Edwards follows a quarrel between two blocs of American capital over who writes the rules for Haitian garment assembly. Vertically integrated textile producers spent decades defending yarn-forward rules of origin, which grant duty-free entry only to clothing sewn from American fibre, and they wrote those rules into the Caribbean Basin trade acts. Apparel firms and large retailers organised around global supply chains wanted cheaper third-country inputs instead. The HOPE act of 2006 conceded tariff preference levels and single transformation rules, drawing furious objections from textile lobbies that Haiti would become a transshipment point for Chinese fabric; HOPE II and the 2010 HELP act went further. Reading the earthquake as the policy window through which the transnational bloc won, Edwards sets out what the winners required in return, export processing zones with tax holidays and full profit repatriation, and wages held at the floor. Haiti's place in the chain was redefined as mobile, low-wage assembly.