nobody buys the local style because it is more expensive than the imported stuff. as a result the local style dies out, or it doesn't get a chance to be developed in the first place.
that's how you protect your local economy. that's pretty normal everywhere. in europe people go on strike if imports threaten their livelyhood. dumping cheap clothing on an economy that can't handle it is not really helping. it's going to make the local stuff even more expensive because there is less demand for it.
local development simply does not happen if outside products are allowed to dominate.
if we were talking about a part, say less than half of the market, that would be fine, but the import of cheap clothing is so massive that there is no more room for a local market.
Yes, I know this practice is commonplace. What it does is "protect" a specific industry, but that results in less choice for consumers and higher prices.
Protectionism has value when applied to strategic industries, like chip making, that you cannot afford to have cut off.
Making local garments is not a strategic industry.
P.S. Every businessman believes in the free market for everyone except his own business, which the government should protect from competition. The same for unions.
this is not about protecting businesses. this is about providing jobs for locals. many african countries are struggling with that.
providing an income for everyone is important. keeping everyone satisfied is too. not to mention not loosing your cultural identity. and if the clothing industry is able to provide jobs by keeping cheap low quality products out of the country, why would that be bad? clothing is not the biggest expense people have, so making clothing a bit more expensive is not going to hurt that much.
We have had that in Argentina for 40 years. The result? One of the most expensive countries to live in the world. The PS5 you can buy for 500 dollars in USA? it is 1000 here in Argentina. The Samsung Galaxy you pay 800 in USA? It is 1600 in Argentina. The Levi jean you pay 100? It is 250 in Argentina. Or, if you want to pay the same price for a jean, you can, but the quality will be 1/3 of the one you can buy in USA/EU.
we are not talking about banning the import of regular products, but about donated or second hand items that are sold for next to nothing, half of which is useless junk. the point is to not allow these inferior imports to undercut local products, not to make any imports more expensive than local ones. the latter happens too, and it's stupid, but just because that is bad, and we should be allowed to sell our products, that doesn't mean that we should also be allowed to dump our junk that we don't want in those countries too.
sure there may be some that can benefit from these donations, but there are others that are hurt. it's up to them to decide what they prefer. it's not up to us.
