WASHINGTON — Five U.S. textile organizations and the Service Employees International Union have sent a letter to U.S. Trade Representative Ron Kirk urging him to reopen the textile sections of the pending free trade agreement with South Korea.
The organizations said in their letter that the original text of the agreement, negotiated by the Bush administration, favors South Korean producers and would injure U.S. textile and apparel companies and cause substantial job losses. They asked for a longer timeline for the phasing out of tariffs, a tighter rule of origin and adequate customs enforcement in the pact.
Reps. John Spratt (D., S.C.) and Howard Coble (R., N.C.), co-chairs of the House Textile Caucus, sent their own letter to Kirk, calling on the trade chief to revisit and revise the textile provisions in the current trade deal with South Korea.
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“We believe the current agreement will place domestic producers at a distinct disadvantage by allowing a massive flow of highly technical industrial textiles from [South] Korea into the United States with few opportunities for reciprocal export of U.S. products to [South] Korea,” they said in the letter.
South Korea’s proximity to China and the degree of cross investment between the two nations creates special challenges, said Auggie Tantillo, executive director of the American Manufacturing Trade Action Coalition, which signed the agreement along with the National Council of Textile Organizations, the National Textile Association, the U.S. Industrial Fabrics Institute and the American Fiber Manufacturers Association, as well as the SEIU, which includes the Workers United apparel and textile union in its fold.
At the G-20 summit in June, President Obama set a tight deadline for completing the agreement when he directed Kirk to smooth out any remaining impediments to getting the stalled pact approved by Congress before the next G-20 meeting in South Korea in November. South Korea is the eighth-largest shipper of textiles and apparel to the U.S., shipping 447 million square meter equivalents, or $257 million in goods, to the U.S. in the first four months of the year, according to the Commerce Department’s Office of Textiles & Apparel.
In response to the letter, a USTR spokeswoman told WWD: “We are consulting with the textile industry to fully understand their concerns.”
“This is a real test for the Obama administration,” Tantillo said. “They did not negotiate this agreement, but they ran on a platform of wanting to reinvigorate the U.S. manufacturing base and create good middle-class jobs. This is a tangible way to demonstrate that they intend to carry through on those campaign commitments.”