FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

January 29, 2004

Textile Industry Issues Challenge to Candidates

on China & U.S. Jobs

– Keeping Quotas on China Will Be Key to Industry Support –

– Coalition Vows to Politicize Every Textile Worker in the Country –

Spartanburg, SC (January 29) - Leaders of the unified textile and fiber industry today made retaining quotas on imports of unfairly subsidized imports of Chinese textile and apparel products the “make or break” political issue for the industry in the 2004 elections.

The leaders vowed to make every effort to get every single textile and fiber worker registered to vote, educate them on the issues and candidates, and get them to the polls on Election Day in order to elect candidates who will oppose unfair trade practices and support textile manufacturing jobs in this country. Almost one million people work in the U.S. textile, apparel and related industries sector, including 722,000 nationwide who work directly in textile and apparel manufacturing.

Noting that the margin of victory during the last presidential race was so close, Allen Gant of Glen Raven Inc. stated, “This industry is prepared to work hard on behalf of any candidate that makes an ironclad commitment on maintaining quotas on imports from China. We are also prepared to work hard against any candidate that will not defend our workers against these illegally subsidized imports. This industry is determined that we will make a difference in the 2004 election.”

Since the last presidential election, the U.S. textile and apparel sector has lost 323,000 jobs, representing 31% of its workforce. In textiles alone, one U.S. textile job has disappeared every nine minutes since Inauguration Day 2001, for a total of 156,000 lost jobs in 36 months. Also, over the past three years, at least 211 textile plants in the United States have been forced to shut their doors.

· In South Carolina alone, 22,000 textile and apparel jobs have been lost over the last three years, which represents nearly 28 percent of the textile workforce that existed in that state at the beginning of 2001. Also, in that same time, 48 South Carolina textile plants have shut down.

· And it’s not just textiles and apparel jobs that have been lost in South Carolina. Since 2000, South Carolina has lost some 92,000 private sector jobs, including 65,300 manufacturing jobs (nearly 20 percent of all such jobs) in the past 36 months.

Jim Chesnutt, Chairman of the American Textile Manufacturers Institute (ATMI) and CEO of National Spinning, said, “This will be an election where jobs count. Workers in this country are sick and tired of seeing the work formerly done in U.S. plants head out the door and over to China. When they discover that the U.S. government is looking the other way while China is illegally subsidizing Chinese textile and other manufacturing exports to this country, they will look to hold some people accountable for this outrage. Our workers want their government to stand up for them, and they will be looking to support only those candidates who will start saving U.S. manufacturing jobs, not backing policies which send them overseas.”

Steve Dobbins, Chairman of the American Yarn Spinners Association (AYSA) and President of Carolina Mills, said, “It is imperative that our industry, including our hundreds of thousands of workers and our suppliers, become politically involved in order to make U.S. trade policy more responsive to our concerns. We need a trade policy that treats U.S. manufacturers fairly, not as sacrificial lambs.”

The textile crisis in this country has been precipitated by a record-breaking flood of illegally subsidized Chinese imports. Imports of textiles and apparel from China have increased by 320% in the past twenty-four months. Studies have shown that the removal of all remaining Chinese quotas will destroy the textile sector in the United States, causing the closure of 1,300 textile plants with 650,000 textile and apparel workers losing their jobs.

Jonathan Stevens, Vice Chairman of the National Textile Association (NTA) and CEO of Ames Textile Corporation said, “By November 2^nd, Election Day, every textile worker in this country will have received a scorecard ranking both local and national candidates on whether they are for our workers or against them. At the top of the scorecard, the message will be: VOTE – YOUR JOB NEXT YEAR DEPENDS ON IT.”

China uses a variety of unfair and illegal trade practices to undercut textile manufacturers in the United States and around the world. These include currency manipulation, direct state subsidies, the use of “no-cost” loans from Chinese banks and government “rebates” for exported textile products.

According to George Shuster, CEO of Cranston Print Works and co-chair of the American Manufacturing Trade Action Coalition (AMTAC), “The continuing offshoring of America’s jobs and its wealth is an issue that more and more Americans, including many in the service sector, are deeply concerned about. We are literally selling our future and our children’s futures to China and other countries that don’t play by the rules. What our workers need is a government that is as aggressive on their behalf as China is on theirs.”

Other issues that the industry will query the candidates on include: 1) opposing free trade agreements that cost textile jobs; 2) preserving the “Buy American” U.S. defense industrial base requirements of the Berry Amendment; 3) maintaining U.S. textile tariffs in the Doha Round; and 4) aggressively using U.S. and international trade rules to attack unfair trade practices, including transshipment and intellectual property theft, in China and elsewhere.

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For further information, contact:

Robert DuPree (ATMI) – rdupree@atmi.org or (202) 862-0526

Lloyd Wood (AMTAC) – lwood@amtacdc.org or (703) 307-7662

David Trumbull (NTA) – dtrumbull@nationaltextile.org or (617) 542-8220 ext 2

Mike Hubbard (AYSA) - mshaysa@aol.com or (704) 824-3522

Cotton Nelson (NCC) – cnelson@cotton.org or (800) 377-9030

Diane DeZan (AFMA) - ddezan@afma.org or 703-875-0432

PARTIAL LIST OF ATTENDEES AT JANUARY 29, 2004 MEETING IN SPARTANBURG

Auggie Tantillo, Washington Coordinator, AMTAC, Washington, DC
Allen Gant, President, Glen Raven, Inc., Glen Raven, NC and First Vice-Chairman, ATMI George Shuster, CEO Cranston Print Works, Cranston, RI, Co Chair, AMTAC

Karl Spilhaus, President, National Textile Assn., Boston, MA
Jonathan Stevens, President, Ames Textile Corp., Lowell, MA and Vice-Chairman, NTA

Mike Hubbard, Executive Vice President, AYSA, Gastonia, NC
Lewis Gossett, President, SCMA, Columbia SC
Steve Dobbins, Chief Executive Officer, Carolina Mills, Maiden, NC and President, AYSA
Cass Johnson, Interim President, ATMI, Washington, DC
Jim Chesnutt, CEO, National Spinning Company, Washington, NC and Chairman, ATMI

Smyth McKissick, President, Alice Manufacturing Company, Easley, SC
John Emrich, President & CEO, Guilford Mills, Inc., Greensboro, NC
Jim Bell, President, NCMA, Raleigh, NC
Roy Bowen, President, GTMA, Atlanta, GA
Roger Milliken, CEO Milliken & Company, Spartanburg, SC and Co Chair, AMTAC

Rob Chapman, President, Inman Mills, Inman, SC
Walter Montgomery, Jr., Former President, Spartan Mills, Spartanburg, SC
Richard Dillard, Director of Public Affairs, Milliken & Co., Spartanburg, SC
Ashley Allen, President, Milliken & Co., Spartanburg, SC
Jason Copland, Executive Vice President, Copland Industries Inc., Burlington NC
Amy Daugherty, Miami Thread, Drexel, NC
Carlisle Hamrick, President, Hamrick Mills, Inc. Gaffney, SC
Ned Cochrane, Vice President, Mt. Vernon Mills, Greenville, SC
Henry Neisler, President, Dicey Fabrics, Inc., Shelby, NC
Larry Galbraith, Chief Executive Officer, Denim North America, Columbus, GA
Mike Shelton, President, Valdese Weavers, Valdese, NC