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Numerous Trade Associations Urge Emergency WTO Meeting on Textile and Apparel Quota Phase-Out

On June 15-17, 2004, trade associations from forty-seven countries attended a meeting entitled "Summit on Fair Trade in Textiles and Clothing," which called on individual governments to request an emergency meeting of the WTO in order to identify solutions to the pending expiration of the WTO textile and apparel quota system on January 1, 2005.

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A letter issued at the conclusion of the meeting states that WTO solutions could include an extension of the current system, the development of a new system or the use of other WTO mechanisms (e.g., transitional safeguard mechanisms).

The letter also called for expedited and effective remedies to all types of unfair trading practices employed by certain major supplier countries, such as currency manipulation, state-sponsored subsidies and state-provided non-performing loans, among others.

The letter ends by asking nations that seek to dominate textile and apparel trade through unfair trade practices, to recognize that the impoverishment of numerous countries throughout the world is not in their own long-term interests.

(See ITT's Online Archives or 06/14/04 news, 04061425, for BP summary of an earlier letter from this group urging the WTO to extend the deadline for its textile and apparel quota phase-out.

This earlier summary also mentioned a U.S. Association of Importers of Textiles and Apparel (www.usaita.com) Textile Development Memo which stated, among other things, that the WTO Agreement on Textiles and Clothing (ATC), by its own terms, cannot be extended, and that any new WTO measures would require a consensus.)

Summit Press Release and letter (communiqu, dated 06/17/04) available at http://www.ncto.org/newsroom/brussels02.pdf

associated document on China's textile and apparel trade (dated 06/15/04) available athttp://www.ncto.org/newsroom/chinarpt.pdf