NCTO
Announces Support for U.S.
-
Australia
Free Trade Agreement,
Opposition
to FTAs with
Bahrain
and
Morocco
_____________________
U.S.
Textile Makers Praise Strict Rule of Origin Included in
Australia
FTA,
Urges
Agreement’s “No-Loophole” Language to Serve as Model for
Any Future Trade Pacts
Washington,
DC – The National Council of Textile Organizations
(NCTO) announced today that it supports the
recent U.S. - Australia Free Trade Agreement (FTA) because it contains
a strict yarn-forward rule of origin with no
loopholes, and that it opposes and will
urge congressional defeat of the proposed FTAs with
Bahrain and
Morocco because they contain
massive exceptions to the rule of origin that will harm
U.S. yarn and fabric producers.
In
a statement to the House Ways & Means Committee,
NCTO stressed that the export opportunities that FTAs
are supposed to provide
U.S.
yarn and fabric producers “can only materialize in an
FTA if a strict, yarn-forward rule of origin without any
exceptions is included. The United
States textile industry has strongly and consistently
urged the United States government to insist that the
benefits of any free trade agreement must be limited to
the participating countries, and that textile
manufacturers in China, India and other third party
countries should not be allowed to reap the benefits of
the agreement at the expense of U.S. textile producers.”
Unfortunately,
NCTO said, the recently negotiated FTAs with
Bahrain
and
Morocco
contain enormous and unwarranted exceptions to the rule
or origin*,
as does the proposed Central America Free Trade
Agreement (CAFTA). As a result,
NCTO will be opposing all three agreements and urging
their rejection by Congress.
By contrast, NCTO said that it was “pleased to
see that the final U.S.-Australia FTA includes a strict
yarn-forward rule of origin with no (zero)
exceptions.
No tariff preference levels, no cumulation
provisions, no loopholes of any kind to the yarn-forward
rule of origin.”
Accordingly, NCTO supports the FTA with
Australia.
Further,
NCTO “urges that the U.S.-Australia FTA serve as a
template for any future free trade agreements that the
United
States
might negotiate, including any agreements currently
being negotiated.
If future FTAs do not adhere to this strict
yarn-forward rule of origin requirement, NCTO and very
likely many of our allies in the textile and fiber
sector will be forced to oppose such agreements, and we
will urge their defeat in
Congress.”
NCTO
President Cass
Johnson
said, “The FTA with
Australia
has shown that our government does have the ability to
negotiate trade agreements that are win-win deals for
U.S.
textile producers and our potential customers in other
countries.
But the questions that our industry and workers
are asking in this election year are: Will the Australia
FTA serve as the model for future trade agreements, or
will the U.S. negotiators go back to their old habit of
allowing China, India and other free riders to horn in
on agreements they are not party to, at the expense of
U.S. textile production and jobs? Or, more
bluntly, do the
U.S.
negotiators stand with
U.S.
textile workers or Asian textile workers? We urge them to
choose
U.S.
textile workers.”
__________________________________________________________________
*
The agreement with
Bahrain
allows duty-free treatment for as much as 65 million
square meter equivalents (SMEs) worth of imported textile
products made of fabric and yarn not from the
U.S.
or
Bahrain,
which is 95% of the total level of all textile imports
from
Bahrain
in the 12 months ending February 2004. The Morocco
agreement similarly allows duty-free treatment for up to
30 million SMEs worth of imported textiles made of
fabric and yarn not from either the U.S. or Morocco,
which is nearly twice the amount of all such goods made
from yarn and fabric from all sources and shipped to the
U.S. by Morocco in 2003.
EDITOR’S
NOTE: NCTO was recently established to represent the entire
unified spectrum of the
U.S.
textile sector, from fibers to finished products,
including
yarn, fabric, man-made fibers, cotton, textile machinery
and chemicals and others concerned with the prosperity
and survival of the
U.S.
textile industry.
NCTO is
more broadly based than any previous domestic textile
organization.
