NEW YORK — Textile and apparel executives who gathered last week at a meeting of the reestablished Exporters’ Textile Advisory Committee came loaded with gripes — including complaints about the North American Free Trade Agreement and GATT.
While they lauded the group’s commitment in helping them to find export opportunities, the lamentations began almost from the outset of the two-hour meeting, held at the offices of KPMG Peat Marwick here. The discussion marked the first ETAC meeting since November 1992. The group, which was phased out at the beginning of the Clinton administration, was reestablished in March under the Federal Advisory Committee Act.
The executives’ list of grievances included what they said is the U.S. government’s inability to help them conduct business on equal footing with other countries; a lack of satisfactory credit information, and difficulties in finding suitable sales agents overseas. They even criticized the length and content of the meeting.
Rita Hayes, deputy assistant secretary for textiles, apparel and consumer goods at the U.S. Commerce Department, opened the meeting by urging companies to “spend more time developing export opportunities.” Almost immediately she was grilled by executives who complained that exporting was far from easy. They cited limited market access to certain countries — primarily India and Pakistan, because of the barriers set up by their governments — along with minimal assistance from the U.S. in solving the many problems of doing business half a world away.
“The problem remains that through both the North American Free Trade Agreement and GATT, we aren’t on an even playing field,” said Mike Peters, director of marketing for Milliken & Co., whose chairman, Roger Milliken, is one of the chief opponents of both treaties. “We are still being hampered by the continued onslaught of goods coming in from the Orient.”
Peters went on to say that market access remains a key issue. “It seems as though everyone can come into our country, but we really have a hard time going to some other places,” he said. “It makes competing globally very difficult.”
Hayes told Peters that she understood his concerns and that it was her hope that the committee and the firms wishing to export “can work as partners to begin to solve those problems.”
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“There’s also the problem of intellectual property,” asserted Stanley Fradin, president of the Rockland Mills division of Rockland Industries, Baltimore. “Once you start going around the world with your products, you never know who’s going to start knocking you off. And I don’t see our government doing an awful lot to help us.”
In an interview after the meeting, Hayes told WWD, “I understand there is a concern with regard to market access and intellectual property, and our government is working on that issue. But that doesn’t mean exporting is a waste of time. The U.S. textile industry is a mature one and the only way it’s going to really grow is through exports.”
She said the Commerce Department is pursuing market access with both Pakistan and India, “and we hope to see some progress very soon.”
Another problem, said executives, is being able to do day-to-day business activities in foreign countries.
“Our association members make the finest knitted goods in the world,” said David Herrick, executive director of the Knitted Textile Association, a group of 165 firms. “The number one problem, however, is finding decent credit information throughout the world. Also, information on sales agents is hard to find.”
“That’s a good point, and I think we should look into it,” Hayes told Herrick. After the meeting, Herrick said these problems exist in Mexico as well as in more distant places.
Rudy T. Masery, Guilford Mills’ export director, also told Hayes, “The State Department really doesn’t have enough top-notch people in Hong Kong to help U.S. companies do business there.”
“We do welcome these kind of comments,” Hayes told him. “It makes it easier for us to try and do our job that way.”
One of the biggest complaints of the meeting was voiced by Gilbert J. Hill, president of Gilbert J. Hill & Associates, an international trade consulting firm out of Minneapolis. “I’ve spent a lot of money and come about 2,000 miles to this meeting, and I think we could devote a little more time here,” Hill told Hayes as she was closing the parley after two hours. “I don’t know about everyone else here, but I don’t stop work at 4 p.m. I think we should be informed ahead of time about what is on the agenda.”
Hayes said the next ETAC meeting will “probably take place during the summer, either in New York or Washington, D.C.”