Mr. President, today I seek recognition to introduce legislation entitled the Cotton Shirt Industry Tariff Relief and Promotion Act. This legislation will strengthen our domestic dress shirt…
Mr. President, today I seek recognition to introduce legislation entitled the Cotton Shirt Industry Tariff Relief and Promotion Act. This legislation will strengthen our domestic dress shirt manufacturers and the pima cotton growers. My bill extends a technical correction that levels the playing field by correcting an anomaly from previous trade agreements that has unfairly advantaged foreign producers and sent hundreds of jobs offshore.
This legislation extends the reduction of duties levied on cotton shirting fabric that is not made in the United States. U.S. law recognizes this lack of fabric availability and has granted special favorable trade concessions to manufacturers in Canada, Mexico, the Caribbean, the Andean region, and Africa. The U.S. allowed shirts to enter this country duty-free from many other countries, while failing to reduce tariffs on those manufacturers that stayed in the U.S. and were forced to compete on these uneven terms. My bill extends the correction of this inequity.
This legislation also recognizes the need to promote the U.S. shirting manufacturing and textiles sectors, and does so through the extension of a Cotton Competitiveness grant program, which is funded through a portion of previously collected duties.
Our country has experienced an enormous loss of jobs in the manufacturing sector. It is critical that our domestic manufacturers are able to compete on a level playing field. My legislation is a concrete step that this Congress can take to reduce the hemorrhaging of U.S. manufacturing jobs.
One group of beneficiaries of this legislation is a Gitman Brothers factory in Ashland, PA. The Ashland Shirt and Pajama factory was built in 1948 and employs 132 workers. This factory in the Lehigh Valley turns out world class shirts with such labels as Saks Fifth Avenue that are shipped across the U.S. Their shirts are made of pima cotton that is grown in the Southwestern U.S., but spun into fabric only by special mills in Western Europe. Gitman must compete against Canadian shirt companies that import the same fabric tariff-free and who can then ship their shirts into the U.S. tariff-free under NAFTA. These workers and their families deserve trade laws that do not chase their jobs offshore.
This legislation enjoys the support of the domestic shirting industry, UNITE, and the Pima cotton association. I offer this legislation on behalf of the men and women of the Gitman factory in Ashland, the domestic dress shirting industry, and the pima cotton growers, so that for them, free trade will indeed be fair trade as well.
