From: lessgovt@gmail.com   
      
   Where Textile Mills Thrived, Remnants Battle for Survival   
   By Jordyn Holman, Jan. 21, 2024, New York Times   
   In his 40-year career, William Lucas has seen nearly every step in the erosion   
   of the American garment industry. As general manager of Eagle Sportswear, a   
   company in Middlesex, N.C., that cuts, sews and assembles apparel, he hopes to   
   keep what’s left    
   of that industry intact.   
      
   Mr. Lucas, 59, has invested hundreds of thousands of dollars training his   
   workers to use more efficient techniques that come with financial bonuses to   
   get employees to work faster.   
      
   But he fears that his investments may be undermined by a U.S. trade rule.   
      
   The rule, known as de minimis, allows foreign companies to ship goods worth   
   less than $800 directly to U.S. customers while avoiding tariffs. Mr. Lucas   
   and other textile makers in the Carolinas, once a textile hub, contend that   
   the provision — nearly a    
   century old, but exploding in use — motivates retailers to rely even more on   
   foreign producers to keep prices low.   
      
   Defenders of the rule say it is not to blame for a lack of U.S.    
   ompetitiveness. But domestic manufacturers say it benefits China in particular   
   at the expense of American manufacturers and workers.   
      
   “It’s just hard to compete with that,” Mr. Lucas said. “Someone just   
   has to change the law. Someone just has to change the rules.”   
      
   During the pandemic, when e-commerce purchases soared, so did the use of de   
   minimis.   
      
   In the 2016 fiscal year, 150 million packages entered the United States   
   tariff-free under the policy, but by 2023, that figure rose to more than one   
   billion, according to Customs and Border Protection. About half are textile   
   and apparel products.   
      
   A congressional report in June found that Shein and Temu, ultrafast-fashion   
   retailers founded in China, accounted for nearly 30% of the packages coming in   
   under de minimis. (Shein and Temu have said they are open to reworking the   
   exemption.) But while U.   
   S. manufacturers say the rule is one of their biggest challenges, it is not   
   the only one.   
      
   Apparel sales are coming off pandemic highs and have declined. That means   
   fewer orders for the remaining operators in the Carolinas. Bryan Ashby,   
   president of Carolina Cotton Works of Gaffney SC, said that a few years ago he   
   had bought equipment to    
   handle higher capacity, but that he noticed in late summer that his purchasers   
   were pulling back.   
      
   Eight textile plants across the Southern U.S. closed between August and   
   December, according to the National Council of Textile Organizations, a   
   lobbying group. In November, one yarn facility in North Carolina attributed   
   part of its demise to the growing    
   use of de minimis.   
      
   “When you have plants that have been open for so long closing, it’s a   
   canary in the coal mine around how policy and the economy are contributing to   
   the economic harm facing the industry,” said Kim Glas, the president of the   
   council.   
      
   Through most of the 20th century, mills in the region were abundant. That   
   started to change in the 1990s after the North American Free Trade Agreement   
   was signed, eliminating U.S. duties on products from neighboring countries,   
   and large multinational    
   companies started to move garment production to Mexico. In 2001, when China   
   joined the WTO, retailers headed to Asia in search of cheap labor to produce   
   their wares. Since 1994, U.S. apparel manufacturing employment has declined   
   65%, according to the    
   Bureau of Labor Statistics.   
      
   The surviving companies are mostly family-run and privately held, consistently   
   steering money back into their businesses to pay for expensive new equipment   
   and automation to remain competitive. Many produce items for the U.S.   
   military, which requires    
   some clothing to be American made, or for companies whose stated mission is   
   just that. In 2022, just 2.9% of the apparel sold in the United States was   
   made domestically, according to the American Apparel and Footwear Association.   
      
   Halsey Cook, CEO of Milliken, a 159-year-old manufacturer in Spartanburg SC,   
   that makes items like military apparel, car floor coverings and merchandise   
   for Patagonia and Carhartt, said that because of de minimis, the textile   
   industry was “feeling the    
   pain in a new way.”   
      
   “That garment industry largely had already gone overseas,” he said. The   
   surviving U.S. textile manufacturers have adjusted to the realities of free   
   trade agreements, Mr. Cook said, but the huge growth in the use of de minimis   
   “has just completely    
   opened up and undermined that system.”   
      
   In cotton fields, ginneries, yarn mills, dye facilities and cut-and-sew shops   
   in the Carolinas, conversations get animated when they turn to trade law,   
   which hangs over the work being done.   
      
   Parkdale Mills, one of the country’s largest yarn makers, has a plant in   
   Gaffney, S.C., that handles only cotton. Men ferry bales of cotton on   
   forklifts, and automated equipment cleans the cotton and transforms it into   
   spun yarns that can be made into    
   fabric. Many employees at Parkdale have worked there for decades, and Davis   
   Warlick, the executive vice president, greets his workers on the floor with   
   warm familiarity.   
      
   “We’re trying to create more jobs,” Mr. Warlick said after a tour of the   
   400,000-square-foot facility. But he said he and his employees remained   
   fearful. “All of that is threatened daily by one bad, ill-informed decision   
   on Capitol Hill. And all    
   this goes away and they don’t understand it.”   
      
   The garment industry is among the most price-sensitive, and retailers will   
   jump on opportunities to save any money that they can.   
      
   “When you erode any aspect of the supply chain, it hurts everybody,” Ms.   
   Glas of the National Council of Textile Organizations said. That includes U.S.   
   farmers and those who work with them, she added.   
      
   Tatum Eason knows this well. She owns Enfield Cotton Ginnery in eastern North   
   Carolina, which cleans hundreds of bales of cotton for farmers in the   
   surrounding community. She flushes out the debris and other impurities within   
   the cotton without charge,    
   and earns money by selling the cotton seed that comes out during the cleaning.   
   (That cotton seed is later used for cottonseed oil and feeding cattle in the   
   United States and tilapia fish in Saudi Arabia, she said.)   
      
      
   [continued in next message]   
      
   --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05   
    * Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)