The men and women representing Team USA in this year’s Summer Olympics may have been born, raised and trained in America, but as for their stylish Ralph Lauren uniforms, those were made entirely in China.
On Capitol Hill, the revelation drew the ire of Democrats and Republicans alike. “For too long, we’ve seen American manufacturing jobs—including textile and apparel jobs—shipped overseas due to unfair trade that has stacked the deck against American workers,” says Sen. Sherrod Brown, D-OH, a longtime advocate of U.S. manufacturing. “The textile sector employs more than half a million workers in the United States—which is why the federal government should be purchasing, whenever possible, apparel that is domestically produced. With our widening trade deficit, we should be doing everything we can to support American manufacturing and job creation.”