A textile industry group said it had "guarded optimism" about the outcome of World Trade Organization talks in Hong Kong last week, which focused primarily on agriculture trade issues but also touched on other sectors.
 
"As regards American textiles, the result is mixed," National Textile Association President Karl Spilhaus said in a news release. "We were looking at three major areas of concern to NTA and the other textile industry representatives in Hong Kong, and it appears we had some success in two out of the three."

The National Textile Association primarily represents U.S.-based textile manufacturers and their suppliers. Those companies have been hammered in recent years as competition from abroad, especially China, has driven prices down and forced hundreds of textile plants out of business, sending tens of thousands of textile workers to the unemployment lines. The Triad, a traditional hub of textile manufacturing, has suffered heavily.

The National Textile Association, and other trade groups representing textile manufacturers in industrialized countries, wanted the trade ministers gathered in Hong Kong to recognize textiles as a special sector that would be treated separately from other nonagricultural trade.

While the Hong Kong talks didn't specifically create a textile "sectoral," the program released at the end of the meeting "recognizes that WTO members are pursuing sectoral initiatives," Spilhaus said. "This gives us something to build on."

The National Textile Association also wanted to limit the inclusion of textiles in duty-free trade for least-developed countries. Though those countries, which include nations such as Bangladesh and Cambodia, got the duty-free concessions they were seeking, the agreement gives the United States some flexibility, as 3 percent of products imported from those countries can be excluded from duty-free access.

The National Textile Association also sought to have other countries' textile and apparel tariffs set at levels similar to the relatively low U.S. levels. But trade ministers instead went with a proposal that allows countries to have different tariff levels depending on how highly developed they are. So poorer, less developed countries would be permitted to set higher tariffs.

That, Spilhaus said, could limit U.S. textile manufacturers access to foreign markets.

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