Letter
Week of January 13, 2003
Governors criticize Bush administration
The governors of three major textile-producing states Wednesday assailed Bush Administration’s proposal to phase out tariffs on industrial products, including textiles.
In a letter to President Bush, North Carolina Gov. Mike Easley, South Carolina Gov. James Hodges and Georgia Gov. Roy E. Barnes wrote that “Last year ... you stated that minimizing the impact of future trade deals on the domestic textile industry would be at the top of your administration’s agenda. We are writing because we do not see this commitment reflected in your administration’s decision to call for the elimination of all remaining tariff protection for our American textile industry and workers as part of the ‘Doha Round’ of World Trade Organization negotiations.”
“For too long in international trade agreements, the United States has sacrificed jobs in the Southeast for market access that benefits other parts of the country — and our citizens have received nothing in return,” the letter continued. “Your administration’s proposal threatens to continue that trend by eliminating tariffs without sufficiently addressing unfair trading practices, illegal smuggling and other customs fraud, and non-tariff barriers to trade.”
While your proposal would require other countries with extremely high textile tariffs to lower their tariffs in order to reach parity with the United States, it allows an unfair discrepancy between tariffs to continue for a period of five years, which is too long to wait, the governors wrote.
“Such an approach will not “level the playing field” for our domestic textile industry,” the letter read. “Instead, it could easily write the United States out of the game altogether.”
In a separate letter to U.S. Commerce Secretary Donald Evans, Easley expressed similar concerns.
