Five years after the collapse of Rana Plaza – a disaster that killed 1133 garment workers – the Bangladesh Accord on Fire and Building Safety, a multi‐stakeholder program designed to set labour standards for the garment industry, was closed by Bangladesh’s highest court. Widely hailed as a promising example of transnational regulation, the Accord was never successfully institutionalized locally. Based on archival and ethnographic work in Bangladesh, I suggest that although the Accord successfully upgraded factory safety standards, the failure of the transnationally‐supported program to build widespread support among local employers, workers, and government led to its closure and replacement.