Sofi Thanhauser, "Worn: A People's History of Clothing" (Vintage, 2022)
New Books in Science, Technology, and Society
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The Cold War and the American Textile Industry
After the end of World War II Japan was occupied by the Allied powers under General MacArthur. Their goal was to re-industrialize Japan as fast as possible and their priority number one became to give Japan back a textile industry. So what they did essentially was to open US markets to Japanese cotton textiles which was something that the US textile lobby strenuously objected to. But ultimately yeah that cold war concern kind of trumped everything in that moment. The loss of thousands if not millions of jobs about about a million jobs I would say that's a very rough figure but it's a huge amount of job loss that occurred.
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