shirts for men (19.7%) is higher than for women (15.4%), on swimsuits for men (28%) is more than double that for for women (12%), and on seamed leather gloves for men (14%) is marginally higher than for women (12.6%).

    Which is not to say that the tariff system is right or correct. It’s clearly not. It’s stupid and needs to be reformed. There’s no good reason that similar clothing in market and production should be tariffed at different rates based on the sex of the intended wearer. But the situation is not the clear “women pay more than men!” set out at the beginning of this post. One’s argument is usually better when one gets the facts right.

  4. Yeah, what Ataralas said. It’s just another one of those government systems that was patched together over time and makes no sense whatsoever (kind of like the tax code).

  5. Tariffs are higher on goods from poor countries because poor countries pay much lower wages and therefore provide stiff competition to American workers. Cambodian sweatshop workers earn $45 dollars PER MONTH. The point of the tariff is to drive up the price of cheap imported goods in an effort to keep products made by American workers competitive- although the tariffs aren’t nearly high enough for that purpose and the American clothing industry has been decimated by competition from sweatshop labor in low-wage foreign countries like Cambodia and Thailand.

    France, on the other hand, has a wage and benefits scale that is HIGHER than that of the US. The minimum wage in France is over $11 an hour, and French workers get overtime for anything over 35 hours per week. French goods imported into the US are high-end luxury items that aren’t made here and that do not compete on price. Why would we want high tariffs to keep them out, when their importation doesn’t hurt American workers?

    And btw, the word “nigrah” is extraordinarily ugly. When you say something truly stupid, as this post is, and close it off with a disgusting racial slur delivered in a tone of sneering contempt, as you’ve done here, you do yourself no favors.

  7. Higher tariffs on imports from “brown people” have nothing to do with racism, and everything to do with protectionism. Wages are typically higher in “white” countries, which means goods we import from them are more expensive, with prices more in line with domestically produced items. Rent-seekers aren’t much worried about competition from expensive imports. They do, however, fear competition from cheaper foreign goods (from cheaper “brown” labor) and get the government to pass protective tariffs to protect their business while forcing consumers to pay high prices. This punishes the very poorest people in the world for the benefit of a few domestic special interests.

    Good to know your a free-trade advocate now!

  9. While this wasn’t clothes, still… it’s not just lax environmental standards but lax safety standards and inspections.

    Tell me about it. I have a cat in terminal kidney failure thanks to rice gluten imported from China.

    Need to blog about it, don’t have the heart to. He’s still hanging in, but even the vet can’t explain how.

  10. It makes no sense at all for rich countries to impose tariffs on imports of anything. All it does is make things more expensive for the inhabitants of the rich countries – and guess which inhabitants of the rich countries suffer the most? yep the poor ones.

    I disagree. I believe that free trade benefits business (lower costs, especially labour costs) and the middle and upper classes (lower prices). The poor are the ones losing their jobs to people in other countries who will work for a dollar a day. Isn’t outsourcing one of the main reasons for the rise of the McJob?

    Up here in Canada, support for tariffs comes from the left (to protect local businesses and jobs), while conservatives favor free trade.

    Are the roles reversed in the US?

    As for tariffs being racist, I think you’ve got it backwards. I’d argue that free trade exploits poor (brown) people in less developed nations, so richer (white) people can buy cheaper Nikes and Playstations.

  11. Also look into the producer side. Considering how many women were in the cut and sew business in America back in the 30s, differential tariffs might have benefited women by keeping their wages up. (Men’s clothing being more likely to be made by male tailors.)
    Does anyone remember the ILGWU’s “Look for the Union Label” campaign? Whatever happened to the Ladies who made Garments? These days, not only are union-made clothes impossible to find, US-made clothes are as well.

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