[CTC] Textile manufacturers: Importer TPP demands would destroy us

[Arthur Stamoulis]

Two articles below...

POLITICO

Textile manufacturers: Importer TPP demands would destroy us

7/21/15 5:34 PM EDT

U.S. textile manufacturers today pushed back against importer and retailer
demands that the United States give Vietnam at least the same amount of
market access in the Trans-Pacific Partnership agreement that it gave to
Central American countries in the CAFTA trade deal of 2005.

"CAFTA and TPP are almost completely different animals," Augustine
Tantillo, president of the National Council of Textile Organizations, said
in response to a letter apparel importers and retailers sent U.S. Trade
Representative Michael Froman ahead of Friday’s kick-off of TPP
negotiations in Maui, Hawaii.

What the groups are recommending would allow "duty-free treatment on
three-quarters of the product [from Vietnam] with extremely weak origin
rules that would allow subsidized Chinese yarn and fabric" to be used to
make Vietnamese garments imported under TPP, Tantillo said. In comparison,
CAFTA countries were already mostly using U.S. yarn and fabric when that
agreement went into force, he said.

Tantillo ridiculed another proposal calling for the TPP pact to cut duties
by at least 50 percent on products the domestic textile industry considers
sensitive. "What they're saying is, 'We want to avoid hundreds of millions
of dollars of duty payments,’" Tantillo said. "What we're saying is, 'We
want to avoid going out of business.’"

But Steve Lamar, executive vice president at American Apparel and Footwear
Association, argued that without flexible rules of origin in the TPP, very
little of Vietnam's exports to the United States would actually qualify for
duty-free treatment because it imports most of its yarn and fabric.

Ten years after Congress approved the CAFTA agreement, "we want to harvest
some of those flexibilities that were positive, that were really beneficial
in helping to expand trade with the Central American countries and bring
them forward in the TPP," he said.

— Doug Palmer

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Apparel sector to Froman: Don't move backward in TPP deal

7/21/15 5:04 PM EDT

Clothing importers and retailers urged U.S. Trade Representative Michael
Froman today not to squander the opportunity for increased trade and
competitiveness under the proposed Trans-Pacific Partnership by including
overly restrictive measures to protect U.S. textile producers from
Vietnamese shipments.

"Cutting an agreement that ... locks in all the current sensitivities of a
narrow segment of our industry undermines the ability of the rest of the
industry to use the agreement," the American Apparel & Footwear
Association, National Retail Federation, Retail Industry Leaders
Association and U.S. Fashion Industry Association said in a letter.

The United States and 11 other countries will begin an intense round of
deal-making Friday that could wrap up the TPP. U.S. textile and apparel
producers, which employ about 372,000 workers, are worried about a flood of
cheaper clothing imports from Vietnam under the pact.

Julia Hughes, president of the U.S. Fashion Industry Association, told
POLITICO the textile provisions of the TPP agreement should at "the bare
minimum" be as flexible as a 2005 free trade agreement with Central
American countries and the Dominican Republic. But "what we have been
hearing is that TPP could be more restrictive than CAFTA has been," Hughes
said.

The groups want the following CAFTA elements included in the TPP deal:
duty-free treatment for at least 75 percent of current trade based on the
way that garments are currently made; a minimum 50-percent duty cut for
sensitive products; some “single transformation” rules that would allow
duty-free treatment for garments assembled within the TPP region that use
textiles from other countries; flexibility to revisit the "short supply"
list, which would allow exceptions to the “yarn forward” rule requiring
textiles and apparel be made in TPP countries; and enforcement measures
that recognize the importance of "trusted trader" programs and
sophisticated targeting techniques.

— Doug Palmer

Arthur Stamoulis
Citizens Trade Campaign
(202) 494-8826
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