00:00And now it's going to the Supreme Court. Now we're going to be asking for early admittance.
00:05The White House has vowed to fight an appeals court ruling that found President Donald Trump does not have the power to impose his latest tariff campaign.
00:14Apparel and textiles have been subject to tariffs for decades.
00:17If the latest are reinstated, can Americans find relief in the form of gently used clothing?
00:22In 1930, the Republican-controlled House of Representatives, in an effort to alleviate the effects of the anyone, anyone, the Great Depression, passed the anyone, anyone, a tariff bill, the Hawley-Smoot Tariff Act.
00:45The Smoot-Hawley Tariff Act of 1930 increased levies on foreign-made goods imported into the U.S. by roughly 20 percent.
00:54In the nearly 100 years since, the American Apparel and Footwear Association says the fashion industry accounted for just 5 percent of imports by volume, but faced more than 25 percent of tariffs imposed through trade policy.
01:07We've paid them, just to be very clear.
01:10My name is Steve Lamar.
01:11I'm the president and CEO of the American Apparel and Footwear Association.
01:16We still have these very high tariff rates, and we're the most heavily tariff sector in the U.S. economy still.
01:22In the years that followed Smoot-Hawley, Lamar says many industries were able to reduce their tariff burden, but not the fashion industry.
01:30We still largely pay the same high tariffs that existed back in 1930.
01:37The appeals court is allowing the tariffs to stay in effect until at least October 14th, while the White House fights it out in court.
01:45The Budget Lab at Yale says the effective tariff rate, or the actual average duty paid on all imports, for August was roughly 11.5 percent.
01:55That's considerably lower than the statutory rate, or rate established by law, which was set at 18.2 percent in August, according to Yale.
02:03That statutory rate is the highest since 1935.
02:07When it comes specifically to clothing in the short term, Americans will pay 39 percent more for leather products, 37 percent more for apparel, and 21 percent for textiles.
02:19In the long run, they will adjust to 19, 18, and 11 percent higher, respectively.
02:25But avoiding tariffs on clothing is harder than checking tags.
02:303 percent of what's in your closet was made in the United States.
02:3397 percent was made somewhere else, in another country, and imported into the United States.
02:39Lamar says some products may be labeled made in USA, but have inputs from somewhere else.
02:45The opposite is also true when items made in other countries contain American content, like fabrics or yarns.
02:52But the president's goal isn't making America a textile heavyweight.
02:56We're not looking to make sneakers and t-shirts.
02:59We want to make military equipment.
03:02We want to make big things.
03:03While tariffs are up in the air for now, in August, the Trump administration officially ended a trade exemption that allowed more than $60 billion in goods to enter the country without facing levies for 2024.
03:15So the de minimis loophole is essentially been a longstanding part of our trade policy in the United States.
03:23And this helps, you know, the small manufacturers, producers of items import anything under $800 per package into the United States, duty and tariff free.
03:36My name is Alon Rotem.
03:38I'm the chief strategy officer at ThredUP, and I help manage our resale as a service programs.
03:44When that loophole was closed, we really think that that help is going to help level the playing field between domestic resale, like what we do at ThredUP, and fast fashion, and really help, you know, comparatively improve the domestic offering.
04:02In recent years, fast fashion brands like Zara, H&M, and Shein have offered inexpensive options for people hoping to stay on trend.
04:10Fast fashion means that new, albeit fairly disposable clothing is nearly as cheap as some secondhand clothing.
04:20My name is Dr. Jennifer Lizotte, and I am an associate professor of history and material culture at the University of North Carolina, Wilmington.
04:28And the price differential between what I could get at thrift stores in the 90s and how much stuff costs, even at Kmart, was much bigger than it is between, you know, Shein and the Salvation Army today.
04:43Fast fashion has been the subject of criticism.
04:46In March, U.N. Secretary General Antonio Guterres highlighted the impact of fast fashion during his remarks on the International Day of Zero Waste.
04:55According to a survey from YouGov, Millennials and Gen Z are gradually becoming more aware of the concerns with fast fashion's impact on the environment.
05:05The closure of the de minimis exemption is expected to make products from the likes of Shein and Taimou more expensive moving forward.
05:13And that opens the door for a booming secondhand market, which is expected to reach $367 billion by 2029.
05:22Now we're seeing tariffs, you know, sort of change, change supply chains and really shift prices.
05:30And so secondhand clothing has really been like a great place to find value.
05:35Those types of shifts have been important throughout the history of the secondhand market.
05:40Lazat, who wrote From Goodwill to Grunge, A History of Secondhand Styles and Alternative Economies, explained it took the prevalence of mass production at the end of the 19th century for there to be enough goods to support a secondhand market.
05:54Prior to that, if something got stained or worn out, you would remake it or even use the scraps to stuff a pillow.
06:00According to YouGov, Americans are pretty split on their preference for buying secondhand versus new, but owning and showing off pre-loved clothing hasn't always been in vogue.
06:11Places like Goodwill and Salvation Army rebranded that because in the 19th century, used clothing especially was really the province of peripatetic Jewish salespeople.
06:24And so anti-Semitism discouraged other Americans from really exploring that avenue.
06:31But Salvation Army obviously Christianized that and also sanitized it, talked about we wash all these things.
06:37This is a great way to, you know, shop if you don't have enough money.
06:42One of the things we've been working on at ThredUP over, you know, the 15 years we've been around is really helping to de-stigmatize secondhand and making that sort of a normal part of the shopping experience.
06:55Shortly after the turn of the 20th century, thrifting took off as a hobby.
07:00But through the 1930s, there was still an issue keeping stores like Salvation Army and Goodwill stocked.
07:06At the time, Lazat says they made their money by recycling paper products.
07:11There's evidence as early as like 1906 that people were doing it kind of recreationally.
07:17Post-World War II is really when it takes off.
07:20And part of that has to do with you get this change in the technology related to clothing.
07:24While she says it's hard to quantify the impact Smoot-Hawley had on secondhand markets, as it was somewhat of a gray market, economic conditions and the state of the country definitely affect the market for previously worn goods.
07:37In the 1970s, you see other economic downturns, you know, as part of the United States losing its global primacy in a lot of main sectors of production.
07:50And here, you definitely see people shopping secondhand out of necessity, but with a twinned political purpose, right?
08:00Like saying, you know, I'm kind of mad at the government.
08:02There's the context of the Vietnam War, too.
08:04So it's rebellious and practical at the same time.
08:08As young people searched out individuality through the way they dressed, secondhand became more fashionable.
08:13But the interesting thing to me is that every generation of young people kind of rediscovers secondhand shopping, right?
08:20In whatever mode, wherever it's found, whatever model, whether it's online or at a thrift store up the street.
08:27And I think that there's a big sort of identity crafting phase in young adulthood.
08:32As secondhand shopping increases in popularity, Rotem says the sheer number of marketplaces make it easier than ever to get previously worn goods.
08:41But both he and Lazat know it can be harder to find unique statement pieces at a good price.
08:47I'm Kennedy Felton with Straight Arrow News.
08:49For more on the state of the secondhand market and even how it affects sneaker culture, head to san.com or the Straight Arrow News app and search thrift.
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