From The Financial Times (Subscription required):
In the gathering storm in Washington over “unfair” trading by China, there is no more sensitive lightning rod than textiles and clothing – and no US industry is more persistent in demanding government action to stem a flood of Chinese exports.
Listen to the industry and you would think the end of the world had arrived. Since the elaborate global quotas that long restricted trade in textiles were abolished in January, US producers have squealed that overwhelming Chinese competition is devastating their already struggling businesses.
Yet where exactly is the evidence for those claims? Indisputably, imports from China have shot up. According to US data, imports of Chinese clothing were 70 per cent – and of textiles 39 per cent – higher at the end of February than a year earlier. But most of China’s gains have been at the expense of other exporters and often reflect its producers’ decisions to repatriate offshore production in anticipation of the removal of quotas. That the US industry has been harmed is far less obvious. The steady decline in its employment and output has not quickened: the rate of job losses in the first quarter was actually lower than the average since the mid-1990s, while product prices firmed slightly.
