Numerous Trade Associations Urge Emergency WTO Meeting on Textile and Apparel Quota Phase-Out
On June 15-17, 2004, trade associations from forty-seven countries attended a meeting entitled "Summit on Fair Trade in Textiles and Clothing," which called on individual governments to request an emergency meeting of the WTO in order to identify solutions to the pending expiration of the WTO textile and apparel quota system on January 1, 2005.
Sign up for a free preview to unlock the rest of this article
Timely, relevant coverage of court proceedings and agency rulings involving tariffs, classification, valuation, origin and antidumping and countervailing duties. Each day, Trade Law Daily subscribers receive a daily headline email, in-depth PDF edition and access to all relevant documents via our trade law source document library and website.
A letter issued at the conclusion of the meeting states that WTO solutions could include an extension of the current system, the development of a new system or the use of other WTO mechanisms (e.g., transitional safeguard mechanisms).
The letter also called for expedited and effective remedies to all types of unfair trading practices employed by certain major supplier countries, such as currency manipulation, state-sponsored subsidies and state-provided non-performing loans, among others.
The letter ends by asking nations that seek to dominate textile and apparel trade through unfair trade practices, to recognize that the impoverishment of numerous countries throughout the world is not in their own long-term interests.
(See ITT's Online Archives or 06/14/04 news, 04061425, for BP summary of an earlier letter from this group urging the WTO to extend the deadline for its textile and apparel quota phase-out.
This earlier summary also mentioned a U.S. Association of Importers of Textiles and Apparel (www.usaita.com) Textile Development Memo which stated, among other things, that the WTO Agreement on Textiles and Clothing (ATC), by its own terms, cannot be extended, and that any new WTO measures would require a consensus.)
Summit Press Release and letter (communiqu, dated 06/17/04) available at http://www.ncto.org/newsroom/brussels02.pdf
associated document on China's textile and apparel trade (dated 06/15/04) available athttp://www.ncto.org/newsroom/chinarpt.pdf