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Bangladesh's problem is not that it lacks access to the sea, but that the sea has too much access to Bangladesh: flooding from the waters of the Bay of Bengal constantly afflicts the low-lying territory. Its other geographical problem is that it is almost entirely surrounded by India, because the 2,545-mile long frontier, agreed in 1974, wrapped India around Bangladesh, leaving it only a short border with Burma as an alternative land route to the outside world.

H&M was Bangladesh's largest apparel exporter, even if the brand was in the clear, it might still be hammered by labor rights groups and consumers as a symbol of all that was wrong with offshoring:

The garment industry generates an enormous cash flow for the Bangladeshi government, and not only on a revenue level. In 2018, 10 percent of Bangladeshi parliament members owned garment factories and 30 percent had family members who were owners,

Siddiqur Rahman, president of the Bangladesh Garment Manufacturers and Exporters Association, told me. "Fifty million people depend on the garment industry. Our economy is dependent on it." The government planned to double output in five years.