Stitched Into a Label
The idea of permanence lingers in “Made in U.S.A.” even when the seams come undone.
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Before my sister’s wedding last year, I ducked into a clothing store in Berkeley looking for a plain white T-shirt. The high for the special weekend was expected to be around 110 degrees, and I figured this shirt would be stained and soaked when I finished with it. Disposable, I figured.
I had a price in mind: $20, maybe $30 if they sold a multi-pack. Naive of the area I was in — a Design Within Reach across the street, an Apple Store down the block — I quickly realized this couldn’t be that kind of store. Founded on the radical-if-old-fashioned belief that American manufacturing could still matter, American Giant sources cotton from North Carolina, has its yarn milled, cut, and sewn in domestic factories, and turns it into basics built to endure. The promise: spend more now, avoid replacing it later.
Hence, the price tag: $40 for one “Made in U.S.A.” plain tee. Not ideal for someone on a budget, but the salesperson dangled a discount, and I rationalized my way into it. I tapped my card and stepped back into the heat.
The shirt survived the wedding, and a year later it still hasn’t quit — no sagging, no pilling, no collar collapse. It’s been doused in cherry ICEE, freckled with cooking oil, run through dozens of washes, and it keeps coming back strong. The shock wasn’t that it held up, but that I was shocked at all. Shouldn’t durability be the baseline?
Before the decline, American durability wasn’t aspirational. The Berry Amendment of 1941 required the military to source U.S.-made textiles, and that standard bled into civilian life. Denim from Cone Mills set the global benchmark. Levi’s were tough enough for miners yet stylish enough for export. Red Wing boots got passed down, Woolrich blankets held their place in cabins and barracks alike. “Made in U.S.A.” held a brand of quality and durability.
Then, in the 1970s, the floor gave way. As New York Times writer
Kurutz notes in American Flannel, textile mills shuttered across the Carolinas, New England, and Appalachia. Within a decade, domestic apparel collapsed from 70 percent of the market to nearly zero. Generational skills in spinning, weaving, and sewing vanished almost overnight. What replaced it was the world we know now: overseas manufacturing, cheap clothes, fast turnaround — a system built on speed and price over endurance.
What endured was the expectation. Even as the supply chain moved offshore, “Made in U.S.A.” hardened into shorthand: a myth we kept reaching for, even when reality no longer matched. Today, you glimpse that ethos in outliers like American Giant or Darn Tough Socks. More often, though, the label functions as a patriotic garnish — a mood of national strength, not a guarantee of lasting quality.
Recently, one afternoon while getting the mail, I said hello to our USPS letter carrier and heard the squeak of their blocky black shoes as they left our building. I looked down at my own sneakers — beaten, overdue for replacement — and then at theirs: regulation USPS footwear, each pair stamped with an “SR/USA” tag certifying slip resistance and American sourcing. Were these the holy grail of American manufacturing for our front-line workers — built to endure what imports are designed to burn through? Or were they just another myth stamped into leather?
Because of the Berry Amendment, postal shoes are required to be 100 percent U.S.-made and tested by the government. Often, they cost more than $200 a pair. But their reputation is underwhelming, with carriers complaining they’re heavy, stiff and overpriced.
“I’m trying to spend my allowance on some postal shoes,” one worker asked on Reddit earlier this summer. “I at least wanna have the official shoes in case. Which ones are the best value for comfort and longevity?” The top response: "A doctor’s note for plantar fasciitis and a pair of Hokas is the best way to preserve your feet.” In another thread, users share how they have a pair of regulation shoes in the car for insurance purposes, as they know that slipping in non-certified sneakers might complicate coverage for an injury.
In 2017, Government Executive reported that USPS had been approving defective footwear that sometimes disintegrated under normal use, leading to slips, falls and costly replacements for carriers. Union officials said green-tagged, regulation shoes often lasted just three months before breaking down. One veteran put it bluntly: “If the tires are no good, they’re ultimately going to damage the person. It’s not a race, it’s a marathon. You need to be able to last in this job.”
The contradiction is the same in military footwear. For decades, the military exempted sneakers from the Berry Amendment, arguing U.S.-made trainers were too expensive, too scarce and not durable enough, and gave recruits cash allowances to buy whatever brand they liked. Only recently, in 2017, Congress compelled the Pentagon to bring back American-made athletic shoes, and two years later, in 2019, the military was issuing sneakers from American producers like New Balance, Propper and San Antonio Shoemakers.
For years, “optional” pairs of combat boots could come from foreign suppliers that were cheaper, sometimes even preferred. But this summer, at the same time quality failures forced the Marine Corps to return nearly a quarter of its U.S.-produced boots, lawmakers introduced the bipartisan Better Outfitting Our Troops (BOOTs) Act to a bill designed to close a loophole in the Berry Amendment so that all combat boots be 100 percent U.S.-made.
The absurdity of BOOTs isn’t that it repeats Berry, but that it has to step in to patch a gap Berry left open. Because Berry only kicks in above $150,000, the Pentagon could skirt it on smaller contracts — exactly the kind of buys that add up fast. BOOTs tries to close that loophole, ensuring even small-dollar purchases of boots can’t slip through to foreign suppliers.
Will American manufacturers rise to meet the demand if legislation further enforces “Made in U.S.A.”? Tariffs weigh them down; skilled labor has scattered. Ingenuity isn’t the question so much as whether timing and willpower still exist.
And it’s in that gap, between what we’re capable of and what we’ve already let slip, that the paradox lives: stitched into a white tee and a pair of postal shoes. “Made in U.S.A.” has always been both a symbol of permanence and a leap of faith — something we want to believe will endure. Today it flickers between what’s earned and what’s imagined, the collar that still holds and the soles that split on the stairs.
The question isn’t whether the label survives but whether we’ll stop pretending the tag can do the work the stitching no longer does. 🤖
Correction (10.1.25): In an earlier version, I stated that the BOOTS Act “duplicates” the Berry Amendment. In fact, BOOTS is intended to close the loophole in the Berry Amendment’s $150,000 small-purchase threshold (i.e., ensuring that smaller acquisitions are also subject to Berry). Thanks to a helpful reader for catching this — nuance is important!
Such a cool perspective on an all-too-familiar catchphrase.