The mission of the United States Industrial Fabrics Institute (USIFI) is to build a strong coalition of US fiber, fabric, and end product manufacturers and to serve member company interests both domestically and internationally. Learn more.  USIFI member companies must:

• be incorporated
• have business headquarters or significant manufacturing in the United States
• service or supply the United States specialty fabrics industry with products

USIFI is part of the not-for-profit  Industrial Fabrics Association International (www.ifai.com), the global association for the specialty fabrics industry.

Two-and-a-half-year mission in Washington D.C. ends in victory for military tent makers/supply chain

(Roseville, MN – January16, 2012) At a time when President Obama and his administration are on a new mission to repatriate American manufacturing jobs, the U.S. Industrial Fabrics Institute (USIFI) recently scored a victory for the textile industry.

USIFI is the manufacturing segment of the Industrial Fabrics Association International (IFAI), and has a long track record of fighting policy decisions that kill American manufacturing jobs--semper vigilans.

This mission began two-and-a-half years ago when a surprise reinterpretation of the Berry Amendment was announced by the Defense Logistics Agency (DLA) saying that military tents could be constructed with components made offshore. That subtle interpretive phrasing would curtail American companies, and was contrary to the spirit of the Berry Amendment, (USC, Title 10, Section 2533a), a law which requires the Department of Defense to give preference in procurement to domestically produced, manufactured, or home grown products. Congress originally passed domestic source restrictions as part of the 1941 Fifth Supplemental DoD Appropriations Act in order to guarantee a domestic source for products needed during war.

Michael Froman, President Obama's deputy national security adviser for international economic affairs, and U.S. Trade Representative Ron Kirk this week said that a U.S.-EU free trade agreement is among the options to be discussed in a newly launched exploration on how to deepen bilateral trade and investment ties between the two sides in order to stimulate economic growth and jobs.

“We will be exploring options ranging from 'TEC plus' to a potential FTA with an open mind toward seeing what is feasible and what would have the greatest impact on our economic relationship,” Froman said during a Nov. 29 press briefing following the Transatlantic Economic Council (TEC) meeting.

He said U.S. positions in the working group, like all U.S. trade policy, will be determined through an inter-agency process. Part of that process would include outreach to stakeholders, both Froman and Kirk said. This will include working with Congress, the private sector, and labor and environmental groups, Froman said.

Froman chairs the TEC along with EU Trade Commissioner Karel De Gucht, who also co-chairs the new working group established under the TEC to examine ways to deepen bilateral economic ties. Kirk is the U.S. chair of that working group.

In a Nov. 30 speech to the Chamber of Commerce, Kirk also signaled that an FTA would be among the options the group would explore when said the two sides agreed that “everything would be on the table.”

He said that does not mean the two sides will be launching an FTA, but that they have agreed to have an “open and honest dialogue” about all options.

If something is not achievable, the two sides will acknowledge that as well, Kirk said. According to Kirk, the working group builds on the outcome of the TEC which has developed joint principles on information and communication technology services this year as well as working on good regulatory processes.

Kirk said that the two sides also agreed that their efforts at deepening economic ties should not do any harm to the “breadth and depth” of the current U.S.-EU relationship. “Whatever we do, we want to make sure we are not creating barriers to what is already an extraordinary” relationship, he said.

Korean lawmakers ratified the long-pending Korea-United States free trade agreement Tuesday afternoon, November 22, about 50 days after the US Congress approved the deal, using an unscheduled plenary session to do so.  Implementation is expected within several months.

Read the full story here:   http://www.arirang.co.kr/News/News_View.asp?nseq=122857&code=Ne3&category=4  

America's $29 billion specialty fabric business soon could lose jobs to companies in South Korea, an exec fears.

Specialty fabrics serve an array of markets -- everything from awnings to auto airbags to protective gear for soldiers and firefighters. Unlike apparel textiles, the U.S. specialty fabric business has continued to grow, but according to industry trade associations it may now be threatened by the new Korea-U.S. free trade agreement (KORUS).

Read the full Star Tribune article here: http://www.startribune.com/business/134143553.html

Yes! Weekly, Eric Ginsburg, November 9, 2011

USIFI Board of Directors member Bret Kelley is quoted extensively in this article.

With a double-digit unemployment rate in Guilford County, a grassroots movement about economic inequality called Occupy Wall Street growing around the country, a recent city council campaign and a presidential election approaching, everyone seems to be talking about jobs.

On Oct. 18, President Obama spoke in Jamestown to promote his American Jobs Act.

A week before, Congress passed a free trade agreement with South Korea in a rare show of bipartisan unity, with supporters claiming the agreements would increase exports and jobs. Obama said the agreement, known as KORUS, would create 70,000 US jobs.

The Department of Commerce’s International Trade Administration stated that the decreased tariffs would boost North Carolina’s computers and electronic, manufacturing and agricultural industries.

But the textile industry doesn’t buy the hype, and many people connected to textiles are saying the free trade agreement will deal a heavy blow to the industry and could cause massive job losses.

“The administration and congress are saying job creation is the No. 1 agenda item, and then they turn around and pass this jobs-killing act,” said Auggie Tantillo, director of the American Manufacturing Trade Action Coalition. “There’s a massive disconnect, in our opinion.”

Tantillo and other textile representatives aren’t the only ones who think the industry will take a hit. Public Citizen, a consumer advocacy group, says nearly 58,500 North Carolina textile jobs will be threatened by KORUS — far more than any other industry in the state — and that the biggest losses would be in reps. Howard Coble and Brad Miller’s congressional districts in and around Greensboro.

The evidence of the textile industry’s long arc of decline can be found throughout North Carolina, especially in Greensboro, which was once considered the nation’s textile capital. Smokestacks still loom against the skyline, though many mills have been reduced to rubble. What happened to this industry, the lifeblood of so many communities throughout the region, the people and equipment that used to grow old in the mills together?

The early history

The textile industry dates back to the Industrial Revolution in England, with jobs eventually being relocated to the colonies in pursuit of lower labor costs, initially settling in the Northeast. When workers began to unionize and fight for better conditions, the industry was lured to the “new South” after the Civil War by a low cost of living, unorganized workers, a plentiful source of cotton and a network of streams and rivers in North Carolina’s piedmont that could power the mills.

Though they weren’t the first to build textile mills in Greensboro, the Cone family created a textile empire in the city beginning with the Proximity plant in 1896 and Revolution Mill three years later. In 1912 the company opened its fourth mill, and by 1920 it was the city’s largest employer: One out of every seven residents worked in Cone Mills.

The industry continued to grow. Burlington Mills moved their headquarters to town in 1935 and Guilford Mills, founded in 1946, opened a plant in 1950. The massive growth came at a price for North Carolinians, especially those working in the mills.

“We’ve used a history of coerced or poorly compensated labor as a drawing card for industry [in North Carolina] forever,” said Guilford College history chair Alvis Dunn.

The industry followed a pattern of what many critics call a “race to the bottom” for wages and standards, helps explains why many manufacturing jobs later moved overseas.

Mill owner Ceasar Cone would have strongly disagreed, as he did to the state’s labor commissioner in 1898. “We believe the cotton factory employees are all well satisfied and about the best paid people in the state,” Cone said. “Just let the mills and their employees work together as harmonious as in the past and present.”

The relationship between plant owners and workers was anything but friendly, though many of the conflicts came later.  Six mill workers were killed during a violent strike in Marion and others in Gastonia in 1929. In 1934, 400,000 workers heeded a nationwide textile strike called for Labor Day, but with many across the state living in company housing like at Cone Mills, workers were evicted en masse and the strike went down as a failure.

Decades later, a 1958 strike in Henderson was marked by bombings on both sides of the conflict.

The conflict was in Greensboro, too. Klansmen and neo-Nazis killed five organizers connected to a textile organizing push in 1979, but struggle between labor and Cone Mills long predated the massacre. Many employees believed that Ceasar Cone would close any unionized plant and evict and blacklist anyone involved. In 1925, James Evans led a successful walk- out at the White Oak plant after their workload was doubled and pay remained unchanged. Five years later he was one of hundreds of workers who created a chapter of the United Textile Workers of America, and he was amongst 40 who were fired immediately.

Author:  Janet Labuda, Vice President of Global Compliance, Vandegrift

November 2, 2011

On October 12th, the 519th anniversary of Christopher Columbus’s accidental bump into the “new world,” Congress enacted three new Free Trade Agreements (FTAs) with Korea, Colombia, and Panama. Although some pundits predict that these new agreements will increase the trade deficit and cause an increase in U.S. job loss, others predict that exports will increase and the market expansion will develop new engines for domestic jobs. Whichever way this “new chapter” in international trade turns out, one thing is certain: the U.S. regulatory agencies will be on the hook to ensure that transactions claiming conditional duty-free benefits under these and other trade preference programs will be in compliance with the requirements.

There is nothing in these agreements that will happen by accident.

An analysis of the vote shows that 44 members of the House Textile Caucus—or slightly less than two-thirds of the caucus—voted against the U.S.-Korea FTA, as did eight additional House members with textile interests in their districts. These 52 members—consisting of 18 Republicans and 34 Democrats—accounted for roughly one-third of the 151 members who voted against the Korea FTA. A larger share of House Democrats voted against a Democratic president on trade than ever before.

The day following the passage of the FTAs, Senators Kay Hagan and Lindsey Graham introduced the Textile Enforcement Security Act (TESA), aimed at saving textile jobs and enhancing enforcement of the trade preference programs as it relates specifically to textile imports. The House version of the bill was introduced in August 2011 and has 19 co-sponsors.

Congressional textile caucus members and the domestic textile industry are concerned about the abuse and misuse of these preferences by countries not party to the agreements. In addition, they are concerned that regulatory agencies do not have the resources to ensure compliance with these programs. As such, the Office of the U.S. Trade Representative, U.S. Customs and Border Protection, and the Departments of Labor and Commerce will be expected to closely monitor and enforce the agreements. However, the government can’t do it alone and the trade community needs to play their part.

What does this all mean for the importing community and how can they ensure that legitimate trade and business are not disrupted? In the Korea FTA, CBP has been given the authority to deny entry for goods where a pattern of non-compliance is identified. In addition, as with all FTAs, CBP has the ability to deny claims of preference and often this occurs well after the goods have entered the commerce of the United States. The downstream impact is that importers may be faced with paying duties well after they have made business decisions on sourcing and pricing. It is not uncommon for CBP to deny preference and send bills out for duty owed for a large number of transactions months after the goods have been entered.

Because these agreements have a level of complexity built into obtaining preferences, importers must ensure that manufacturers and producers know that a preference claim will be made when the goods are imported into the United States. Communication between importer sourcing personnel, the buying agents, and manufacturers is critical. Manufacturers must understand that a document trail is a key element of verification by CBP personnel. The inability to produce documents to illustrate the manufacturing process will lead to the denial of preference and a high-risk designation not only for the manufacturer, but also for the importer of record.

The customs house broker is the linchpin in the importing process. The broker is licensed and regulated by CBP to conduct customs business on behalf of their clients, and thus a critical partner in ensuring compliance. When choosing a broker, the importer should ask the following questions:

     •• How long has the company been in business?

     •• How much of their business involves the textile industry?

     •• How much of their business involves trade preference program claims?

     •• What types of resources does the broker have?

     •• How versed are the broker’s resources in preferential trade programs?

     •• What past experiences do the broker’s resources have in international trade? Did they work for a regulatory agency? Did they work in international sourcing?

     •• Does the broker have a compliance department?

     •• Is the broker a member of broker associations, either locally or on the national level?

     •• Does the broker maintain open lines of communication with regulatory agencies?

     •• Does the broker maintain offices in key ports of entry handling trade preference program trade?

     •• Does the broker encourage open and frequent communication?

     •• Is the broker willing to work with your sourcing department to take maximum advantage of the trade preference programs?

Once you are comfortable with the customs house broker, it will be much easier to navigate through the trade preference programs—and there will be few, if any, surprises down the road.

In real estate, it’s all about “location, location, location.” In international trade, “compliance, compliance, compliance” will be the name of the game for the foreseeable future.

Janet Labuda has been a frequent presenter at USAITA conferences. She recently retired from U.S. Customs and Border Protection and is currently the Vice President of Global Compliance for Vandegrift, a freight forwarder and customs house broker and USA-ITA Associate Member. http://www.usaita.com/news/off-the-cuff/624-new-trade-agreements-new-compliance-requirements  

AMTAC staff traveled to Chicago for the latest round of Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) negotiations among the governments of the United States, Australia, Brunei, Chile, Malaysia, New Zealand, Peru, Singapore and Vietnam. The U.S. government held firm on their stance in favor of a yarn-forward rule of origin for textiles and apparel despite strong opposition from other TPP governments. The United States tabled a yarn-forward rule in the previous negotiating round this past July in Vietnam. Most of the other TPP countries as well as U.S. importers and retailers favor a more liberal rule in the form of either a value-based rule or single transformation (assembly only).

AMTAC’s Auggie Tantillo gave a presentation to TPP negotiators on the importance of the yarn forward rule of origin at a stakeholder’s forum on Saturday, September 10. A copy of the PowerPoint presentation is attached. Other domestic industry representatives presented as well, and this forum provided an important opportunity to demonstrate the resolve of the U.S. private sector in preserving yarn forward under TPP. In addition to the stakeholder forum, domestic producers and associations including AMTAC also met separately with TPP government delegations to clarify why yarn forward is so critical in this agreement.

The next round of negotiations is scheduled for October 24-28 in Lima, Peru. This will be an important round as the last session prior to the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) meeting in Honolulu in mid-November. TPP participants originally hoped to announce a final agreement at the APEC meeting. Although it is unlikely that the November deadline will be met, there will be significant pressure to announce a general framework to guide the remaining negotiations in Honolulu. If a general framework does end up being announced in November, AMTAC still expects the TPP negotiations to carry well into 2012.

In addition to AMTAC staff, the following AMTAC members were present in Chicago:

• Kathi Dutilh – Milliken & Company
• Bill Jasper – UNIFI
• Jane Johnson – UNIFI
• Jean Lineberger – U.S. Industrial Fabrics Institute
• Bob Chesebro – Wigwam Mills