Free Trade Advocates Head to Court
U.S. apparel and textile importers are taking their fight for free trade to the courts.
The U.S. Association of Importers of Textiles and Apparel (USAITA) filed a lawsuit on Dec. 1 against the Committee for the Implementation of Textile Agreements (CITA), the government group that decides whether to impose temporary quotas, or safeguard measures, on apparel and textiles coming from outside the United States.
The lawsuit against the interagency group, chaired by the U.S. Department of Commerce, was filed in the U.S. Court of International Trade.
The New York trade group is challenging CITA’s decision to consider safeguard measures on items such as cotton pants and cotton knit shirts based on the future threat of those imports as opposed to an actual market disruption. Laura Jones, executive director of the USAITA, which represents several major retailers and manufacturers, has called the safeguard measures “misguided.”
The lawsuit requests that the court enjoin CITA from considering any of the threatbased safeguard petitions pending a decision by the court on the merits. The government has 10 days to respond to the lawsuit.
With apparel and textile quotas scheduled to disappear on Jan. 1, 2005, CITA last year imposed safeguard measures on three textile and apparel categories: knit fabrics, dressing gowns and bras. Those safeguard measures, which will expire at the end of December, imposed one-year quotas allowing imports from overseas to grow by only 7.5 percent over the previous year. The measures were taken after the industry showed actual disruption.
On Dec. 1, a textile coalition filed a request to extend the safeguard measures on bras for one year. CITA has 15 working days to accept or reject the petition. In November, petitions were filed to extend the import restrictions on knit fabrics and dressing gowns.
In addition, petitions for safeguard measures have been filed for cotton, wool and manmade pants, cotton and synthetic shirts, knit shirts, underwear, synthetic filament fabrics, and combed cotton yarn.
In October, CITA imposed safeguard measures on socks. Domestic sock mills still have about 40 percent of the U.S. market share, down from 76 percent in 1999. —Deborah Belgum
