New Sino-US textile talks will be tough to negotiate, says CNTAC
16 Aug '05
2 min read
Sino-US talks this week aimed at defusing months of textile trade tension will prove more difficult than those between China and Europe, an industry group warned.
Sun Huaibin, spokesman for the China National Textile Apparel Council (CNTAC), said the wider range of textile categories involved in the negotiations meant that the talks will not be easy.
"Compared with the limited products involved in the Sino-EU talks, negotiations between China and the US will be tough," he said.
"At this stage, without having settled on basic principles, detailed technical terms are difficult to finish."
Senior US and Chinese officials will meet in San Francisco on Tuesday and Wednesday to negotiate what the office of the US Trade Representative (USTR) said would be "a broad textile agreement".
The meeting was already scheduled to discuss US safeguards imposed against a range of Chinese textile imports, which have soared since global quotas that regulated the trade were scrapped on January 1.
But the talks have now been expanded as the United States seeks to emulate a deal reached by the European Union (EU) with China in June that averted a potential trade war over textiles.
China and the EU eased their tensions when they agreed to limit the growth of imports of 10 Chinese textile products to the EU to between 8.5 and 12.5 percent until the end of 2007.
No such agreement, however, has been struck between China and the US, despite several rounds of talks. The US has instead imposed quotas on seven Chinese textile products and is considering introducing limits on another five.
marketing@alchempro.com
