In Issue 24 of the CCRM, among the many excellent articles, I have just read an article by Enrika Naujoke about sustainable clothing.

I fear that all the time clothing is so cheap it’s going to be seen as a disposable item. Also, there is another factor at play, that being social media. The reality is that the social media driven world many choose to participate in, I suspect has a significant impact on the need to be seen in different clothing when constantly photographing oneself having a wonderful time.

Although the encouragement of used clothing websites liked Pre-Loved and Vinted is all well and good, in practice of course the products have to be even cheaper than new products in order to sell. There are very few who only buy from such sites on environmental principals. So, even cheaper clothing creates an even greater ability to throw them away.

The modern culture of disposable clothing is not about to change; therefore the immediate conclusion is to influence the price in relation to earnings. Of course, governments are more than sensitive to anything that increases inflation, and any significant additional tariffs on clothing entering the EU is going to have an impact on inflation, such is the volume of imports.

So how does the EU increase the price of clothing to ensure more consumers can no longer afford to teat clothing as a throwaway item, while also adding value instead of just costs to the EU economy? I would suggest, alongside tiered tariff levels linked to valuation and commodity codes, there might be a zero tariff on the materials imported from which clothing is made. So, while increased tariffs on imported clothing would increase inflation, zero tariff rated material imports would encouraging increased EU production, increase investment in the EU, create jobs, lessen social support demands, and increase tax revenues from both employers and employees.

The increased costs of EU production could also be partially offset by a reduction in the VAT added on EU origin goods, given the actual earnings from VAT would naturally increase on higher priced goods.

So, to conclude, if the EU is going to reduce the environmental impact of what is unnecessarily cheap clothing, in the process of adding to inflation, it has the opportunity to add value to its members social and economic structures. It would be interesting to run the numbers, not that numbers show all the pros and cons.