US drops quotas after textile deal with China

Washington - The US government on Wednesday dropped all pending decisions to impose quotas on Chinese textile imports after the two nations clinched a deal to regulate the trade.

The Commerce Department said all 24 outstanding requests by US industry groups for so-called safeguards on textile imports had been scrapped in light of the agreement reached two weeks ago.

Franklin Lavin, undersecretary of commerce for international trade, said the agreement "establishes conditions on trade in the vast majority of products covered by these cases".

"Based on these considerations, CITA has ended further consideration of all pending textile safeguard petitions," he said, referring to the department's Committee for the Implementation of Textile Agreements.

On November 8, the two countries signed a three-year deal to limit 34 types of Chinese exports of textiles and apparel to the US market, after they had rocketed this year to stoke Sino-US trade tensions.

In the absence of a comprehensive deal, the United States had been resorting to cumbersome quotas, or safeguards, that will now be replaced by caps allowed in the new agreement with China.

One of the US groups that had clamoured for quotas on Chinese textiles, the American Manufacturing Trade Action Coalition, said Wednesday's CITA decision was "appropriate".

"We note, however, that the comprehensive bilateral agreement explicitly reserves the US textile industry's right to pursue safeguard petitions as warranted in the future," AMTAC executive director Auggie Tantillo said. - AFP

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