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Letters to the editor

By Furniture Today Staff -- Furniture Today, March 31, 2003

Fair trade and free trade are not the same

In December, at a meeting of the World Trade Organization ... U.S. Trade Representative Robert Zoellick, on behalf of the Bush administration, presented a proposal to eliminate global tariffs on industrial goods, including textiles and apparel, by 2015. This proposal is nothing more than a "gift" to China and puts at risk most of the manufacturing jobs in the United States. During the past year, more than 1 million U.S. manufacturing jobs have been exported in search of cheap and exploited labor.... This "free trade" does not in any manner take into consideration "fair trade."

For years, our government's trade policy ... has encouraged the U.S. textile industry to take advantage of nearby preferential trade arrangements and free- trade areas to develop trading blocs that will be competitive with Asian manufacturers. Our government has said to us, "You need to develop partnerships and sell your fabric and yarn to apparel makers in the Caribbean, Central America, Mexico, and the Andean countries of South America. If you do that, the apparel will come back tariff-free, and that will give you a competitive advantage over the low-wage manufacturers in China, India, Pakistan, etc., who would still face tariffs on their imports after we eliminate all our import quotas in 2005."

Well, many of us have tried to set up such trading arrangements and develop export markets, and guess what? This new U.S. proposal to eliminate tariffs would undermine the very trading partnerships our government has told us to establish. By reducing and ultimately eliminating U.S. tariffs, it would make preferential tariff arrangements meaningless. Our customers in the Caribbean and Mexico will find their garments — garments containing our yarn — displaced by garments from China that contain only Chinese yarns. These proposed tariff cuts will wipe out most of the over $12 billion worth of U.S. textile exports that currently are shipped to our trading partners to the south.

The reason we will lose that business is that it will throw the U.S. market wide open to even greater numbers of imports from Asian countries that have manipulated their currencies to give their own products what amounts to a 30%–40% price break. This new tariff proposal does nothing to address such currency manipulation, which is anything but "fair trade."

Further, because the proposal seeks to immediately eliminate duties of 5% or less, it will hurt commodity-type textile producers of yarns and certain fabrics while making competitive disparities even wider with many developing countries. Textiles, like the rest of manufacturing, have been hard hit over the past several years and profit margins today are between 1% and 2%.

Finally, the proposal does nothing to force other nations to swiftly eliminate non-tariff barriers that keep our exports out of their markets.... All non-tariff barriers must be eliminated quickly and not phased out, and no country should be given a free ride on this.

Our representatives and senators should push for the U.S. to adopt a new proposal that all countries should lower their tariffs first to the current level of U.S. textile and apparel tariffs, and only then seek to negotiate further liberalization. Also, the U.S. should ... negotiate separately on textiles and apparel. This would permit the U.S. to pursue a more equitable approach to tariffs, swift elimination of non-tariff barriers to U.S. exports, protection of intellectual property rights with respect to textile designs, copyrights, etc., and more effective customs enforcement measures.

Our elected officials should also remind President Bush of his comments ... that "minimizing the impact of future trade deals on the domestic textile industry is at the top of the administration's agenda." A different and better tariff proposal for textiles and apparel is needed if that commitment is to be followed and "fair trade" achieved.

James W. Chesnutt, president and CEO, National Spinning Co., president, American Yarn Spinners Assn., chairman, Yarn and Thread Committee, American Textile Manufacturers Institute

In appreciation of F/T's courage

With the hornets buzzing you these days (in the aftermath of David Perry's column in the Feb. 10 issue, page 20, "Arrogance hurt Sealy on single-sided beds") and clearly looking to inflict some pain in what they see as retribution, I wanted to let you know how much I appreciate the long-standing courage of the Furniture/Today editorial staff in playing the edge, just to keep us awake and thinking.

One-sided mattresses are a welcome innovation, but a one-sided or "safe" press would be deadening.

You may get it wrong on occasion but I, for one, sincerely appreciate the benefits derived from stirring the mind, the emotions and the combatants.

Don't let the outraged shoot the messenger, because he's often the only one with a wakeup call for us!

John McNeill, Resource Associates, Petaluma, Calif.

Let's do away with no-sales-tax promotions

Back in the 1970s, the furniture industry introduced the no-sales-tax promo. I'm so tired of this promotion. No matter if our discounts are at 40% off the manufacturer's suggested retail price, that's not good enough, and consumers are asking for no sales tax — which for the retailer is just another slice off their profit.

I would love to see this promo leave the industry. Can you imagine going to Nordstrom and purchasing a suit at 40% off, which is usually never the case, and them throwing in the sales tax! Because it's furniture, consumers think no sales tax should be automatic.

Bob Terranova, Todays Way Riverside, Calif.

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