[nradov]

It's never going to be economically viable for most poor countries to develop local clothing industries. Even without imports of used clothing the economies of scale in that industry are just brutal. Poor countries that want to protect local industry can impose import tariffs, but in most cases they would be better off with unrestricted free trade.

[LawTalkingGuy]

They already had local clothing industries - people in poor countries weren't walking around naked until the mid 80s when container-shipping meant offshoring trash became cheap.

If this issue was isolated to shoes, and those were technically unavailable for local manufacture, then you'd probably be right. But these practices destroy all industry, leaving the people without any manufacturing base or value creation outside of cultural artifacts, and tends to keep the poor countries poor.

[nradov]

Most of those countries had craft clothing production, hardly anything that could be legitimately called an industry.

You haven't proposed a viable alternative. Should developed countries voluntarily stop exporting used clothing? Would that actually make people in poor countries better off?

[LawTalkingGuy]

> You haven't proposed a viable alternative.

I was explaining the problem and now not solving it is my fault.

> Should developed countries voluntarily stop exporting used clothing? Would that actually make people in poor countries better off?

Yeah, that's what the developing country said in this instance. They passed their own laws to prevent import.

And the charity promised to use the shoes for an experiment in recycling which would have brought knowledge benefits at least even if not producing a superior product. They clearly defrauded their donors regardless of Indonesian trade policies.

[Ekaros]

Why don't developed countries reuse the clothing there? Save the shipping. Maybe force the stores also to sell second-hand clothes with new clothes.

[nradov]

Government can't reasonably force stores to sell particular products. Most don't even have space for that. And outside of a few fashion items, used clothes have almost no value in developed countries anymore. They can barely be given away. Many are simply shredded for use as rags.