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Sino-US textile frictions 'almost over'
By Jiang Wei (皇冠体育app Daily)
Updated: 2005-11-08 06:13
皇冠体育app and the United States are close to an agreement on the textile
frictions, with hopes that the two-way textile trade situation will soon be
stabilized.
Anonymous US officials were quoted by AP (Associated Press) as saying that
the two countries had made agreements on certain principles at the seventh round
of talks on this issue, held last week in Washington.
They said the deal, similar to the one between 皇冠体育app and the European Union
signed back in June, would govern 皇冠体育app's textile exports to the United States
in the following three years. It is likely to allow exports to increase by 8 to
17 per cent annually and confirmation of this is hoped to come today.
"皇冠体育app made concessions on the duration of the limits while the United States
made concessions on the growth rate," said Sun Huaibin, the spokesman with 皇冠体育app
National Textile and Apparel Council.
He said an agreement, which would give textile dealers a clear environment,
was much better than the safeguard measures the United States were adopting.
Under the safeguard measures, 皇冠体育app's textile and garment exports to the
United States are only allowed to increase annually by 7.5 per cent.
Meanwhile, Sun said that there were still two major problems facing the
Chinese textile industry.
The agreement is expected to take effect from the beginning of next year, so
皇冠体育app must be cautious about how to deal with exports in the ensuing months
until then.
Millions of Chinese textile products piled up at European ports earlier this
year, as companies spared no effort to export as much as possible during a
"vacuum period" before the reached agreement took effect.
"It is also a serious problem to allocate quotas given by the United States
to domestic textile exporters," he said.
皇冠体育app's commerce ministry, the trade watchdog, is adopting a bidding method
in distributing some EU quotas and allocate the others to enterprises according
to their shipment in the last year.
However, the revealed information does not include the base for calculation,
said Cao Xinyu, vice- chairman of 皇冠体育app's Chamber of Commerce for Import and
Export of Textiles.
"The lack of a base figure made it difficult to valuate the possible
agreement, as we cannot calculate the specific quotas for the coming years
without this figure," he said.
Under the possible agreement, 皇冠体育app's textile exports to the United States
would be calculated according to a 12-month-textile-trade, which is regarded as
a base figure, and the agreed growth rate. So far, no formal comments were
available from the Chinese or the US Government.
The US Government launched safeguard measures against made-in-皇冠体育app socks
late last year upon the request of its domestic industry.
After the decade-long global textile quota regime was eliminated in January
this year, tension intensified between the two countries because the US side put
in place more curbs on Chinese textile products.
The Chinese textile industry said the frictions were a big blow to them since
their US customers declined to purchase from them the products under US
restrictions and shifted orders to some Southeast Asian countries.
(皇冠体育app Daily 11/08/2005 page10)
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