Textile Industry Seeking Job Protection

[Kadie]

Textile Industry Seeking Job Protection
By MARTIN CRUTSINGER, AP Economics Writer

Sunday, April 3, 2005



(04-03) 14:46 PDT WASHINGTON, (AP) --


Shirts, pants, underwear and a lot of other clothes made abroad have arrived in the United States by the bulging boatload since Jan. 1, when more than three decades of quotas ended. Consumers are rejoicing over the lower prices. But the domestic textile and apparel industry is complaining about the loss of thousands of jobs from what it contends is unfair competition.


It wants the Bush administration to move quickly to limit the soaring number of shipments from China.


"Time is so critical. The amount of goods that China is flooding into this market is so large that only the government can move quickly enough to prevent a lot of textile jobs from being lost," said Cass Johnson, president of the National Council of Textile Organizations.


According to data released Friday by the Commerce Department, China shipped 78.3 million cotton knit shirts to the United States in the first three months of this year, an increase of 1,258 percent from the same period a year ago. Shipments of 74.1 million cotton trousers represented an increase of 1,521 percent

more...
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/n/a/2005/04/03/national/w144636D82.DTL

[Deja Q]

1. Good luck workers; hope none of you voted * because he SUPPORTS offshoring

[Malva Zebrina]

2. We have a textile industry? Where?

Really. Where? I do a lot of sewing and when I buy fabric, it is not fabric that is produced in the US. One would be hard pressed to find any fabric that is produced in the US. and if indeed there are some pockets somewhere remaining that do produce fabric, where is the industry in the US that would buy that fabric and produce a product for consumer consumption?

If anyone has ever travelled the Connecticut River Valley along the blue and black roads, one would travel through small town after town of abandoned textile mills. Good for dramatic photos, but abandoned now. At one time, we did indeed, it seems, have a thriving industry.

No more.

[LostinVA]

4. My dad's company still makes fabric in the USA

(Lowell, Mass.), but he's had 6 or 7 companies sold out from under him and sent to Mexico, Honduras, China, etc. since 1988. Luckily, he does R&D, so he always has a job.

(for the record, he refuses to take ANY orders from Wal-Mart)

[UpInArms]

3. I hope

that works out for them :sarcasm:

[w4rma]

5. Republicans and DLCers say this is "protectionism". (nt)