In between beef tallow fries, raw milk, and vaccine denialism, Make America Healthy Again figureheads have set their sights on another slice of life: our clothing.
“The MAHA movement doesn’t stop with what we EAT — It’s also about what we WEAR,” Secretary of Agriculture Brooke Rollins said in a post on X in late May. “For decades, America offshored textile jobs and allowed foreign synthetic, plastic-based materials to take over the clothing market.” Rollins went on Fox News to promote a new Department of Agriculture campaign dubbed “the Great American Cotton Plan,” an initiative that promises subsidies for American cotton farmers, revitalization of domestic manufacturing, more favorable trade policies with other countries, and a marketing campaign aimed at consumers that urges them to buy “plant, not plastic.” The campaign is at least partially a problem of the Trump administration’s own making: Cotton farmers themselves have said tariffs and increasing costs are making the job harder and more expensive.
The focus on cotton clothing and textiles as part of MAHA ideology is coming at an opportune time for the movement. There’s been a wave of interest in clothing made from natural fibers like cotton, wool, and linen, as opposed to synthetics like polyester that are common in fast fashion especially, but also in clothing more generally. Some brands are cashing in on growing consumer interest in natural-fiber clothing, marketing their products using imprecise and unregulated buzzwords like “non-toxic” and “clean.” And at every turn, influencers document their efforts to swap out plastics and other synthetics in their homes for “natural” alternatives. Now, led by Secretary of Health and Human Services Robert F. Kennedy Jr., MAHA is subsuming cotton as part of the official platform.
The government’s appeal to consumers to buy, wear, and use cotton products over others seems, on its face, fairly harmless — cotton clothing does feel nice. It is a versatile fabric that comes in an endless array of textures, knits, colors, weights, and prints. It’s breezy in hot weather, especially with a looser weave that isn’t skin-tight. There are some products that I will only purchase if they’re 100 percent cotton, like pajamas, graphic T-shirts, or denim. Cotton, like every fiber, has its place in our wardrobes; the MAHA evangelists and profiteers, though, rarely untangle the nuances.
One garment category that’s gotten a lot of attention in recent years is activewear, which tends to be made of synthetics for performance and comfort purposes, and is often worn close to the skin. On social media, influencers dramatically stuff their leggings, sports bras, and underwear into garbage bags, vowing to toss their clothing and replace it with cotton products. The influencer content often goes for maximum panic. (“If you want to have babies one day, throw away all your activewear,” one video begins. It’s promoting a so-called “low-tox” athletic brand.)
But some average consumers also worry about working out in petroleum-based materials, citing polyester garments shedding microplastics and the potential of their skin absorbing chemicals from their clothes. A piece from Wirecutter dealing specifically with the plastic activewear question lays out some of the complicating factors: When it comes to chemical exposures, it’s not clear what risk clothing poses compared to, say, eating or drinking. Scientists are still trying to understand what effects microplastics have on the human body, or how to best measure microplastics to begin with. Synthetic fabric and materials also do play an important role in having comfortable, durable clothing: You need elastic in the waistbands and legs of underwear, for example, or they wouldn’t stay in place. Socks made of 100 percent wool or cotton would wear out faster. Even the “low-tox” activewear brands promoted by influencers have some amount of synthetic fibers with unidentified origins in the fabrics they use — 100 percent cotton leggings won’t have the same stretch.
There’s another reality that much of the “non-toxic” and administration’s MAHA branding is glossing over: Being made from natural fibers like cotton doesn’t necessarily mean a garment is safer or chemical-free. Manufacturers will sometimes treat fabrics (including cotton) to make them more resistant to staining or wrinkling, which can lead to chemicals like formaldehyde being present in clothes. Some early research has also called into question claims that natural fibers do in fact biodegrade, as often claimed by manufacturers and brands.
The USDA’s Great American Cotton Plan has also angered some MAHA influencers, who say it’s a scheme backed by the agriculture industry to sell more pesticides — cotton is water-intensive to grow, process, and dye, and uses massive amounts of chemical pesticides and fertilizer. Their preferred course of action is to focus on organic farming, but even that comes with a caveat: Generalized organic labels are squishy, and reporting by The New York Times found evidence of fraud along the supply chain for certified organic products. In other words, it’s a mess.
One thing that’s for sure, though, is that consumer fears around what clothing is made of is great for business. There are “low tox,” “natural,” and “clean” clothing brands popping up every day, with nice-sounding but unregulated claims around safety and health with sparse details — but with plenty of products for consumers to purchase. MAHA Action, a group that says it is “committed to supporting president Donald Trump’s MAHA Agenda,” celebrated the Great American Cotton Plan on social media. True believers can fill their shopping carts in the MAHA Action online store, which is stocked with a handful of organic cotton T-shirts — and plenty of polyester, too.