A New Pattern Is Cut for Global Textile Trade China Likely to Dominate as Quotas Expire
By Peter S. Goodman and Paul Blustein Washington Post Staff Writers Wednesday, November 17, 2004; Page A01
AMPARA, Sri Lanka -- Wild monkeys and Buddhist shrines outnumber any signs of industry, and rampaging elephants are not uncommon. The closest port lies seven hours away, down a rutted road. Yet here in the jungle of this small island nation in the Indian Ocean, the Daya Apparel Export Ltd. factory and others like it churn out pants and shirts for American Eagle Outfitters, A-line skirts for the Gap and bras for Victoria's Secret.
"If I didn't have this job, we wouldn't have enough to eat," said 20-year-old Mohammed Ismail Mazeela, one of 2,000 women from surrounding villages who work at the plant. The $40 monthly wage supports her family in Sammamthurai village, where people walk trash-strewn lanes in bare feet. It buys the electricity powering the lone bulb in her shack, the food her mother cooks over the wood fire on their concrete floor, and schoolbooks for her sister's three children. "There is nothing else here."
Soon there may be even less. On Jan. 1, World Trade Organization rules governing the global textile trade will undergo their biggest revision in 30 years. The changes are expected to jeopardize as many as 30 million jobs in some of the world's poorest places as the textile industry uproots and begins consolidating in a country that has become the world's acknowledged low-cost producer: China.
About $400 billion in trade is at stake, but the implications are greater than the money involved. Since 1974, many developing countries have pinned their economic hopes on a complicated system of worldwide quotas that guaranteed each a specified share of the lucrative textile markets in the United States and Europe. By specifying how many blue jeans or how much fabric an individual country could export, the quotas have effectively limited the amount of goods coming from major producers like China, while giving smaller or less competitive nations room to participate. Capital and jobs followed the quotas, helping countries build an industrial base through textile exports.
full: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A55462-2004Nov16.html
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