Since the final customer bears the higher pricing in the end, four significant American trade associations strongly opposed the proposal to impose higher duties on textile products imported from Bangladesh and four other countries.
The American Apparel and Footwear Association (AAFA), the National Retail Federation (NRF), the Retail Industry Leaders Association (RILA), and the United States Fashion Industry Association (USFIA), collectively observed in a letter to David Johanson, chair of the US International Trade Commission (USITC).
The NRF fights for the interests of consumers, brands, laws, and concepts in the retail sector, while the AAFA is the national trade association that represents manufacturers of clothing, shoes, and other sewn goods as well as their suppliers. The USFIA represents retailers, importers, wholesalers, and brands of textiles and clothing that are established in the US and conduct business internationally. The RILA is the trade group for top retailers.
With hundreds of members, the four groups achieve yearly sales of several trillion dollars.
The USITC is looking into the abrupt price increase and the excess supply of clothing coming into the US markets from five countries: Bangladesh, India, Indonesia, Cambodia, and Pakistan. The investigation is being done under the title Apparel: Export Competitiveness of Certain Foreign Suppliers to the United States.
During the commission’s hearing attended by the leaders of the trade bodies, it was said that the US imposes higher most-favoured-nation duty rates on apparel products than nearly any other sector and factors into the cost competitiveness of source countries.
Bangladeshi apparel exporters are facing one of the highest tariffs at 15.62 per cent in the US,
which imported more than US $ 116 billion worth of garment items last year. Bangladesh’s share stands at 9.3 per cent. Bangladesh, India, Indonesia, Cambodia, and Pakistan are, respectively, the third, fourth, fifth, sixth and eighth largest apparel suppliers to the US.
Bangladesh exports products such as denim, woven shirts, woven pants, T-shirts, active fleeces, and basic sweaters to the US. Though garment products are not eligible for duty-free treatment under the generalised system of preferences (GSP), the five countries maintain their competitiveness.
The leaders added that they had seen firsthand how tariffs boost costs for US consumers and businesses rather than for foreign exporters when they were imposed on Chinese goods.
Tariffs are levied as taxes on imports, which are then passed down to consumers. The leaders of the hearing stated that low- and middle-class customers are disproportionately affected by the current tariffs on garments and would suffer even more if there were greater duties on clothing.
If the administration is serious about its desire for US companies to reduce dependencies on any single country, imposing tariffs on other source countries would be counterproductive, they said.
