Editorial - August 2003

The fight goes on to protect textile jobs

Published August 13, 2003

You get an idea of the scope of the problem facing the textile industry when their top officials gather and spout the statistics on lost jobs and trade deficits.

More than 30 textile/fiber industry senior executives from South Carolina, Georgia, North Carolina, Tennessee, and Washington, D.C., including several CEOs,  recently announced a grassroots lobbying campaign in support of the textile/fiber coalition’s campaign to slow the surge of job-destroying Chinese imports.

Roger Milliken, CEO of Milliken & Co., threw out this incredible, but believable figure — nearly 300,000 textile and apparel jobs have been lost since January of 2001 and that number does not even include the job losses from the Pillowtex bankruptcy.  Moreover, the United States ran a $61 billion trade deficit in textile and apparel goods in 2002. 

Millikin and other officials say losses and the trade deficit are caused by policies made in Washington.  That’s why the companies attending this latest gathering in Spartanburg S.C. pledged to hold voter registration drives to make sure that 100 percent of the eligible voters working at their respective companies are registered to vote,.

Smyth McKissick, III, CEO of Alice Manufacturing, said there is a mechanism, the special textile China safeguard, that can slow job-destroying Chinese imports.  “We intend to generate as many individualized e-mails and letters as we can from textile industry employees to the Congress and the President is support of the China safeguard petitions filed on July 24,” he said.

The textile/fiber coalition petitioned the U.S. government to invoke the special textile China safeguard and slow the surge of Chinese imports on knit fabric, dressing gowns, brassieres, and gloves on July 24.

China heavily subsidizes its textile sector, the largest in the world. Over one-third of China's textile output last year came from money losing operations.

Given these circumstances, there’s only so much that can be done. We agree with the opinion expressed by the Durham Herald-Sun in our guest column Monday: The brutal fact is that textiles can be produced much cheaper in  China, Mexico and other low-wage nations than they can be made  here. North Carolina's textile jobs are low-hanging fruit in the global marketplace.

But if pressure can be applied to China as suggested by these textile officials, it should be. And every elected official in Washington who represents the Carolinas and who want to stay in office had better do everything possible to bring that about.

© 2001 Lincoln Times-News  

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