Textile groups seek import protection
By Susan M. Andrews -- Furniture Today, July 28, 2003
Washington — A coalition of 14 textile trade associations last week filed petitions with the federal government seeking protection from Chinese imports in four areas: knit fabric, cotton and manmade fiber gloves, cotton and manmade fiber dressing gowns and robes, and cotton and manmade fiber brassieres.
Several members of Congress backed the group's efforts to invoke the "China safeguard," which under trade laws may be implemented if imports are deemed to disrupt and threaten the U.S. market.
"If the U.S. government does not send a message by approving these actions, massive layoffs will actually begin occurring sometime in mid-2004 due to the nature of ordering cycles from China," said Billy Moore, chairman of the American Textile Manufacturers Institute and an executive at yarn producer Unifi.
According to a study by ATMI, 630,000 textile and apparel jobs will be lost and 1,300 plants will close if quotas expire on textile and apparel product Jan. 1, 2005, and the China safeguard is not used.
Allen Gant, chief executive officer of fabric supplier Glen Raven, said the U.S. textile and apparel market "is not merely threatened, it is under an unprecedented attack from a flood of illegally subsidized Chinese imports, which in these four product areas have increased by 920% in the past 17 months."
George Shuster of Cranston Print Works and co-chair of the American Manufacturing Trade Action Coalition, said, "China's textile and apparel exports to the United States grew by 117% in 2002 and are on pace to more than double again in 2003. More than 80% of China's textile and apparel exports to the United States are in categories with no quotas.... (The Bush) administration must make good on its many public commitments of support for this industry and move to stop this anti-competitive import surge."
The textile coalition alleges that illegal currency manipulation on the part of China and its direct subsidization of an enormous state textiles sector give China's producers a 40% price advantage over U.S. producers.
A five-member federal government interagency group will decide whether to invoke the China safeguard, a process that could take several months or more.
