WASHINGTON—The National Council of Textile Organizations (NCTO) President and CEO Kim Glas issued a statement today following President Biden’s remarks on the global supply chain crisis and stressed the importance of investing onshoring and nearshoring.

National Council of Textile Organizations President and CEO Kim Glas issued the following statement:

We appreciate President Biden’s call to ensure we are building more resilient and reliable supply chains and to invest in our manufacturing industries here at home, in his address earlier today.

There is a reason we got into this mess and there is a reason we have a global supply chain crisis. Years of offshoring production in a race to the bottom –exacerbated by predatory trade practices that have undermined so many manufacturing industries–has led to a tipping point. In fact, it was not too long ago that nurses in New York City and beyond were wearing garbage bags as gowns as our overreliance on Chinese production chains exposed severe fragilities in keeping our health care workers safe during the height of the pandemic.

China’s virtually unlimited and unrealistic pricing power coupled with its subsidies and lack of enforceable environmental standards strips benefits and undermines policy objectives, and leaves us in an untenable situation of overreliance on a foreign supply chain for critical products and raw materials. This must change.

We must hold China accountable for predatory trade practices that have offshored our industries and our jobs. We must onshore and nearshore more textile and apparel production chains out of Asia to the U.S. and also to Western Hemisphere trade partners. This has a multitude of benefits to ensure more reliability in production and also has remarkable job benefits to U.S. manufacturers and our allied trading partners who adhere to higher labor and environmental standards. Further, it will help address the migration crisis and grow better paying jobs.

Now is the time to we need to unlock long-term commitments to source product from the USA and from our Hemispheric partners.  If we moved another 10 percent of global production to the U.S. and the Hemisphere, imagine the benefits that could be achieved.  Ensuring further verticalization and investment in all aspects of the industry, from raw materials to finished products, is good for the American economy and workers in the U.S. and in the region.

Our industry stands ready to help and provide the solutions to onshore and nearshore these production chains that benefit manufacturing workers, the U.S. economy, our Western Hemisphere allies, and consumers.   Further, onshoring and nearshoring these critical production chains has remarkable benefits for the environment and addresses the growing, systemic and alarming issues associated with climate change. 

It is critical that supply chains mitigate risks so that we are never in this situation again.  We appreciate President Biden recognizing the value of onshoring these critical production chains and stand ready to work with the administration in these efforts.

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NCTO is a Washington, DC-based trade association that represents domestic textile manufacturers.

• U.S. employment in the textile supply chain was 530,000 in 2020.
• The value of shipments for U.S. textiles and apparel was $64.4 billion in 2020.
• U.S. exports of fiber, textiles and apparel were $25.4 billion in 2020.
• Capital expenditures for textiles and apparel production totaled $2.38 billion in 2019, the last year for which data is available.

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CONTACT:

Kristi Ellis

Vice President, Communications

National Council of Textile Organizations

kellis@ncto.org  |  202.684.3091

WASHINGTON—The National Council of Textile Organizations (NCTO) President and CEO Kim Glas issued a statement today following U.S. Trade Representative Katherine Tai’s speech at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, outlining the Biden administration’s China trade policy.

National Council of Textile Organizations President and CEO Kim Glas issued the following statement:

We support the Biden administration’s plan outlined today by U.S. Trade Representative, Ambassador Katherine Tai, to enforce the Phase One deal with China and maintain tariffs on finished textile and apparel products. We believe it’s important to hold China accountable for pervasive intellectual property theft and persistent predatory trade practices that have undermined U.S. manufacturers and its workforce.

China’s rampant abuse of intellectual property rights and other illegal trade activity has gone on for far too long at the direct expense of U.S. manufacturers and the loss of millions of U.S. manufacturing jobs. The U.S. textile industry supports the president’s authority to use Section 301 to address China’s unfettered practice of intellectual property theft, which has had a damaging impact on the entire U.S. textile and apparel production chain and other manufacturing industries for decades.

NCTO has strongly supported applying tariffs on finished products in our sector as a key negotiating leverage with the Chinese. NCTO also supports a targeted and limited exclusion process for a small list of inputs such as dyes, chemicals and textile machinery that are not available domestically and that enable U.S. manufacturers to compete in the global marketplace.

We also appreciate the administration’s support for strengthening Buy American policies and investing in the U.S. manufacturing base.  We urge the administration to impose duties on finished medical protective equipment (PPE) to support domestic textile companies that have produced over a billion PPE items since the COVID pandemic began. While tariffs aren’t the only mechanism in the toolbox, it’s necessary to ensure a holistic approach to onshoring and nearshoring these critical supply chains, a key priority for the Biden administration and our domestic manufacturers who ramped up production overnight to help in the current crisis.

Finally, we strongly support the administration’s intention to address broader, systemic issues in our trading relationship with China—specifically, the need to remedy unfair advantages that stem from rampant state ownership of manufacturing and the pervasive use of production and export subsidies that displace U.S. textile manufacturers in markets both at home and abroad. 

We appreciate the Ambassador’s thoughtful approach on addressing these complicated matters in a way that ensures that workers and manufacturing sectors are the center of the trade approach with China.

We appreciate Ambassador Tai and the Biden administration recognizing the critical need for a strong resilient manufacturing sector and look forward to working closely with the administration to implement a strategic vision that helps strengthen our middle class.

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NCTO is a Washington, DC-based trade association that represents domestic textile manufacturers.

• U.S. employment in the textile supply chain was 530,000 in 2020.
• The value of shipments for U.S. textiles and apparel was $64.4 billion in 2020.
• U.S. exports of fiber, textiles and apparel were $25.4 billion in 2020.
• Capital expenditures for textiles and apparel production totaled $2.38 billion in 2019, the last year for which data is available.

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Kristi Ellis

Vice President, Communications

National Council of Textile Organizations

kellis@ncto.org  |  202.684.3091

WASHINGTON—The Biden Administration has awarded a contract for $6.5 million to U.S. Cotton LLC, the largest manufacturer of cotton swabs in the United States, to increase domestic production capability for polyester tipped swabs for home testing kits and mass testing applications to fight the COVID-19 pandemic.  Since the beginning of the pandemic, U.S. Cotton has retooled operations to produce over 400 million COVID testing kit swabs.

The Department of Defense (DOD), in coordination with the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), announced the award today as part of the administration’s broader effort to increase domestic production capability for essential medical supplies.

U.S. Cotton, based in Cleveland, Ohio, said the company will increase its production capacity from 92 million polyester swab tips per month to approximately 371 million polyester swab tips per month by May 2022 to support domestic COVID-19 testing. The DOD contract award was funded through the American Rescue Plan Act (ARPA) to support the domestic industry base expansion for critical medical resources.

John Nims, President of U.S. Cotton said, “We are proud to be involved in a national effort to help deploy these testing kit swabs for the American people. These swabs are designed to make it easier for people at home to self-administer coronavirus tests and will also be used for mass testing applications, which is critically important. We greatly appreciate the collaboration with DOD and HHS to ramp up essential capacity of polyester-based synthetic swabs that will help in the fight against the pandemic.

“We continue to step up to meet our nation’s critical need for American-made coronavirus testing kit swabs on a massive scale. It is an honor to work with our government to help fight this pandemic and use our innovative technologies based here in the United States to fill a national and global demand for testing kits. I especially want to thank Senator Brown and Senator Portman for all their incredible support to help us retool and expand our operations in Cleveland. We can’t thank them enough for their tireless work and also want to recognize their hard working staff. As the Delta variant surges across the country, this timely investment will help in the fight against COVID by adding this much-needed, long-term surge capacity.”

Kim Glas, President and CEO of NCTO, said, “We want to sincerely thank President Biden, the Department of Defense, and the Department of Health and Human Services for leading this critical industrial expansion effort. We appreciate the administration’s commitment to expand the U.S. industrial base for these essential products.  We have a once-in-a-generation opportunity to onshore these critical supply chains long-term and we look forward to working with the administration and Congress to advance long-term solutions.”

The Department of Defense (DOD), in coordination with the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), announced the award today as part of the administration’s broader effort to increase domestic production capability for essential medical supplies.

U.S. Cotton, based in Cleveland, Ohio, said the company will increase its production capacity from 92 million polyester swab tips per month to approximately 371 million polyester swab tips per month by May 2022 to support domestic COVID-19 testing. The DOD contract award was funded through the American Rescue Plan Act (ARPA) to support the domestic industry base expansion for critical medical resources.

John Nims, President of U.S. Cotton said, “We are proud to be involved in a national effort to help deploy these testing kit swabs for the American people. These swabs are designed to make it easier for people at home to self-administer coronavirus tests and will also be used for mass testing applications, which is critically important. We greatly appreciate the collaboration with DOD and HHS to ramp up essential capacity of polyester-based synthetic swabs that will help in the fight against the pandemic.

“We continue to step up to meet our nation’s critical need for American-made coronavirus testing kit swabs on a massive scale. It is an honor to work with our government to help fight this pandemic and use our innovative technologies based here in the United States to fill a national and global demand for testing kits. I especially want to thank Senators Brown and Portman for all their incredible support to help retool and expand our operations in Cleveland.  As the Delta variant surges across the country, this timely investment will help in the fight against COVID by adding this much-needed, long-term surge capacity.”

Kim Glas, President and CEO of NCTO, said, “We want to sincerely thank President Biden, the Department of Defense, and the Department of Health and Human Services for leading this critical industrial expansion effort. We appreciate the administration’s commitment to expand the U.S. industrial base for these essential products.  We have a once- in-a-generation opportunity to onshore these critical supply chains long-term and we look forward to working with the administration and Congress to advance long-term solutions.”

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NCTO is a Washington, DC-based trade association that represents domestic textile manufacturers, including artificial and synthetic filament and fiber producers. 

• U.S. employment in the textile supply chain was 585,240 in 2019. 
• The value of shipments for U.S. textiles and apparel was $75.8 billion in 2019. 
• U.S. exports of fiber, textiles and apparel were $29.1 billion in 2019. 
• Capital expenditures for textile and apparel production totaled $2.5 billion in 2018, the last year for which data is available.

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CONTACT:

Kristi Ellis, VP Communications

kellis@ncto.org  |  202.684.3091

WASHINGTON—The National Council of Textile Organizations (NCTO), representing the full spectrum of U.S. textiles from fiber through finished products, issued a statement today welcoming Senate passage of a bipartisan infrastructure bill that will provide billions of dollars in new spending to revitalize the nation’s roads, bridges and railways and help reconstitute a domestic supply chain for personal protective equipment (PPE).

“We commend the Senate for passing the bipartisan infrastructure bill, which will provide critical resources for our nation’s aging infrastructure and at the same time help incentivize the reshoring of personal protective equipment (PPE) production, an important priority of the U.S. textile industry,” said NCTO President and CEO Kim Glas.

NCTO worked with congressional allies to include a version of the Make PPE in America Act, legislation co-sponsored by Senator Rob Portman (R-OH) and Senator Gary Peters (D-MI), in the infrastructure legislative package. The bill ensures all PPE purchased by the Departments of Homeland Security, Health and Human Services and Veterans Affairs are Berry Amendment-compliant; guarantees long-term contracts (a minimum of two years) to U.S. manufacturers; and creates a tiered preference for PPE made in the Western Hemisphere by our free trade partners using U.S. components, after domestic manufacturing capacity has been maximized.

“We sincerely thank Senator Portman and Senator Peters for working to include their Make PPE in America Act in the infrastructure bill,” Glas said. “This bill will help onshore critical production of personal protective equipment (PPE) by guaranteeing long-term contracts for domestically produced PPE and ensuring that taxpayer dollars are utilized to bolster the federal purchase of American-made PPE.

The U.S. manufacturing industry has produced over a billion lifesaving PPE and other medical products over the last year, as NCTO members retooled production chains in response to the nation’s needs. We will continue to urge the government to purchase Berry-compliant products containing 100 percent domestic content for PPE to help bolster the full U.S. production chain in the future.”

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NCTO is a Washington, DC-based trade association that represents domestic textile manufacturers.

• U.S. employment in the textile supply chain was 530,000 in 2020.
• The value of shipments for U.S. textiles and apparel was $64.4 billion in 2020.
• U.S. exports of fiber, textiles and apparel were $25.4 billion in 2020.
• Capital expenditures for textiles and apparel production totaled $2.38 billion in 2019, the last year for which data is available.

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Kristi Ellis

Vice President, Communications

National Council of Textile Organizations

kellis@ncto.org  |  202.684.3091

WASHINGTON—The National Council of Textile Organizations (NCTO) President and CEO Kim Glas issued a statement today on the Biden administration’s proposal to increase domestic content rules for federal government purchases.

National Council of Textile Organizations President and CEO Kim Glas said:

“The U.S. textile industry, employing nearly 530,000 workers, greatly appreciates President Biden’s commitment to close Buy American loopholes and immediately increase domestic content requirements on purchases.  For far too long, Buy American policies have contained loopholes that have undermined our U.S. domestic industrial base and its workforce.  Today is a positive step forward and we look forward to working with the administration on this critical issue moving ahead. 

We also want to acknowledge the incredible work that Celeste Drake, the administration’s Made in America Director, has completed on this effort.

With today’s announcement, domestic procurement rules would be immediately increased from 55  to 60 percent with the content threshold increasing to 75 percent over phases by 2029. It would also strengthen domestic supply chains for critical goods.

Increasing the domestic procurement threshold for domestic goods under the current Buy American law will bolster domestic production and stimulate more investment in U.S. manufacturing.  We believe it is critical that taxpayer dollars are used to invest in American manufacturing and our workforce. It is essential that we close loopholes in our Buy America laws, expand application and produce coverage of domestic content rules, and close unnecessary waivers that undermine American manufacturing and its workforce.

As part of its efforts this year to buy American, the White House highlights in a Fact Sheet a purchase made by the Departments of Defense and Health and Human Services in March for over 22 million in American-made cloth face masks for communities hit hard by the pandemic.

We commend the Biden administration for the contracts awarded in March of this year for up to 22.2 million Berry-compliant masks. Production of these 100 percent U.S.-made masks has involved an extensive    supply chain comprising 25 domestic companies and 5,000 American workers, and we must continue to build on this success and reshore momentum by continuing to award future contracts using a similar process. Our industry was proud to help fulfill President Biden’s commitment to up 22 million reusable masks made with 100 percent U.S. content.

The U.S. manufacturing industry has produced over a billion lifesaving PPE and other medical products over the last year as NCTO members retooled production chains in response to the nation’s   needs. We have long advocated that 100 percent content is essential and Berry-like rules help bolster the full production chain.

We understand the administration is seeking to backfill the Strategic National Stockpile with essential products and NCTO, with other industry associations and labor unions, has urged the administration to continue purchasing Berry-compliant products for PPE. 

This is essential to bolster our domestic industrial base at a time when PPE orders have diminished.  Further, we believe Berry should apply more broadly to other mission critical products purchased by non-Defense federal departments and agencies like Homeland Security.

COVID-19 revealed the fragility in key aspects of our supply chain, and we believe strengthening our Buy American laws, coupled with other strong policies, will help onshore these and other critical supply chains.

Fully maximizing purchasing of Berry-compliant products moving forward is critical to sustaining and furthering the incredible progress made to date and should be considered as part of the administration’s onshoring and industrial expansion efforts.

Using the provisions of the Buy American Act alone is not sufficient to address U.S. national security needs. Our national security needs must foster investment in the  capital-intensive raw material production processes upstream and downstream production in the supply chain. These upstream production processes are not only essential from an overall domestic capacity standpoint, but they are also the implementation point for a range of advanced technologies such as anti­-viral, anti-bacterial, and other functional fiber, yarns, fabrics, and finishes.

We appreciate the Biden administration’s commitment to closing these loopholes and strengthening domestic supply chains.  We look forward to continuing our work with the administration on these priorities as they consult with key stakeholders on implementation moving ahead.

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NCTO is a Washington, DC-based trade association that represents domestic textile manufacturers.

• U.S. employment in the textile supply chain was 530,000 in 2020.
• The value of shipments for U.S. textiles and apparel was $64.4 billion in 2020.
• U.S. exports of fiber, textiles and apparel were $25.4 billion in 2020.
• Capital expenditures for textiles and apparel production totaled $2.38 billion in 2019, the last year for which data is available.

CONTACT: Kristi Ellis

(202) 684-3091

www.ncto.org

WASHINGTON—The National Council of Textile Organizations (NCTO), representing the full spectrum of U.S. textiles from fiber through finished products, issued a statement today welcoming Senate passage of the bipartisan U.S. Innovation and Competition Act (USICA). As part of the bill’s effort to address overall manufacturing and technology competitiveness issues from the perspective of the U.S.-China relationship, the legislation will help reconstitute a domestic supply chain for personal protective equipment (PPE).

“We commend the Senate for ushering the bipartisan USICA, designed to make the U.S. more globally competitive against China, across the finish line which includes an important provision to help onshore personal protective equipment (PPE) production,” said NCTO President and CEO Kim Glas.

“We sincerely thank Senator Rob Portman (R-OH) and Senator Gary Peters (D-MI) for working to include their Make PPE in America Act in the USICA, a critical priority of the U.S. textile industry,” Glas said. “This language will help onshore critical production of medical personal protective equipment (PPE) by guaranteeing long-term contracts for American-made PPE and establishing a much-need domestic procurement requirement for federal purchases of these essential products. It will ensure that that U.S. taxpayer dollars are utilized to construct and secure a domestic production chain for the manufacture of lifesaving PPE and other essential medical supplies,” Glas said.

NCTO led an industry and labor coalition effort supporting the inclusion of the Make PPE in America Act in the USICA.  The USICA contains the key provisions of the Portman-Peters bill that ensures all PPE purchased by the Departments of Homeland Security, Health and Human Services and Veterans Affairs are Berry Amendment-compliant and guarantees long-term contracts for these critical items to incentivize domestic production.

“While we support the overall USICA package, which includes many items of critical importance to the U.S. textile industry, our industry is extremely concerned about a provision that was added in the eleventh hour that could sidetrack the critical effort to onshore a self-sufficient PPE industry,” Glas added. “This harmful provision would unilaterally suspend normal tariffs and penalties assessed on PPE imports for two years. Doing so would allow China to maintain its stranglehold on the U.S. PPE market, while working at cross-purposes with other provisions of the bill designed to incentivize much needed investment in domestic PPE manufacturing. U.S. manufacturers retooled production and have significant idle capacity.  It is critical that the House of Representatives strike this damaging language if this legislative package is considered.

“Congress and the administration need to keep PPE tariffs in place to support U.S. businesses and workers who abide by higher labor, environmental and production standards.  The industry reconstituted supply chains to help healthcare frontline workers.  Our industry has significant capacity to help meet U.S. medical needs.  This provision is the absolute wrong message to send to American manufacturers and its workforce.” Glas noted.

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NCTO is a Washington, DC-based trade association that represents domestic textile manufacturers.

• U.S. employment in the textile supply chain was 530,000 in 2020.
• The value of shipments for U.S. textiles and apparel was $64.4 billion in 2020.
• U.S. exports of fiber, textiles and apparel were $25.4 billion in 2020.
• Capital expenditures for textiles and apparel production totaled $2.38 billion in 2019, the last year for which data is available.

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Kristi Ellis

Vice President, Communications

National Council of Textile Organizations

kellis@ncto.org  |  202.684.3091

WASHINGTON—A broad coalition of industry organizations and labor unions, representing a broad spectrum of manufacturers and workers who stepped up to make essential personal protective equipment (PPE) throughout the COVID-19 pandemic, sent a letter today to Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) and Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) expressing strong support for the inclusion of robust domestic procurement policies for PPE in the U.S. Innovation and Competition Act (USICA) currently being considered by the Senate.

“Specifically, we urge you to ensure broad government coverage for domestic PPE procurement by extending rules for PPE procurement substantially similar to the Berry Amendment to the federal government’s largest buyers of these products, including the Departments of Homeland Security, Health and Human Services, Veterans Affairs, and Defense,” the coalition states in the letter.

“We thank you for including such a provision in Section 4153 of the USICA, which is substantially similar to the bipartisan Make PPE in America Act (S.1306) introduced earlier this year by Senators [Gary] Peters and [Rob] Portman,” the coalition writes.  “As you consider legislation to respond to the legacy of manufacturing and technology offshoring to China, provisions like Section 4153 are vital to reduce U.S. dependency on China for vital medical supplies.”

“Last spring when our national PPE crisis was on the nightly news showing workers wearing garbage bags as gowns and reusing N95 masks, our severe overreliance on China for PPE revealed the undeniable fact that the lack of U.S. production of PPE is a threat to our national security and the public health of the American people,” the letter states.

However, “despite PPE shortages and supply chain disruptions, American workers stepped in to fill an enormous void. As a result of its sweat and ingenuity, U.S. manufacturing produced over a billion critical PPE items such as face masks, isolation gowns, and testing kit swabs for health care and frontline workers, as well as the American people… For the first time in years, America makes PPE again,” the coalition adds.

“For this trend to continue, however, the coalition stresses that “the emergent U.S. PPE industry needs the purchasing certainty that long-term government contracts can provide.”

“We need a strong, vibrant, redundant wholly U.S. PPE supply chain to help protect us from the next public health crisis. We urge you to ensure that the U.S. Innovation and Competition Act extends domestic purchasing requirements for PPE to the four critical departments with the largest federal purchasing power for these products—DHS, HHS, VA, and DoD.”

See the coalition’s full letter here.

The statement was signed by the following organizations:

• AFL-CIO
• Alliance for American Manufacturing
• American Apparel and Footwear Association
• American Iron and Steel Institute
• American Sheep Institute
• Coalition for a Prosperous America
• Georgia Association of Manufacturers
• INDA: Association of the Nonwoven Fabrics Industry
• Narrow Fabrics Institute
• National Council of Textile Organizations
• Parachute Industry Association
• Rhode Island Textile Innovation Network
• SEAMS: Association of the U.S. Sewn Products Industry
• Service Employees International Union (SEIU)
• Steel Manufacturers Association
• U.S. Industrial Fabrics Institute
• United States Footwear Manufacturers Association
• United Steelworkers
• Warrior Protection and Readiness Coalition
• Workers United

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NCTO is a Washington, DC-based trade association that represents domestic textile manufacturers.

• U.S. employment in the textile supply chain was 530,000 in 2020.
• The value of shipments for U.S. textiles and apparel was $64.4 billion in 2020.
• U.S. exports of fiber, textiles and apparel were $25.4 billion in 2020.
• Capital expenditures for textiles and apparel production totaled $2.38 billion in 2019, the last year for which data is available.

DOWNLOAD RELEASE

Kristi Ellis

Vice President, Communications

National Council of Textile Organizations

kellis@ncto.org  |  202.684.3091