The African Growth and Opportunity Act has generated many jobs in the clothing manufacturing sector, especially for women. Photo: Jenny Bussey Vaughan/Mercy Corps

Most Americans may have never heard of the African Growth and Opportunity Act, but their closets probably contain at least one article of clothing imported as part of it.

The act — AGOA, by its acronym — was passed by Congress in 2000. It’s a free-trade deal between the U.S. and a number of Sub-Saharan African nations that eliminates quotas and duties for certain goods. It allows African products to compete with those from other regions on a more level playing field on the U.S. market. 87 percent of these imports consist of petroleum and minerals, according to a report by the Council on Foreign Relations. That’s not all, though, as Florizelle Lizer, the assistant U.S. trade representative for Africa explained to the U.S. Department of State’s Bureau of International Information Programs:

The main focus of our efforts and our capacity-building assistance related to AGOA has always been to promote new nontraditional and value-added exports from Africa like apparel, footwear, processed agricultural products and manufactured goods.

This is where you’ll find AGOA’s selling point for the average Joe or Joanna in one of its member states. It’s created tens of thousands of manufacturing jobs, and many of these new employees are women. Some of the largest gains are in clothing manufacturing. For a poor, landlocked country like Lesotho, clothing exports tripled and 50,000 new jobs appeared following its entrance into AGOA, according to a report by Lawrence Edwards and Robert Lawrence. It’s also helping to empower women by providing them access to a regular income, comments Zambia News Features.

There’s a catch, though: AGOA says the materials used to make products exported to the U.S. must be manufactured in the exporting country or, at the very least, in another AGOA state. But being able to manufacture fabrics on an industrial scale is a tall order for developing nations that don’t already have that kind of infrastructure. Luckily for them, another piece was added to AGOA a few years after it debuted. It’s called the Third Country Fabric Rule, and it allows African countries to import their fabric from other parts of the world, manufacture the finished product at home, and then export it to the U.S. under AGOA.

The Third Country Rule doesn’t quite sync up with AGOA, and must be renewed more frequently. AGOA itself isn’t up for revision until 2015, while the Third Country Rule is set to expire in 2012. In May, AllAfrica reported that the U.S. had said that "its market would no longer be accepting garments whose raw materials could have been sourced from outside the exporting country." Since then, a U.S. congressman submitted a bill to extend the Rule until 2015, though an article from Forbes argues that recent U.S. actions concerning AGOA constitute a kind of "benign neglect."

Not everyone is in favor of AGOA in its current state, though. Some call it a fig leaf for the oil industry or a cap on the growth of African manufacturing. U.S. Secretary of State, Hillary Clinton, is a supporter, but in a recent speech at the AGOA forum in Zambia she pointed out some of its shortcomings, according to Procurement News. She said African governments need to work on providing greater support to manufacturers — citing the example of an American business that chose to import from Vietnam instead of an AGOA because Vietnamese government subsidies meant that the factory there could churn out products more quickly. Clinton also criticized the fact that countries "export only a handful of the 6,500 products," eligible under AGOA, while "the most common export is still a barrel of oil." Others see the Third Country Rule as actually stunting the growth of local textile industries. It might be cheaper to import from Asia in the short run, but local businesses could suffer the long-term.

But in the minds of many, allowing the rule to lapse — or even threatening to let it do so — makes investors nervous and hurts countries’ long-term prospects. Here’s hoping congressional inaction concerning your clothing’s origin won’t cost an African woman the shirt off her back.

Margo Conner is a senior at Lewis & Clark College in Portland, Oregon, majoring in international affairs. Read her other contributions to Global Envision.

Pakistan, known for its textiles, would like the freedom to sell these wares in foreign countries, not just in local shops. Photo: Benny Lin (flickr)

After environmental disasters, nations often rush to pledge relief aid. But how well-meaning are these donations? If countries were truly acting altruistically, they might also consider amending their trade policies, as Pakistani textile manufacturers argue in the Wall Street Journal.

In Pakistan, textiles are a major part of the economy. “The country's textile sector directly employs 3.5 million people, accounting for 40 percent of urban factory jobs,” writes the Journal. Overall, textile-product exports account for over half of Pakistan's total exports, so any restrictions placed on the sector have a significant impact on the entire economy.

As a result, the cost to Pakistani textile producers from U.S. barriers to trade is considerable, reports the Journal.

Abolishing American tariffs, which currently stand at an average 17 percent on cotton pants and shirts from Pakistan, would boost the nation's textile exports by $5 billion annually, government officials and factory owners estimate.

This sizable loss in income and the effect it has on the economy is integral to reforming Pakistan's economy. Neither the aid that Pakistan receives, in general, nor pledged aid in response to recent flooding, will be enough to lift Pakistan out of poverty, advocates say.

The recent flooding has profoundly impacted Pakistan and made this an opportune time to highlight grievances over the use of aid versus trade. Advocates for lowering trade tariffs are using the inflows of aid and heightened focus on rebuilding Pakistan’s soggy economy to show that most countries’ donations are inadequate.

The crux of their complaints is that the U.S and other donor nations could do far more to help countries such as Pakistan recover if they would stop restricting trade, allowing manufacturers and merchants to prosper and help the economy recover.

When put into perspective, using aid donations to signal support for development does ring a bit hollow, as these numbers cited by Global Issues demonstrate.

The total cost to developing countries of restrictions on textile imports into the developed world has been estimated to be some $50 billion a year. This is more or less equivalent to the total amount of annual development assistance provided by Northern governments to the Third World.

So, as the article continues on to say, “we take back with our left hand every cent we give with our right," a practice that has been understandably met with criticism in the developing world.

Surely the aid given to help ensure there is adequate food, water, and sanitation for flood victims doesn't go unappreciated. However, looking to the future — a necessary response to any disaster — some Pakistanis are calling on donor countries to reevaluate policy, not just pull out their pocketbooks.