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US seeks comprehensive textiles deal with China


Jitendra Joshi
Washington / AFP
08/12/05

The US government said Thursday it would launch talks next week with China to pursue a broad agreement on textiles trade in a bid to defuse months of tension caused by surging Chinese imports.

Senior US and Chinese officials will meet in San Francisco next Tuesday and Wednesday "to negotiate a broad textile agreement", the office of the US Trade Representative (USTR) said.

The meeting was already scheduled to discuss US safeguards imposed against a range of Chinese textile imports, which have soared since global quotas that regulated the trade were scrapped on January 1.

But they will now be expanded as the United States seeks to emulate a deal reached by the European Union with China in June that averted a potential trade war over textiles.

David Spooner, the USTR special negotiator for textiles, will lead a team in San Francisco that will include officials from the Departments of Commerce, State, Labor and Treasury.

"In our numerous consultations with our domestic textile and apparel industries and members of Congress, we heard unambiguous calls for a more comprehensive approach to textile trade with China ," Spooner said.

To strong protests from Beijing , the US government has responded to a clamour for action from US textile manufacturers by slapping limits on several categories of imported Chinese garments.

Following the end of the quota system, total Chinese textile imports to the United States surged 54 percent year-on-year to 5.6 billion dollars in the first quarter, according to US figures.

That has helped stoke the US trade deficit with China to record levels, giving fuel to critics of President George W. Bush's trade policies.

An inter-agency US committee said on August 1 that it was considering limits on an extra five categories of Chinese textiles, in addition to curbs already placed on seven types.

China reacted angrily a couple of days later.

"The move encourages the American textile industry to abuse trade restraining measures against Chinese textiles and is against the free trade concepts of the World Trade Organisation," a commerce ministry spokesman said. But the United States says it is acting fully in step with rules laid down when China joined the WTO in late 2001 that left open the prospect of limitations on trade if Chinese exports were to flood the US market.