Rachel Slade’s ‘Making It in America’ calls for a manufacturing revival

The basic argument of the journalist Rachel Slade’s new book, “Making It in America,” is that this should change. Since the North American Free Trade Agreement, or NAFTA, was implemented under President Bill Clinton in 1994, more than 60,000 U.S. manufacturers have permanently closed, eliminating millions of jobs. Offshoring of production to Asia in many sectors has only accelerated these trends. Even when workers can find new jobs, those positions tend to be less desirable. From 2001 to 2003, the average manufacturing worker who became reemployed in the service industry experienced a 20 percent drop in income, from $40,154 to $32,153.

American workers are not the only ones affected. Lax labor laws and safety standards in countries around the world make the workers producing goods for major brands vulnerable to wage theft, gender-based violence, and health and safety violations. Considering the effects on the natural world only darkens the picture. Transporting hundreds of millions of tons of cheap goods around the globe creates an enormous carbon footprint, and the disposal of these items drives pollution and environmental collapse. Americans discard more than 1.5 billion pounds of clothing each year, and much of this ends up in sub-Saharan Africa, contaminating water supplies with petroleum-based yarn and chemical dyes. The obvious dangers of relying on foreign countries to produce essential computing components and medical supplies only strengthen the case for a renaissance of U.S. manufacturing.

So how hard would it be to start producing more things in America again, with unionized and well-paid workers, using American-sourced materials? Much of Slade’s book is an answer to this question in narrative form. She tells the story of Ben and Whitney Waxman, an idealistic couple in Maine who launched an apparel company called American Roots almost a decade ago with exactly that goal. It’s not a spoiler to reveal that they find the task incredibly challenging but possible, if barely.

Ben Waxman grew up in Portland, Maine, where his parents ran a business making wool capes. Long an epicenter of textile production in America, Maine experienced the same post-NAFTA decline in manufacturing as the rest of the country, and his parents’ operation closed in 2002. Ben worked for years as a union organizer in his youth, traversing the country and trying, often unsuccessfully, to help preserve the jobs and benefits of Americans who did things like process sugar beets, assemble cars and manufacture refrigerators. Slade narrates this backstory in the first part of the book, so that by the time we see the couple found American Roots in 2014, the depth of their motivation is clear: The decline of American manufacturing is not just a talking point — it’s personal.

Ben’s extensive union contacts provide the fledgling apparel manufacturer with some crucial clients that place large orders for gear their union members can wear. These symbiotic relationships have an irresistible symbolism: America’s unions supporting a unionized workforce manufacturing vests and sweatshirts in America, using cotton and other materials sourced here. But finding drawstrings, zippers, grommets and cotton fleece made in America is no easy task. Slade’s chronicle of the couple’s efforts to secure these supplies doubles as a tour of the decimated state of domestic manufacturing. One zipper maker in Los Angeles says his clients are loyal — until they’re bought out by private equity and forced by new management to find cheaper prices from foreign suppliers.

It’s impossible not to root for the Waxmans as they work extraordinary hours and remain steadfast in their commitment to pay their unionized workers well. In 2022, the average worker at American Roots made $47,000 in annual salary, with generous benefits that included three weeks of paid vacation, holidays and sick days. The prices of the company’s hoodies — they range from $101 to $120 — reflect this decent treatment of workers. It’s normal for businesses that don’t prioritize cost-cutting at the expense of workers to have higher prices.

What’s strange are policies and regulations that perpetuate the disastrous status quo under the mantra of “free markets.” All markets require some regulations and rules to function — the question is always what those rules should be and whom they will benefit. A more reasonable system of tariffs, subsidies and regulation could reward American businesses for manufacturing domestically and treating unionized workers well. Such policies could help lower prices for consumers, but they could also have crucial political repercussions, as Slade persuasively argues, by quelling the rage and disaffection felt by millions of Americans whose jobs were sent overseas at the behest of wealthy corporations and their shareholders.

Slade’s book gives a granular sense of just how hard it is for business owners, particularly those in manufacturing, to do the right thing by their workers in America today. It also conveys just how meaningful and rewarding building a truly ethical business can be, for owners and workers alike. Though the narrative wanders too often into digressions — like a numbered list of the 13 steps in just one phase of the construction of a hoodie — its broader political resonance is potent and timely.

In a possible future America with the capacity to manufacture much more of the hundreds of millions of tons of goods we currently import, there would still be strong ecological reasons to decrease our consumption of so much stuff. But these goals are not necessarily in tension. It’s vital both to consume less and to make more of what we do consume.

Nick Romeo teaches in the Graduate School of Journalism at the University of California at Berkeley. His new book, “The Alternative: How to Build a Just Economy,” will be published in January.

The Almost Impossible Quest to Manufacture in the U.S.A. (and How It Got That Way)