From the 90's, the American
government had a direct involvement in the textile industry through its
economic policies. Because of the tendency of the high standard of living of
the American citizen, salaries were extremely higher than any other emerging
country in the textile industry. This is the main reason the United States
began to close the major part of the textile industry, including the fact that
they could not compete with foreign industries.
The
problem is when the government intervenes in this field. However, the fault is
not only the government´s, but also the executives´. Some ask for more
government policies for some reasons: they want total guarantee so their
business will succeed and others because they want more relief or benefits from
the government when competing with other businesses. So, the government took
advantage of this request and brought some regulations to order to have control
on this industry. Unfortunately these regulations caused many disadvantages.
For example, the government limits competition between textile businesses,
which leads those national companies to lose the competition against foreign
companies. For starters, in the United States the labor costs, raw material
costs are higher, and more efficient machinery are limited due to the great
high standard of living a government provides to an American. That´s why it´s
so hard for an American firm to be successful, since they don´t have enough utility
nor a decent gain from the production of materials and services.
It´s just inconvenient for Americans
to pay high wages that the government requires. And the worse thing, it´s to
know that the money from these paid wages by the Americans are being used by
the government to reduce the raw material costs of foreign businesses, where
the foreign firms end up winning competition.
Another regulation is the antitrust
laws. They don´t let textile companies to improve their methods of producing
nor creating new products. The failure of these companies are also because foreign
textile firms are free to buy cotton in any market at a lower price than an
American firm does.
In conclusion, the government role
can affect dramatically the whole future of the textile industry in a country.
Its regulations are established in order to benefit citizens but it also can
cause huge problems to the companies, like a total failure in this field. So,
notably it is better for this industry not to have too much involvement from
the government. It would be beneficial for the executives to have a free
enterprise in order to have total freedom when producing a good or service and
selling it to gain as much as possible. In other words, a country working based
on the term laissez faire would be the best choice because it´s when
businessmen are totally free to create wealth and to improve the growth of
their business.