USA : Safeguard Action on socks imports from Honduras - AAFA
Kevin M. Burke, AAFA President & CEO wrote to Matt Priest, Chairman Committee for the Implementation of Textile Agreements explaining his views regarding the possible safeguard action on imports from Honduras of cotton, wool, and man-made fiber socks.
Letter goes as follows:
The national trade association of the apparel and footwear industries, and their suppliers – I am writing to provide comments on the above-captioned matter. As you know, the AAFA is an active supporter of a strong U.S./Central American trade partnership.
We were among the first organizations to endorse the planned free trade agreements with the Central American region and were a leading member of the coalition that worked to enact the Caribbean Basin Trade Partnership Act and the U.S./Central American-Dominican Republic Free Trade Agreement (CAFTA-DR). Our members include most of the major textile and apparel exporters to, and importers from, Central America.
Given the importance that the Central American region continues to play for the U.S. textile and apparel industry – both as a sourcing destination and as an export market – our efforts have concentrated on ways to strengthen and deepen trade relationships, and grow commerce, with this region.
We believe the Administration should focus its efforts on achieving this goal as well. As it resolves this matter, the Administration should keep this principle in mind.
At the outset, we wish to stress that we generally do not favor safeguards as an appropriate policy tool. We have opposed a number of previous safeguard actions because we have not felt they were effective or that they would remedy the situation cited by the domestic petitioners.
While we believe it is appropriate to include safeguard mechanisms in free trade agreements – and we supported the inclusion of such a safeguard mechanism in the CAFTA-DR – we believe these mechanisms should be invoked only in extreme circumstances and only after consultations with key stakeholders fail to reach an amicable solution to resolve the underlying issues.
Safeguards should be viewed as a tool of last resort. Moreover, such tools should only be used when (a) domestic industry making the same product for the commercial market petitions for relief, (b) such domestic industry demonstrates injury from the subject imports, and (c) the imposition of the safeguard can be reasonably expected to remedy the injury experienced by the domestic industry.
We urge the Administration to ensure that these conditions are met before moving ahead on any safeguard action including the proposed safeguard with regards to socks exported from Honduras. Safeguards not properly used are a strong deterrent to expanded free trade.
