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Contact:
Cass Johnson (202)
822-8025
For Immediate Release
Missy Branson (202)
822-8026 February
26,
2008
African and Western
Hemisphere Textile Groups
Oppose McDermott Trade Bill
- Bill Would Cause Massive
Layoffs in Least Developed
and Developing County Textile Industries
-
Washington
DC) In a letter to House Ways and Means Chairman
Charles Rangel, fifteen textile and apparel trade
groups from Africa and the Western Hemisphere
urged Chairman Rangel to strike controversial
trade sections of the New Partnership for
Development Act (NPDA) that would cause
devastation in the textile and apparel sectors in
least developed and developing countries.
In
the letter sent last week, leading textile groups
noted that the bill authored by Congressman Jim
McDermott (D-Washington) would “result in hundreds
of thousands of job losses in our textile and
apparel sectors while increasing poverty in the
African, Andean, CAFTA and NAFTA
countries.” (Click
Here)
The
groups criticized the NPDA trade sections for
giving enormous new benefits to two apparel
superpowers – Bangladesh
and Cambodia
– which have already seen their exports grow by 60
percent during the last three years. These
exports gains have come largely at the expense of
struggling textile and apparel sectors in African
and Western
Hemisphere
countries. In their top ten export items,
these countries have lost $2.0 billion in orders
to Bangladesh
and Cambodia
during the last three years.
The
groups called the
Bangladesh
and Cambodia
proposals “anti-development trade measures” which
would transfer trade away from the poorest
countries to
Bangladesh
and Cambodia.
They predicted that approval of the special
Bangladesh-Cambodia benefits, coupled with the end
of restraints on Chinese exports at the end of
2008, would be devastating: “We fully expect
that our sectors would quickly collapse as
importers re-allocate their sourcing to four or
five major countries.”
Textile
and apparel trade groups from Colombia, the
Dominican Republic, Ecuador, El Salvador,
Guatemala, Honduras, Kenya, Lesotho, Madagascar,
Mexico, Nicaragua, Peru, South Africa and the
United States signed the
letter.
###
For
additional information:
Africa:
Jas
Bedi
Chairman – KAM
(Kenya Association of
Manufacturers) Textile Sector
Chairman – KAMEA
(Kenya Apparel Manufacturers
Exporters Association)
jas@bedi.com
+254
(20)
556-114
Latin
America:
Nora Ambriz
Director
General
CANAINTEX (Cámara Nacional
de la Industria Textil de
México)
nambriz@canaintex.org.mx
52 55 52808637 Ext
1002
United
States:
Cass
Johnson
President
NCTO
(National Council of Textile
Organizations)
Washington,
DC
cjohnson@ncto.org
(202)
822-8025
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