U.S. Begins Steps to Limit Import Surge From China

The Bush administration, reacting to a flood of Chinese clothing imports since January, began a process on Monday to impose import quotas on shirts, trousers and underwear.

In an abrupt policy reversal, the Commerce Department said that it would begin an investigation into the need to re-impose trade quotas that were lifted just three months ago on a wide variety of Chinese apparel.
.....
The announcement came just three days after the administration published data showing that imports of cotton knit shirts increased 1,257 percent in the first three months of 2005 compared with the first quarter of 2004. Imports of Chinese cotton trousers jumped 1,500 percent, while imports of underwear tripled.

Those products are among the few kinds of mass-market clothing still made in the United States. They had been protected under a quota system that expired at the end of 2004.

http://nytimes.com/2005/04/05/business/worldbusiness/05trade.html?adxnnl=1&adxnnlx=1112674253-qdEWzIsMqg3VAC17ShNH0w

do not call the debt or we are all doomed unless we refuse to pay it.

Msongs
www.msongs.com/political-shirts.htm

I'm getting light headed. My vision is getting squiggly at the edges.

Wal-Mart depends on huge-volume sales of cheap Chinese crap to the minimum-wage workers in the towns whose economies it has destroyed. They will donate more $$$ to the GOP and the trade restrictions will mysteriously evaporate.

from Wal-Mart. You KNOW they're ordering Chinese goods like there's no tomorrow (and they are probably right).

The underwear rides up.

It can't be to protect American workers, there must be some other motive.
Maybe the clothes aren't cut right or sized right and it is costing the distributer a fortune in returns.

I'm short and not a pound overweight, so you would expect Asian clothes to fit me, but they don't. The pants especially don't fit my western (hourglass, I guess) figure.

to feed to the electorate.

And they sound suspect. I'd like to see the Commerce Dept verify these figures.

The announcement came just three days after the administration published data showing that imports of cotton knit shirts increased 1,257 percent in the first three months of 2005 compared with the first quarter of 2004. Imports of Chinese cotton trousers jumped 1,500 percent, while imports of underwear tripled.

A considerable amount of the clothing labeled as "Made in USA" is actually made in places like Saipan, which are US territories but are not subject to US wage and hour laws. So Busholini can protect US companies from Chinese competition, while they still can get away with paying workers far less than the minimum wage. Somehow, I suspect this is what the real motive might be. More here:

"Out in the Pacific Ocean, on a chain of fourteen islands known as the U.S. Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands, a $1 billion garment industry has been booming since the 1980s. Thousands of garment workers live and toil in deplorable conditions, working up to 12 hours a day, seven days a week, and earning $3.05 an hour or less, often without overtime pay. Yet, the clothes these workers sew carry labels that say "Made in the U.S.A."

After World War II, the U.S. won control from Japan of the Northern Mariana Islands (the Marianas). Because of the Marianas' limited economic base, the U.S. delegated control of minimum wage and immigration laws to the Marianas' government. The U.S. also provided for duty free imports of products into the U.S. and no quota restrictions. Last year alone, the federal government estimated that contractors and U.S. retailers avoided more than $200 million in duties for $1 billion worth of garments shipped from Saipan, the main island of the Marianas.

With no U.S. import tariffs, no U.S. quota restrictions, a minimum wage of $3.05, and lax immigration laws, the Marianas has attracted a host of foreign investors from China, Korea and other nations who produce clothes for some of the biggest brand-name labels, at the cost of exploiting workers. "

http://www.sweatshopwatch.org/swatch/marianas/index.html

Looks like they are doing something, while letting the obscene profits continue on the backs of the poor.

Thanks for posting the sweatshopwatch.org

this is only smoke and mirrors

Or at least the ability to make them.

China now owns the U.S. economically. All they have to do is threaten to quit loading container ships. Three weeks after they stop shipping we will be unable to repair a toilet or find new socks.

We sold the tools to the farmhands forgetting that we can't farm with bare hands. Guess who ends up owning such a farm.

I remember when they were closing the steel mills and thinking what the hell do we do if we need steel and are warring or whatever with whoever makes the steel. Cars, electronics, etc. Was there a TV made in this country in the last ten yrs. All the technology we developed is literally given away for free to other countries. We have and continue to fuck ourselves. We will become a third rate agrarian economy supplying food to industrial and tech giants in Asia while our engineers and scientists go jobless.

are pure crap. i remember when making your clothes was cheaper than buying them...not any more.

its too late Bushy!!!

There's now a higher that other countries, particularly in Europe will also do the same against goods from Third World countries.

Of course it also depends what the so-called quota level is set at;
1100% increase for quotas for shirts versus the 1200 plus now?

is all phased out since jan 1, so this is strictly speaking not allowed I think.

He nevers does anything for a good reason, something else is up in * world. I just wonder what it is ??

:kick:

China, which has been significant in keeping us solvent and financing our lethal consumer debt levels, is buying less and less.

BushCo has extremely limited leverage in trade since Beijing is its Sugar Daddy, so this move is probably, as some suggested, technically meaningless. But its *narrative* meaning is interesting, both in what is being trumpeted for domestic consumption and what is being signalled--in the barest of wimpy squeeks--to the Chinese.

But is the damage already done? When I hear every caller on C-span, republican, democrat and independant caller alike, agree on this one issue, you know things are bad.