China Trade

Tough talk on textiles

Ever since 1977, when the U.S. began importing men's knit shirts, men's and women's trousers, other apparel and textiles from China in large quantities, the volume has been rising sharply. During the first eleven months of last year, China sold $827 million worth of textiles to the U.S., up 30% from 1981. The country ranks as the fourth-largest textile exporter to the U.S., behind Taiwan, Hong Kong and South Korea. Unlike those other three, which have agreed to limit the growth rate of their major textile shipments to 1% per year, China has balked. It argued that, since it runs an annual trade deficit of $600 million with the U.S., it should be allowed a growth rate closer to 6%. That is anathema to U.S. textile producers and labor organizations; they claim that U.S. manufacturers are being undercut by low-wage producers in Asia.

For the past five months, U.S. and Chinese officials have sat through four rounds of discussions in Peking to replace the two-year accord on textile shipments that expired Dec. 31. When the U.S. warned that it would unilaterally impose its own quotas if an agreement could not be reached, Chinese officials promptly threatened retaliation (possibly with cutbacks on imports of American agricultural products). Last week the talks finally collapsed, and the new one-sided quota went into effect. On leaving Peking, Peter Murphy, the chief U.S. negotiator, tried to strike an optimistic note. Said he: "The Chinese are not yet anywhere within a range that we could accept. We remain hopeful that in the end we will reach agreement." This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so viewer discretion is required.