Turkey & US textile industry to deliberate on NAMA
29 Mar '06
3 min read
The Republic of Turkey's Minister of State Kursad Tuzmen and CEOs from the US textile industry will appear at a press conference to discuss Turkey's proposal for a separate sectoral for textiles and clothing in the ongoing WTO Doha Development Round's Non-Agricultural Market Access (NAMA) negotiations.
The Republic of Turkey formally submitted a paper proposing a separate sectoral for textile and clothing products at a special meeting in Geneva, Switzerland on March 23.
Turkey's proposal is the first sectoral proposal that would take into account regional trade preferences in the textile and clothing sector.
During 2005, in apparel categories that were removed from quotas, China increased its market share in the United States from 16 percent to 39 percent and, in the EU, from 27 percent to 48 percent.
The 2005 surge in imports from China mirrored almost exactly a similar surge in 2002 when China was released from a smaller number of apparel quotas.
China's import market share in the 2002 product categories is now 67 percent in the United States and 74 percent in the European Union.
The next highest share is Thailand with 2.5 percent. If China continues at its current pace in the 2005 categories not covered by safeguards, it will reach a 70 percent share of the import market by June 2007.
To demonstrate the sector's economic sensitivity, according to the United Nations COMTRADE Database, global trade in textile and clothing-related products totaled nearly $440 billion in 2004.
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