BOSTON — “2004 was a year of intensive activity for the National Textile Association and for our members individually as the industry readied for the end of the 30-year old quota system,” said NTA Chairman Jonathan Stevens, president, Ames Textile Corporation/Game Time Fabrics.
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The China textile safeguard was the major story in 2004. Restraints that the industry had won on imports of knit fabric, brassieres and dressing gowns were in effect for most of the year. But since they expired in late December, the only safeguard in place is a limit of 42 million dozen pairs of socks. That safeguard will expire in October 2005.
NTA in 2004 joined in a major textile industry group effort to file threat-based China textile and apparel safeguards. The organizations participating in this project each committed scores of hours of volunteer and staff time. We carefully selected the 12 products based on thorough analysis of the verifiable threat of market disruption.
“We are dismayed that a single judge could, after a brief review, enjoin CITA from further consideration of our petitions,” Stevens said. “We have urged the Bush Administration to expedite China textile and apparel safeguards.” At a meeting of the Board of Government of NTA in New York on January 18, the association urged the Bush Administration to:
• pursue a legal strategy to as quickly as possible restart consideration of threat-based safeguard petitions;
• institute a real-time counting system of import data in order to streamline the collection of import statistics necessary to pursue cases based on market disruption; and
• self-initiate safeguards based on market disruption in early 2005.
Looking to other international trade issues, NTA reiterates opposition to the U.S.-Central American Free Trade Agreement (CAFTA) as negotiated.
“Back in November 2003, when CAFTA was being negotiated, NTA told our negotiators the four things we would need to see in the free trade agreement if we were to support it — access to the region for American-made fabrics, no tariff preference levels, no cumulation and a short supply provision at least as restrictive as that in the Caribbean Trade Preference Act (CBTPA) apparel provisions,” Stevens said. “All these points would have been of mutual benefit to the industries in Central America and the U.S. Each point had precedent in other trade arrangements of the U.S. Unfortunately, CAFTA, in its present form, failed on each of these four points.”
Membership expands
NTA has been expanding membership over the past year, so that it is now effectively the largest textile organization. This membership drive is continuing as the members and staff of NTA identify and approach potential members, both textile producers and supporting members.
NTA has grown by adding two new industry sectors. Our Upholstery Fabrics Committee, chaired by Roger Berkley, president and CEO, Weave Corp., has been active in fabric and furniture flammability regulations and monitoring international trade in upholstery fabrics.
Early in 2004, Consumer Product Safety Commission (CPSC) Chairman Hal Stratton encouraged the furniture industry to propose a standard that would make furniture safer from fire. The industry, including NTA, proposed a practical, economic approach that included a 5-second open-flame fabric test and spread the compliance burden among most suppliers.
However, when CPSC’s staff-initiated proposal was presented in October 2004, it was quite different from the industry’s approach, and placed unreasonable requirements on most furniture components, though it did not require that fabrics meet an open-flame standard.
Work is under way to evaluate the agency’s proposal and recommend additional changes that can become the foundation for a technically sound, economical standard that will make furniture safer from fire. The agency is expected to begin a formal rulemaking proceeding on upholstered furniture flammability soon.
The new NTA Textile Bedding Committee brings together three of America’s largest producers of sheets and other bed linens — Dan River Inc., Springs Industries and WestPoint Stevens Inc.
NTA’s Textile Bedding Committee has been actively working with both the California Bureau of Home Furnishings and the Federal Consumer Product Safety Commission (CPSC) on the flammability of bed clothes. The committee has worked with California on developing test methods to evaluate the flammability of filled bedding products, such as comforters and mattress pads and pillows. A formal rulemaking is expected to begin in California soon after a formal precision and bias study of the methods is complete.
The committee is also working with CPSC as it begins to review textile bedding flammability. An Advanced Notice of Proposed Rulemaking was published in the Federal Register on January 13, and comments must be submitted to the agency by March 14.
The Government Procurement Committee is organizing an industry-wide meeting of textile companies to review DoD’s Clothing and Textile procurement activities and establish a formal line of communications with the textile industry. NTA’s members are anxious to review major projects, future funding levels and ways the U.S. textile industry can support our soldiers, sailors, airmen and marines involved in military operations around the world. This new committee is chaired by Robert Goulet of Milliken and Co.
“I’m proud to report to my fellow textile executives that NTA runs a highly efficient operation,” Stevens said. “With a relatively small staff and tightly managed overhead, NTA effectively covers all the major areas of interest and concern to American textile manufacturers.”
Celebrates 150 years
In NTA 2004 celebrated 150 years of serving the American textile industry with our very successful annual meeting in Cooperstown, NY, home of the National Baseball Hall of Fame. On his election as chairman of NTA at that meeting, Jonathan Stevens said:
“In reflecting on the changes in our organization in the last 150 years, I am reminded of the words of several respected and well-known industrial pundits:
• in 1899, Commissioner of the U.S. Office of Patents Charles H. Duell declared, ‘Everything that can be invented has been invented.’
• in 1943, nearly mid century, IBM chairman Thomas Watson said, ‘I think there is a world market for maybe five computers’; and
• in 1968, Business Week predicted, ‘With over 50 foreign cars already on sale here, the Japanese auto industry isn’t likely to carve out a big slice of the U.S. market.’
“As these pronouncements illustrate, we cannot look at the present and be complacent about the future. The NTA owes its longevity, I think, to the great line of textile industrialists who did not become complacent, and its future will depend on those who, like them, responded with enthusiasm to the challenges we face.”
Now we look forward to our 151st Annual Meeting, November 6-8, at the Amelia Island Plantation, Amelia Island, FL. According to James Robbins, NTA vice chairman and president and CEO of Elastic Fabrics of America, “This year’s program will explore how American textile companies can successfully manage the transition to a world without quotas.”
