Down and Almost Out in Mongolia -NYT [View All]

ULAN BATOR, Mongolia - On Genghis Khan Avenue, Mongolia's garment factory workers are begging for mercy.

"I am praying this company won't close," said Dejidmaa Sosorijav, 39, pausing from trimming white threads from a man's jacket destined for the United States. Employed for the last year in an American-owned factory, Mrs. Sosorijav, a mother of three, added: "It is very hard for a person my age to find a job. Mongolian-owned companies say '35 or younger.' "

The death knell for Mongolia's garment industry will ring on Jan. 1, when a decades-old global quota system is to end, freeing American and European fashion companies and retailers, in the long run, to buy as many clothes as they want from the lowest-cost producers, notably China, India and Pakistan.

This effort at market liberalizing is expected to save American consumers as much as $6 billion a year, though higher tariffs imposed temporarily by China, as well as possible additional limits established in the United States and Europe, are expected to shave off some of those savings.

But the new wave is still expected to upend the world garment industry, shuffling millions of jobs in dozens of the world's poorest countries. Buyers are expected over time to shift their purchases to the largest and cheapest producers.........

http://www.nytimes.com/2004/12/29/business/worldbusiness/29mongolia.html?oref=login