The Regional Dynamics of Global Trade: Asian, American, and European Models of Apparel Sourcing

East Asia's export industries have become increasingly diversified, internationalized, and regionally integrated. The world textile and apparel industry has undergone several migrations of production since the 1950s and they all involve Asia. The first migration of the industry took place from North America and Western Europe to Japan in the 1950s and early 1960s, when Western textile and clothing production was displaced by a sharp rise in imports from Japan. Neoclassical economics has the simplest prediction: The most labor-intensive segments of the apparel commodity chain should be located in countries with the lowest wages. The East Asian newly industrializing economies (NIEs) are generally taken as the archetype for industrial upgrading among developing countries. The East Asian NIEs play significant intermediary roles in both types of industries, as information brokers and producers of intermediate inputs in buyer-driven chains and as direct manufacturers of assorted inputs and low-cost finished goods in producer-driven chains.