Clothing-makers called on the Trump administration Monday to forgo placing 25% tariffs on $300 billion worth of goods imported from China, arguing the action wouldn’t protect the domestic industry since it widely uses supply chains that include China.
The comments came as the administration began the first day of public hearings at the U.S. Trade Representative’s Office in Washington, D.C., on President Trump’s tariff plans, which would effectively put all goods imported from China under a 25% rate.
Marc Schneider, representing Kenneth Cole Productions, said that while earlier tariffs on Chinese goods put in place by the administration were premised on stopping Beijing’s practice of forced technology transfers, that rationale doesn’t exist for the apparel industry. Sewing fabrics together doesn’t involve trade secrets, he noted, so the tariffs raise the costs of making goods without providing a corresponding benefit.
“Additional 25% tariffs would have a devastating impact,” Schneider said, arguing that his company, retailers, industry employees, and consumers would all be forced to make up the difference. Buying the materials domestically is not an option, he said, as the industry long ago shifted to using imports to contain costs. “It is not feasible to move our supply chain to the U.S., as the infrastructure to support it no longer exists,” he said.
Representatives of federal agencies to hear the testimony pressed the businesses and trade groups testifying on whether it was truly the case that there was no option but to import from China. A State Department official asked Jean Kolloff, testifying for Quinn Apparel Inc., if only China could provide the cashmere her company uses to make sweaters. Mongolia also exports cashmere, the official noted.
Kolloff responded that the Mongolian cashmere was of lower quality. “The goats in Mongolia are primarily brown and black,” she said, but U.S. consumers are used to brighter colors for cashmere sweaters, which means her company has to use white wool, which can be dyed. And that wool mainly comes from China.
The hearings were the next step in the administration’s effort to ratchet up pressure on China to make trade concessions. In late April, the White House and Beijing appeared close to a deal to resolve the trade disputes, but talks broke down in early May amid accusations that China was trying to walk back concessions it made earlier in the talks. That prompted the White House to raise existing tariffs on $250 billion worth of Chinese goods to 25% across the board, up from 10%, and to institute similar tariffs on a further $300 billion worth of goods.
That would effectively put all Chinese imports under the same rate. Groups that were previously able to convince the administration to make exclusions for particular products that are rare outside China now face the prospect of getting tariffs on those goods anyway.
No talks between the countries are scheduled, and prospects for future ones are dim. A meeting was initially scheduled between Trump and Chinese President Xi Jinping at the G-20 summit in Japan on June 28, but both sides have since downplayed the possibility of a meeting, and it is not clear if the two leaders will meet at all. Trump has said he’ll decide on whether to follow through with the tariffs after the G-20 event.
