The shirt on your back probably had an exotic life before it reached you. Say you bought it in America and the label said it was "Made in Sri Lanka". It may well have been made from Chinese fabric, woven from Chinese yarn, spun from Chinese cotton or man-made fibre. Why, you may wonder, was your shirt not actually cut and sewn in China? We know they have scissors and sewing machines there and millions of nimble-fingered operators. After all, many of the other shirts on the shop hangers were indeed made in China. The question is being asked with increasing urgency in China, too, as well as in Sri Lanka, Bangladesh, Nepal, Cambodia, El Salvador, Honduras and more than 40 other countries with thriving clothing industries based on exports. They are bracing for the scheduled elimination, at the end of this year, of quotas that have governed their exports to the world's two biggest markets: America and the European Union. The quotas have restrained some countries' exports, but in others have created an export industry that might not otherwise have existed.
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