US Starts Negotiating With Chinese Govt Over Textile Imports

According to a Commerce Department official the Bush administration, concerned about a flood of textile products from China, has begun negotiating with the Chinese government for it to limit exports of those goods, a Commerce Department official said.

U.S. clothing makers have asked the U.S. to set quotas on Chinese-made bras, knit shirts and dressing gowns, and the U.S. is to rule on the request within a month. Still, using that ``safeguard'''' procedure would be slow and cumbersome, said James Leonard, Deputy Assistant Secretary of Commerce for Textiles.

Leonard declined to give any details about the negotiations or what agreement could be reached. Pressed by Congress and industry in the U.S., the Reagan administration prodded Japan to ``voluntarily'''' limit its exports of autos, machinery and other goods to the U.S. in the 1970s and 1980s.

Commerce Secretary Donald Evans and U.S. Trade Representative Robert Zoellick are scheduled to travel to China in the coming weeks. Evans has said he will be pressing the Chinese leadership to live up to its commitments in the World Trade Organization to lower tariffs and barriers to investments.

Chinese sales of textiles to the U.S. rose 63 percent to $3.15 billion in 2002, data from the Commerce Department show. They are on the way to exceeding that total this year, and representatives of U.S. companies say that a worldwide agreement to end restrictions on textile trade in 2005 could leave China as the only producer of textiles in the world.