Why The American Shoe Disappeared And Why It's So Hard To Bring It Back
Footwear companies face big costs in potential new tariffs on more Chinese imports. Almost all shoes sold in the U.S. are made overseas. Only about 200 factories remain. One man tried to change that.
Updated at 11:04 a.m. ET
For Douglas Clark, the darkest part of working for Nike in the 1980s was watching American shoe manufacturing "evaporate" in the Northeast in a mass exodus to Asia in pursuit of cheaper labor.
"As a true Yankee — and my father was a Colonial historian — you know, it was heartbreaking," he said.
Clark would go on to a long career in footwear, at Converse, Reebok, Timberland, then his own line of shoes at New England Footwear. And there, he would devote eight years to one mission: creating a model to make shoemaking in America profitable again.
This was a tall order. At a time when President Trump speaks of rebuilding
