NTA Review and Forecast, January 2004
SPECIAL TO SOUTHERN TEXTILE NEWS
By William Giblin

China the hot topic in 2003, 2004 says National Textile Association.

The announcement, on Christmas Eve 2003, that the U.S. was imposing quotas on three types of textile products from China --knit fabric, brassieres, and dressing gowns-- capped year-long efforts by NTA and others in the textile industry to get the Bush Administration to take its first action to meaningfully address the flood of textile and apparel imports from China which is severely disrupting the domestic textile industry and undermining all of our free trade agreements and preference programs.

"We see these safeguards as a good beginning," said NTA chairman William Giblin, President of Tweave, Inc., located in Norton, Mass. "We call on the U.S. government to negotiate a comprehensive bilateral agreement with the Chinese that covers all sensitive textile and apparel categories. This would eliminate business risk and uncertainty for all sides. This is what the U.S. government has almost always done in the past when it has implemented a quantitative import limitation like the China safeguard."

"China is the issue," said NTA president Karl Spilhaus, "if our government does nothing about China then all their other programs --NAFTA, CBTPA, AGOA, CAFTA, FTAA, whatever-- will not save jobs in our region or help our other trading partners after January 1, 2005." "We are pleased," Spilhaus said, that our government has so far said no to requests to increase quotas in 2004, but we need more, or we are going to continue to lose jobs -- and not just textiles jobs."

Flawed CAFTA must be defeated.

When the NTA Board of Government met in Florida in November, they stated four things that must be in CAFTA for NTA to support the agreement. We needed within the basic yarn-forward rule a "Special Regime" similar to the "Special Regime" program between the U.S. and Mexico in the current NAFTA. We said that we could not support an agreement that had Tariff Preference Levels or cumulation that allow fabric from non-partner countries to get the benefit of the FTA. And we said that the "short supply" list and procedures must be no more lax than those in CAFTA. Every one of these points represented positions that would help make CAFTA work for the U.S. textile industry, merely followed precedents of existing programs, and could have been part of the agreement had our government tried to get anything for our industry in the negotiation. Instead, we find, based on reports of the content of the agreement (which has not been released for us to read in detail) that on every one of this vital points our negotiators failed to deliver for American textile manufacturers. In January our Board of Government met again and voted to oppose CAFTA due to the substantial give-aways in industry sectors such as knit fabrics of all kinds, wool woven fabric, cotton and man-made fiber woven fabric, and narrow and wide elastic fabrics -- all of which have substantial unutilized domestic U.S. capacity.

This regional free trade agreement will open the U.S. textile and apparel markets to a flood of imports from El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras and Nicaragua. Costa Rica has been part of the negotiation, but withdrew in the final hours from this seriously flawed agreement only to come back later and get an even more generous give-away as regards textiles. The Administration must notify Congress at least 90 days before signing the agreement. To become law the agreement must pass a majority vote in both the House and the Senate. NTA will vigorously oppose this agreement. We are currently planning a meeting of our Board of Government in Washington in the spring to continue our work of educating our Senators and Representatives about the job-destroying provisions in this FTA.

Enhanced regulatory and government affairs expertise to serve the textile industry

NTA announced in January that Hardy Poole, former Vice President, Product Services and Corporate Secretary of the American Textile Manufacturers Institute has joined the organization to provide support to the NTA membership on state and federal regulatory issues, defense procurement and consumer affairs.

NTA chairman William E. Giblin said, "I am delighted that, in these troubled times for our industry, NTA can present itself to its members as a true full service organization with experts in all relevant fields to address industry needs."

Poole has over three decades of textile industry experience and has managed numerous technical programs for the U.S. textile industry. In the past, he has worked closely on flammability issues with upholstery fabric producers, suppliers and customers, with regulators from the Consumer Products Safety Commission and California's Bureau of Home Furnishings, and with numerous other agencies and organizations.

According to Henry A. Truslow III, past chairman of NTA and chairman of decorative upholstery fabric producer Sunbury Textile Mills, Inc., "The need for our upholstery fabrics industry to be at the negotiating table with regulators has never been as great as it is today. This industry works tirelessly to provide products asked for by the consumer and our intention is to continue providing these products which are demanded by our customers. Bringing Hardy's experience and expertise to NTA is a tremendous help to this effort."

Both California and CPSC are in the critical stages of establishing regulations that will impact upholstery fabric manufacturers. NTA's upholstery fabrics members will work with other industry organizations and regulators to ensure that if a regulation is promulgated, it will be technically feasible, economically viable and does not eliminate consumers' choices in the marketplace.

Promoting our members products.

The "National Textile Association Guide to American-made Fabrics," a 100-page full-color glossy directory of the members of NTA, with information on their products and services is available from the NTA office at 617-542-8220 or info@nationaltextile.org. The guide lists 44 knitters, 22 weavers, 29 fabric finishers, 41 suppliers of fiber or yarn, and 30 other textile-related companies. In addition to the printed guide, a complete searchable listing of NTA members and their products is available on our newly redesigned website www.nationaltextile.org.

The Guide has been mailed to 4,700 domestic U.S. manufacturers of apparel and major U.S. retailers. It has also been sent to every member company and was distributed at the Material World fabric show in Miami Beach. An additional 750 copies of the Guide have been distributed to apparel manufacturers in Guatemala, Honduras and El Salvador.

Our promotions committee, chaired by Edward Moskowitz, CEO, FabricTex, Inc. have been very active. NTA participated, with a booth, at Material World in Miami Beach, September 29-October 1, 2003. Our panel discussion "2005 and the American Hemisphere" at Material World attracted over 120 attendees. We are currently working on our program of this year's Material World, May 18-20, 2004.

Forum for industry discussion.

Our successful 149th Annual Meeting in Florida in November 2004 brought together 75 textile industry leaders from over 50 companies. We are now planning our 150th Annual Meeting which will be held September 19-21, 2004 in Cooperstown, New York.