Originally Posted by Patti Mahoney
If we grow all of this cotton, why can't we get fabric made from that very cotton this country is growing???
I hear the majority of our fabric comes from somewhere else, like China???? Is that true?
Asia and Southeast Asia, yes.
The US has never had a tradition of high quality cotton weaving; we've always mostly exported our cotton crop to other countries to be turned into fabric, which we then buy.
For many reasons, it is very difficult to start a manufacturing process in an area which has no tradition of that type of manufacturing. For a different example, think how difficult it is to start building cars in a country that has never manufactured them. You'd think that the new country could just import the knowledge and start right up making a high quality car but that's not what happens. The first decades of car building tend to be very low end, low quality cars. Over time, with a lot of work and more than a little luck, the quality of the cars improves until they are finally competitive in a higher priced market.
Europe has had a tradition of fine textile manufacturing, Southeast Asia (including India) does, Asia does... but not the US. We have never produced better than so-so quality cotton textiles.
With the ease of global transport, it's just cheaper to import high quality cotton textiles than it is to try to produce them here, where we have no tradition to rely on.