When textile quotas end this week, will U.S. jobs go, too?

When textile quotas end this week, will U.S. jobs go, too?


Pete Souza / Chicago Tribune / MCT

A worker sews a label for Saks Fifth Avenue onto a sweater at the Alpha Ningxia Cashmere Co. Ltd. in Lingwu, China, in 2006.
By Lisa Zagaroli | McClatchy Newspapers


WASHINGTON — As the head of one of the largest yarn manufacturers in the world, Anderson Warlick doesn't mind going up against other businesses. Competing with Chinese products, however, feels like taking on an entire foreign government.

The chief executive of Parkdale Mills in Gastonia, N.C., is worried that already tough competition from China will get far worse after Wednesday, when the remaining U.S. limits on imports of certain textile products expire.

"It's a very serious issue, and it could be devastating for the industry," Warlick said. "I think the entire textile chain will be affected."

At issue are limits on the number of cotton trousers, golf shirts, babies' socks and more than 30 other textile products that China can export to the United States. The quotas expire at the end of this year, and, under a World Trade Organization agreement, the U.S. government can't reimpose restrictions on Chinese textiles.

The industry is worried that what happened in 2005, when similar safeguards were lifted temporarily, will happen again in 2009.

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http://www.mcclatchydc.com/226/story/58673.html

of what is necessary to kill the textile industry in the US...if you don't believe me, drive through Cabarrus County NC sometime (pay particular attention to Kannapolis) and get back to me...this should be the final nail in the coffin. Free trade is only viable when on level competing grounds...

sP

who have sold ourselves to others so they will clothe us,put shoes on our feet,dry us,and keep us warm at night.