TEXTILES.ORG
National Council of Textile Organizations (NCTO) president and CEO Auggie Tantillo testified as a witness at the office of the U.S. Trade Representative’s (USTR) public hearing on proposed China 301 tariffs in Washington, D.C. May 17.
“The U.S. textile industry strongly supports the Trump administration’s Section 301 case to sanction China’s rampant intellectual property rights (IPR) theft,” Tantillo said. “The U.S. textile industry urges the Trump administration to include textile and apparel end products in any Section 301 retaliatory tariff action against China.”
Tantillo said that China’s predatory, illegal trade actions, including IPR theft, have contributed to the loss of millions of U.S. manufacturing jobs, including hundreds of thousands in textiles.
China’s domination of global textile markets has clearly been aided by its theft of IP rights, he said. “From the violation of patents on high performance fibers, yarns and fabrics to the infringement of copyrighted designs on textile home furnishings, China has gained pricing advantages through blatantly illegal activities. Putting 301 tariffs on Chinese textile and apparel exports would send a long overdue signal that these predatory actions will no longer be tolerated,” Tantillo concluded.
In addition to Tantillo’s hearing testimony, NCTO and the Industrial Fabrics Association’s U.S. Industrial Fabrics Institute (USIFI) and Narrow Fabrics Institute (NFI) submitted a joint 24-page statement for the record as part of USTR’s public comment process on the China 301 tariff issue that closed on May 11.
NCTO is a Washington, DC-based trade association that represents domestic textile manufacturers.