The National Council of Textile Organizations (NCTO) has welcomed President Donald Trump’s latest move to proceed with a 10% tariff on an additional US$200bn worth of goods from China and renewed its request for added duties on Chinese textile and apparel end items.
In a statement on Monday (17 September), Trump said he has directed the United States Trade Representative (USTR) to proceed with placing additional tariffs on roughly $200bn of imports from China following seven weeks of public notice, hearings, and “extensive opportunities” for comment.
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The tariffs will take effect on 24 September and will be set at a level of 10% until the end of the year. On 1 January 2019, the tariffs will rise to 25%.
While the news sparked “deep concern” among the US fashion industry and retailers who claim Trump’s tariff action is cruel to American interests and will create “chaos” for the fashion industry’s supply chains, NCTO says it applauds the latest Section 301 tariff announcement as “necessary to resolve longstanding trade inequities with China”.
However, the organisation added it “strongly believes” that the administration’s continued focus on added tariffs on upstream textile inputs, while thus far refusing to impose tariffs on finished Chinese textile home furnishing and apparel, is flawed.
Instead the group wants Trump to add tariffs on finished Chinese apparel – a move it says is the most effective sanction the United States could impose on China.
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By GlobalData“The Trump administration is right to confront China’s unfair trade practices. Section 301 tariffs show the world that countries which serially abuse US intellectual property rights (IPR) will be held accountable,” said NCTO president and CEO Auggie Tantillo.
“NCTO also thanks the Trump administration for removing various items from the latest retaliation list, including rayon fibre and certain dyes and chemicals. The US textile industry requested the exclusion of these products because they are not available domestically and China is the only significant source of supply.”
Tantillo adds, had US textile manufacturers been forced to pay higher duties on the excluded items, it would raise costs for manufacturers making goods that must compete with like Chinese products.
Yet, despite yesterday’s announcement, the US textile industry remains of the belief that the administration’s strategy to impose Section 301 tariffs on inputs is not the most effective approach to penalize China for what it called its “rampant abuses” of intellectual property rights.
“Added tariffs on finished Chinese textile home furnishings and apparel is the most effective sanction the United States could impose on China because like products from the NAFTA and CAFTA regions using US-made textile inputs immediately become more competitive, thereby incentivising the reshoring textile manufacturing jobs,” Tantillo says.
China hit back at Trump’s latest tariff action yesterday (18 September), announcing new tariffs on US$60bn of US goods.
