TRANSATLANTIC MEETING URGES EQUITY IN INTERNATIONAL TEXTILE AND CLOTHING TRADE

On 17th and 18thJanuary 2002 representatives of the textile and clothing industries of the USA, Canada, Mexico, the European Union and Turkey met in Washington D.C to review prospects for international trade in textiles and clothing following the launch of the WTO Doha Development Agenda in November 2001.

Organisations present at the meetings were: American Textile Manufacturers Institute (ATMI), Canadian Textiles Institute (CTI), Camara Nacional de la Industria Textil de México (CANAINTEX), the European Apparel and Textile Organisation (Euratex), and the Turkish Clothing Manufacturers Association (TCMA). The companies in membership of the above associations together currently employ in excess of 5 million workers.

To rectify the massive imbalance in export opportunities and in the application of WTO disciplines as between the open markets of the developed world and the closed markets of major exporting nations in the developing world, and in Asia in particular, representatives agreed to pursue the following objectives with their respective government authorities:

· To obtain within WTO genuine opening of a number of large potential markets in Asia and elsewhere which are at present almost totally closed, in response to the efforts already made by developed countries and Mexico. This will involve substantial tariff reductions and bindings on the part of those closed countries, together with the abolition of non-tariff barriers (additional taxes and levies, import certification and licensing, etc.) · To make no concessions in respect of the implementation of the Agreement on Textiles and Clothing (ATC) beyond those for which the agreement itself makes clear provision, and which are in any case respected to the letter by the developed world. · To avoid any weakening of safeguard, anti-dumping and anti-subsidy instruments, which, as of January 1st 2005 and the complete elimination of textile and clothing quotas under the ATC system will constitute the only remedies against unfair trade practices. · To further rectify the above mentioned imbalance, and as a matter of simple equity, the de facto moratorium for developing countries on infringements of Intellectual Property Rights within the TRIPs agreement must be brought to an end at the next WTO Ministerial Conference in 2003. The current situation is a clear encouragement to companies in third countries to indulge in counterfeiting and in the piracy of designs and models. · To develop and enforce effective measures to eliminate fraud and transhipment that is an over-frequent occurrence with in textile and clothing trade. This phenomenon not only seriously damages companies and creates job losses on the markets targeted, but is detrimental to the interests of bona fide exporters to those same markets.

The industries of the above-mentioned countries have also agreed that they will follow-up this first discussion with a series of further meetings. The objective of this transatlantic alliance is to achieve the objective of equity in international textile and clothing trade through full integration of the developing countries into the world trading system.