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Politics : Politics for Pros- moderated -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: LindyBill who wrote (94788)	1/11/2005 5:25:41 PM
From: LindyBill	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 793801

Textile Industry vs. Furniture Industry Dynamist Blog Import quotas don't just raise prices for consumers. They make planning complicated for businesses that need imported goods as inputs--even, it turns out, when the quotas are about to end. Furniture Today (I love trade magazines) reports on the end-of-the-year mess created by protectionists concerned that textile importers might jump the gun on the end of quotas: "Here at home, 2004 brought us politicians shamelessly plucking the broken heartstrings of unemployed textile workers. It would have made sense for politicians to help the industry get ready for this day – it was 10 years coming, after all – but the horse was out the barn before the election year began. If they could feel shame, they’d be feeling it now. There are still issues with China, certainly, and no one can blame the domestic textile industry for trying to get some relief from the government. But we certainly cannot blame China for a directive issued Dec. 13 from the Committee for the Implementation of Textile Agreements calling for U.S. Customs to hold fabrics that entered U.S. ports near the end of the year in excess of quotas. In years past, fabric that was over quota near the end of a year was counted against the next year’s quota. But since the quota is now gone, the committee felt that some importers might deliberately ship goods in excess of quotas limits, expecting that the goods would be released on Jan. 1. This decision has created trouble and expense for some upholstery fabric importers. Their goods, ordered in good faith in October from mills that held valid quotas, were declared to exceed quota limits when they arrived in December. Obeying the directive from CITA, Customs put the goods into bonded warehouses where they will stay until Feb. 1. At that time, they will be released in 5% per month increments of the amount over the base quota. Textile lobby groups such as the American Manufacturing Trade Action Council applauded the decision. “It was the very least the government could do,” said a spokesman, adding that that the embargo “should be a lesson to people about the risks of doing business with overseas companies.” A spokesperson at the United States Assn. of Importers of Textiles and Apparel countered that the action was action “pointless, without merit and just plain mean.” Since most imported textiles are apparel, a lot of upholstery fabric suppliers felt confident in late December that the embargo would not impact their business, stating that they typically have some goods held at the end of the year, which then are released on Jan. 1. Some of these companies were surprised to learn when they arrived back at work after the holiday last week that the goods had not been released on Jan. 1 but will be held till Feb. 1 and then trickled out incrementally over a period of months. " Here's a Reuters background article on the end of textile quotas are here. The NYT and WSJ have covered the story repeatedly, but they're hard to link to. One of the points made by Bill Lewis in The Power of Productivity, which I wrote about here, is that India's restrictions on the size of apparel factories has made the industry much less efficient than China's.http://www.dynamist.com/weblog/archives/001560.html