JULY 24, 2003, WASHINGTON, DC – A united textile and fiber industry, a coalition comprised of fourteen major trade associations, announced today that a letter had been sent to the Committee for the Implementation of Textile Agreements (CITA) filing China safeguard petitions.

Petitions were filed in four products areas – (1) knit fabric, (2) cotton and man-made fiber gloves, (3) cotton and man-made fiber dressing gowns and robes, and (4) cotton and man-made fiber brasseries. A copy of the letter and petitions may be found at www.atmi.org.

The textile China safeguard was sold to Congress and the U.S. textile, fiber and apparel industry as a critical component of China’s accession agreement into the WTO. It may be implemented if the U.S. market is disrupted to the point where the orderly development of trade is threatened.

Allen Gant, CEO of Glen Raven Inc., said, “The orderly development of trade in 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. Chinese imports in these four product areas have increased by 920 percent over the past 17 months. There is nothing orderly about that. U.S. jobs are on the line and that is why the textile and fiber industry is following through with its June 11 promise to file China safeguard petitions.”

American Textile Manufacturers Institute (ATMI) Chairman Willis C. “Billy” Moore III of Unifi, Inc. continued, “ATMI recently published a study showing that 630,000 textile and apparel jobs will be lost and 1,300 plants will close if quotas expire on textile and apparel products on January 1, 2005 and the China safeguard is not effectively used. If the U.S. government does not send a message by approving these actions, massive layoffs will begin in mid-2004 due to the nature of ordering cycles from China.”

American Manufacturing Trade Action Coalition (AMTAC) Co-Chair George Shuster of Cranston Print Works stressed, “China’s textile and apparel exports to the United States grew by 117 percent in 2002 and are on pace to more than double again in 2003. More than 80 percent of China’s textile and apparel exports to the United States are in categories with no quotas. China’s share of market in these four categories rose from an average of 5 percent while quotas were still on to an average of 32 percent today. This Administration must make good on its many public commitments of support for this industry and move to stop this anti-competitive import surge.”

American Yarn Spinners Association (AYSA) Chairman Jim Chesnutt of the National Spinning Co., Inc. said, “I recently had to close one of my plants in North Carolina because of our nation’s flawed trade policy. 271,100 textile and apparel jobs have been lost since January 2001. 26 percent of the entire textile and apparel manufacturing sector’s jobs disappeared in just two-and-one-half years. This Administration has said it has a plan to save an industry that it has called a cornerstone of U.S. manufacturing. Now we call on it to fulfill its pledge and stop this unfair surge and to keep hundreds of communities from seeing their tax bases devastated by plant closures.”

National Textile Association (NTA) President Karl Spilhaus emphasized, “China’s projected consumption of 70 to 80 percent of the U.S. textile and apparel market following the expiration of quotas would destroy large export markets for U.S. yarn and fabric in the Caribbean and Latin America. Many of the 1.15 million textile and apparel workers in Mexico, El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, Costa Rica, and the Dominican Republic who turn U.S. yarn and fabric into apparel will lose their jobs too if the Chinese are allowed to dominate the U.S. market.”

National Cotton Council (NCC) Immediate Past President Gaylon Booker remarked, “Domestic mill consumption of U.S. cotton has fallen by more than 40 percent in recent years. The economic health of cotton farming communities from California to Georgia is in serious jeopardy unless the U.S. government confronts the Chinese threat to the U.S. textile and apparel industry.”

American Fiber Manufacturers Association (AFMA) Chairman Geoff Schofield of Drake Extrusion, Inc. concluded, “The U.S. manufactured fiber customer base faces a significant threat from China. If our government agrees to cut U.S. textile tariffs in the Doha Round of WTO negotiations, China will have wider opening to use its managed currency to boost market share.”

China’s illegal currency manipulation scheme and its direct subsidization of its enormous state textile sector give China’s producers a 40 percent price advantage over U.S. producers. Implementing the special textile China safeguard would prevent the Chinese from fully reaping the benefits of their WTO-illegal activities.

CITA decides whether to invoke the special textile China safeguard. CITA is a five-member interagency group chaired by the Department of Commerce that includes the Departments of State, Labor, and the Treasury, and the Office of the U.S. Trade Representative. There is no obligation for CITA’s decision to be reviewed by the WTO.

Under the safeguard procedures, CITA has fifteen business days to make sure the petition is in proper order. If deemed properly filed, CITA will post the petition on the OTEXA website for a thirty-day public comment period. CITA then has sixty days to make a determination on the petition after the comment period closes. CITA may make a determination after the sixty-day period only if it posts a notice in the Federal Register that includes the date by which a determination will be made.

Members of the united textile/fiber coalition include: