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US textile makers want protection from China rivals

US textile and apparel makers plan to ask the Bush administration levy tariffs on Chinese clothing imports to prevent factory closures and job losses. China said it's willing to set voluntary export quotas.

A coalition of six US trade groups, including the National Cotton Council and the American Yarn Spinners Association, said they will petition the Commerce Department as early as next week to levy tariffs on specific Chinese imports, which might include cotton robes, brassieres, and knitted fabrics.

US textile makers say their industry employs 1 million people and will be destroyed after all import quotas on Chinese products are lifted in 2005. the US trade deficit with China surged by a quarter last year to a record US$103 billion, prompting American furniture makers, crawfish farmers and television makers to demand protective tariffs.

"There's an incredibly grave crisis affecting the US textile industry," Roger Milliken, chief executive of Milliken & Co, a Spartanburg, South Carolina apparel maker told reporters in Washington.

"The textile industry is the canary in the coal mine. The outsourcing of American manufacturing must stop if we are to preserve our middle class," he said.

The US textile industry lost 267,700 jobs from January 2001 through last month, with hundreds of factories shut, according to the American Textile Manufacturers Institute. Chinese sales of textiles to the US rose by 63 percent to US$3.15 billion last year.

The coalition wants the government to levy temporary safeguard tariffs to stem Chinese imports.

China's textile trade group says it wants to avoid a trade spat with the US and is willing to institute voluntary quotas, which are normally banned under WTO rules.

"We don't want this to get out of hand," said Zhou Xiaoyi, manager of the information department for the China Chamber of Commerce for Import & Export of Textiles in Beijing ahead of the Washington press conference.

"We want to come up with some quotas on how much can be exported. We need some kind of warning system for when certain product categories are heading to one market too quickly," Zhou said.
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