A bipartisan group in the upper chamber wants to see the Biden administration act on the problem.
A group of U.S. senators recently urged the Biden administration to address troubling import trends in textile and apparel imports that threaten domestic manufacturers and the jobs they represent.
The U.S. textile industry employs approximately half a million Americans and is responsible for $39 billion in annual shipments. It is also a key supply chain for both defense materials and personal protective equipment used by medical workers – the kind America couldn’t source on its own when the COVID-19 pandemic descended in 2020. With that footprint in mind, the senators argue, the administration should convene a meeting of the Departments of Homeland Security, Commerce, Treasury, the U.S. Trade Representative, and the National Security Council to figure out how to preserve the industry’s health, which they argue is being undermined by chronically high import levels.
In a letter led by Sen. Sherrod Brown (D-Ohio) and Tom Thillis (R-N.C.) the senators write:
Unfortunately, after decades of victimization by Chinese economic and trade predation, today our domestic textile manufacturers and workers find themselves attempting to recover from the pandemic while facing unprecedented demand destruction. This is largely a result of China’s aggressive and illegal practices of transshipment, undervaluation of cheap products, forced labor, skirting tariffs and penalties, and countless other tactics that are undermining U.S. supply chains. Without urgent action, we will be unable to head off a coming disaster that will substantially undermine textile and apparel production and employment in the U.S. and throughout the Western Hemisphere.
Specifically, the senators asked the administration to step up enforcement of the Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act (UFLPA) – the law that bans the import of goods made wholly or partially in the China’s Xinjiang Autonomous Region, where the government has been credibly accused of placing ethnic minorities into forced labor camps and running supply chains for exported goods through them. They also are asking for an “interagency process” to address the exploitation of the de minimis loophole in U.S. trade law that allows companies like fast fashion giants like Temu and Shein and the House That Bezos Built – Amazon – to import $67 billion in 2020 duty free, according to the Wall Street Journal.
Their letter comes shortly after a U.S. House of Representatives panel heard concerns that the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs is out of compliance with the Make PPE in America Act, “a 2022 law stating that government agencies purchase personal protective equipment exclusively from U.S. manufacturers,” notes Sourcing Journal.
For all the talk of economic decoupling between the U.S. and China, of tariffs and export controls and the like, we really haven’t done much decoupling. The United States ran a $22.7 billion goods trade deficit with China in August. That was only the trade in goods, just the deficit, and it was in August alone. Billions of dollars worth of Chinese apparel imports continue to enter the United States each year, according to the U.S. International Trade Administration.
The Biden administration needs to make sure applicable laws like the UFLPA are being followed, do something about the abuse of the de minimis rule, and step it up with existing trade enforcement rules, said Kim Glas, the president of the National Council of Textile Organizations.
“To maintain the industry’s operations and competitiveness, the administration must take immediate steps to increase its enforcement activities and crack down on systemic abuse that is undermining the very fabric of our domestic textile supply chain and its workforce,” Glas said in a statement that commended the senators for pressing the Biden administration on this issue.
The senators’ letter can be read here.