Tom Brady, You Are No Patriot, and I Ain’t Talking Football

POST-GAZETTE - Res Publica
Tom Brady, You Are No Patriot, and I Ain’t Talking Football

by David Trumbull -- January 21, 2022

Tom Brady has launched a new athletic clothing brand, but if you thought that might mean new jobs for American textile and apparel workers, your hopes are about to get deflated.

According to his website (which I will not name, lest I give him free publicity), "We currently make our goods between New York, Mexico, Portugal, Lithuania, Vietnam, and China." As far as any products made in New York, it is impossible to tell from his website, because, in the case of individual articles, they all lack the federally mandated disclosure of whether they are domestic or imported. Given the current interest in America-made goods, it is fair to assume that were they made in America, he'd be highlighting that. So, it looks like little, if any is actually made in New York State. The site is also not in compliance with fiber content labeling law.

It's not like these articles cannot be made in the U.S. It's athletic wear, of the same sort the U.S. Department of Defense acquires for our warfighters -- and does so using 100% American-made sourcing. Using publicly available sources I confirmed that the U.S. Department of Defense, in one year alone, 2021, acquired similar garments made in Alabama, California, Florida, Georgia, Michigan, Mississippi, New York, Tennessee, Texas, and Puerto Rico (several manufacturers). Furthermore, nearly all, if not all, states have sheltered workshops for the blind or otherwise disabled that provide these articles. Even here in Massachusetts JA Apparel Corp, New Bedford, gets military contracts for apparel comparable to some of the Brady line.

And at his prices -- $75 for a T-Shirt and $175 for a hoodie – he certainly cannot claim that living wages paid to Americans have forced him to go off-shore. This is pure greed, and disregard for American workers, and in the cases of China and Vietnam, disregard for the rights of the workers in other nations.

According to Human Rights Watch:

"Vietnam’s human rights record remains dire in all areas. The Communist Party maintains a monopoly on political power and allows no challenge to its leadership. Basic rights, including freedom of speech, opinion, press, association, and religion, are restricted. Rights activists and bloggers face harassment, intimidation, physical assault, and imprisonment. … workers are not allowed to form independent unions. The police use torture and beatings to extract confessions. The criminal justice system lacks independence."

The same group ways of China:

"China’s one-party authoritarian state under the Chinese Communist Party systemically curbs fundamental rights. Under President Xi Jinping, in power since 2013, the government has deepened repression at home and sought to muzzle critics abroad. It has arbitrarily detained human rights defenders and lawyers, tightened control over civil society, media, and the internet, and deployed invasive mass surveillance technology. The government imposes particularly heavy-handed control in the ethnic minority regions of Xinjiang and Tibet. The government’s cultural persecution and arbitrary detention of a million Uyghurs and other Turkic Muslims since 2017 constitute crimes against humanity."

Brady is not the only celebrity athlete who needs to be called out. Several American professional ball players refuse to stand for the American National Anthem, because 150 years ago we tolerated slavery, yet they have multi-million-dollar promotional contracts with sneaker companies that use slave labor in the Xinjiang Region of China. I guess slavery is bad only when someone else is benefitting from it.

Few are those in professional sports who will speak up about the human rights abuses in the factories where athletic wear is produced. One of those few is Boston Celtics player Enes Kanter, who has repeatedly excoriated both the NBA and Nike for not standing up to China over human rights abuses being perpetrated by the communist country. (See https://www.foxnews.com/media/enes-kanter-excoriates-nba-nike-china-hypocrite-companies)

You and I don't have the platform that Enes Kanter has to call out the bad actors among apparel and footwear brands, but we have one thing -- we have our wallets. Buying sneakers? Take a look at Massachusetts-based New Balance -- they make sneakers in factories in Massachusetts and Maine.

Tom Brady has abandoned New England and has abandoned American workers, but YOU can be a PATRIOT. Look for the Made in U.S.A. label when you shop for apparel, textile articles, and footwear. Next month I’ll give you some examples of everyday articles you can buy that provide manufacturing jobs for Americans.