Global Shift: Trade and the Disappearing US Textile and Apparel Industry

Speaker: James C. Benton

Over the past half-century, one of America's oldest industries -- textiles and apparel -- has seen a near-total collapse, commensurate with the rapid rise of global trade in this sector. Thanks to global trade, deindustrialization, and automation, current employment in the domestic industry is less than one-tenth of its high levels in the 1970s. Drawing from his award-winning work, Fraying Fabric: How Trade Policy and Industrial Decline Transformed America (University of Illinois Press, 2022), historian James Benton (Georgetown University) will explain the root causes behind this industry's disappearance, which has contributed significantly to the national political and economic shifts of the last 50 years. The discussion will include examples of contemporary efforts to sustain this historic industry, even as it faces new threats of disruption from tariffs and global "fast fashion" sellers like Temu and Shein.

James C. Benton is director of the Race and Economic Empowerment Project at the Kalmanovitz Initiative for Labor and the Working Poor at Georgetown University. This position links KI and Georgetown students with community activists and organizations combating inequality in Washington, D.C. His community work includes serving on the board of directors of DC Jobs with Justice.

He is a co-designer of Creating an Equitable City, a series of experiential learning courses taught at Georgetown’s Capitol Applied Learning Lab focusing on inequality in Washington. He is also the author of Fraying Fabric, which traces U.S. trade policy and political shifts in the postwar era amid the decline of the American textile and apparel industries.

Dr. Benton earned doctoral and MA degrees in U.S. history and an MA in liberal studies from Georgetown University. He also holds a BA in journalism and mass communication from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

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