National Council of Textile Organizations (NCTO) President & CEO Auggie Tantillo testified as a witness at the Office of the US Trade Representative’s (USTR) public hearing on proposed China 301 tariffs in Washington, DC this week.  

“The US textiles industry strongly supports the Trump administration’s Section 301 case to sanction China’s rampant intellectual property rights (IPR) theft,” he said. “The US textiles industry urges the Trump administration to include textile and apparel end products in any Section 301 retaliatory tariff action against China.”

Mr Tantillo also noted that China’s predatory, illegal trade actions, including IPR theft, have contributed to the loss of millions of US manufacturing jobs, including hundreds of thousands in textiles.

“China’s domination of global textiles markets has clearly been aided by its rampant theft of US textile intellectual property.  From the violation of patents on high performance fibres, yarns and fabrics to the infringement of copyrighted designs on textile home furnishings, China has gained pricing advantages through blatantly illegal activities. Putting 301 tariffs on Chinese textiles and apparel exports would send a long overdue signal that these predatory actions will no longer be tolerated,” he concluded.

In addition to Tantillo’s hearing testimony, NCTO and the US Industrial Fabrics Institute (USIFI) and Narrow Fabrics Institute (NFI) submitted a joint 24-page statement for the record as part of USTR’s public comment process on the China 301 tariff issue that closed on 11 May.

NCTO is a Washington, DC-based non-for-profit trade association established to represent the full spectrum of the US textiles sector, from fibres to yarns to fabrics to finished products, as well as suppliers of numerous support services such as trucking, banking, chemicals, and other such sectors that have a stake in the prosperity and survival of the US textiles industry.

US textiles and apparel manufacturers produced US$ 77.9 billion in output in 2017, and the sector’s supply chain employs 550,000 workers from fibre to finished sewn products.

www.ncto.org