U.S. Trade Representative Katherine Tai on Thursday interviewed Bayard Winthrop, founder and CEO of American Giant, about how his company built a Made in America apparel line. Plus: White House officials shared how they’re aiming to strengthen manufacturing in key sectors.
American Giant CEO Bayard Winthrop joined U.S. Trade Representative Katherine Tai at the Alliance for American Manufacturing offices in Washington on Thursday for a discussion on why making things in the United States matters — and the type of policy needed to do more of it. Heather Boushey, chief economist for Investing in America at the White House, took part in a separate panel discussion alongside Daleep Singh, deputy national security advisor at the White House.
Mark Gitenstein, U.S. Ambassador to the European Union, opened the event from his office in Belgium, delivering remarks recalling the Alabama apparel factory his father operated for 50 years that at its peak employed a thousand workers and produced 24,000 shirts a day. Beset by a changing market, it closed in the late 1980s. Gitenstein praised Ambassador Tai for “her efforts to craft a worker-centered U.S. trade policy,” and American Giant’s Winthrop “for his commitment not just to American manufacturing but to the communities that depend on American manufacturing. I grew up in one of those communities.”
Tai then served in the role of interviewer for the event, asking Winthrop about his decision to manufacture apparel in the United States at a time when so much of it had gone overseas. Winthrop explained that in previous jobs, he had to often break relationships with local manufacturers in pursuit of negligible profit margins — and wanted to see if it was possible to do things differently.
“I was thinking a lot about that. I was thinking a lot about, ‘Is that my legacy? That I’m going to chase 15 cents and break relationships with people that stood by me with a lot of stuff?” Winthrop said.
“I decided I wanted to build an apparel business that I knew I’d be proud of,” he continued. “I didn’t know if it’d be big or small or successful or not, but I knew it was a business I wanted to run, and American Giant sort of emerged out of that.”
The company certainly has found success. Along with its ever-popular hoodie, the brand has built out an American supply chain to manufacture an apparel line that includes T-shirts, pants, jeans and dresses. wasn’t an overnight endeavor, Winthrop said, but happened “company-by-company, farmer-by-farmer.”
American Giant starts with cotton grown in North Carolina. That cotton gets ginned, and is sent to a yarning plant to convert cotton to yarn, then to a knitting facility to turn it into cloth. Then, it moves onto a facility for dying and finishing, then a cut and sewing facility to be made into the final product.
A big success for the company was its introduction of an American-made flannel shirt, something that Winthrop repeatedly was told was not possible. “It mattered to me because I felt it symbolized something to me that we lost, and I wanted to get it done,” he said.
Another is a T-shirt to be sold at Walmart for $12.98. Winthrop said what makes it so important is that it shows an affordable, Made in America apparel product can be produced at scale for a major retailer.
“It takes a commitment of time and a commitment of volume, and Walmart to their enduring credit, committed to that,” he said.
While Winthrop’s company has found success in the apparel business, the Biden administration has also pursued industrial policy to grow and strengthen domestic manufacturing in critical sectors, via new laws like the CHIPS and Science Act and Inflation Reduction Act.
Boushey told Alliance for American Manufacturing President Scott Paul that a confluence of events inspired the Biden White House to pursue industrial policy, including pandemic-related supply chain shortages; the need to address climate change; and rising wealth disparities stemming from deindustrialization.
“The outcome that we’re always looking for, the point of our economic policy, is for workers to be paid a good wage, for families to thrive, for communities to thrive,” she said. “That’s the ultimate outcome we’re looking for. It flows through having competitive, viable industries in things that matter that we need to produce.”
The fallout of deindustrialization shows the private sector is ill-equipped to handle today’s economic challenges, SIngh contended, and the public sector-private sector approach to industrial policy favored by the Biden administration traces its roots all the way back to Alexander Hamilton.
At the same time, he continued, the United States and its allies must continue to respond to China’s massive industrial overcapacity, which threatens sensitive manufacturing sectors from steel and aluminum to solar and automobiles. China is clearly using that overcapacity for global leverage he said. “It’s not abstract. You can see it in the numbers,” Singh said.
Maintaining and strengthening American manufacturing is critical to our national security, Singh said.
“The more you make of something, the more creative and productive you can get,” he said.
“We can’t outsource an industry like manufacturing abroad and think we are going to have equality and prosperity in our society.”
Watch the entire program here or via the video embedded below.