U.S. Textile Groups to Seek Quotas on China

U.S. textile producers will ask the Bush administration to impose emergency import quotas on four categories of apparel from China, a textile industry official said.

Lloyd Wood, a spokesman for American Manufacturing Trade Action Coalition, said the industry was expected to file petitions asking for quotas on knit fabrics, gloves, bras, and dressing gowns and robes from China.

The U.S. was required to eliminate import quotas on China in 29 different apparel categories when Beijing joined the World Trade Organization in late 2001.

But as a term of its entry, China also agreed to a so-called safeguard provision that would allow the U.S. to temporarily reimpose quotas if imports surged dramatically.