Free Republic

A once-virtuous cycle is breaking down. What now? For decades, the donation bin has offered consumers in rich countries a guilt-free way to unload their old clothing. In a virtuous and profitable cycle, a global network of traders would collect these garments, grade them, and transport them around the world to be recycled, worn again, or turned into rags and stuffing. Now that cycle is breaking down. Fashion trends are accelerating, new clothes are becoming as cheap as used ones, and poor countries are turning their backs on the secondhand trade. Without significant changes in the way that clothes are...

The old textile mills here are mostly gone now. Gaffney Manufacturing, National Textiles, Cherokee — clangorous, dusty, productive engines of the Carolinas fabric trade — fell one by one to the forces of globalization. Just as the Carolinas benefited when manufacturing migrated first from the Cottonopolises of England to the mill towns of New England and then to here, where labor was even cheaper, they suffered in the 1990s when the textile industry mostly left the United States. It headed to China, India, Mexico — wherever people would spool, spin and sew for a few dollars or less a day....

LOWELL -- Last year when Cindy Kryston called city cultural leaders together to discuss Lowell National Historical Park's financial distress, she got a lot of support from Mike Smith. Smith, American Textile History Museum president, told Kryston, the national park's acting superintendent at the time, the park wasn't alone as it battled decreasing visitation, reduced funding and budget deficits. He wasn't kidding. Smith is in the fight of his 34-year professional life to keep the museum solvent, and, hopefully, in Lowell. The museum currently has a $600,000 operating deficit. Its budget has been reduced from about $2.5 million in 1997...

Textile Industry Seeking Job Protection By MARTIN CRUTSINGER, AP Economics WriterWASHINGTON - Shirts, pants, underwear and a lot of other clothes made abroad have arrived in the United States by the bulging boatload since Jan. 1, when more than three decades of quotas ended.   Consumers are rejoicing over the lower prices. But the domestic textile and apparel industry is complaining about the loss of thousands of jobs from what it contends is unfair competition. It wants the Bush administration to move quickly to limit the soaring number of shipments from China. "Time is so critical. The amount of goods...

Final phase of trade pact may doom U.S. textiles Sunday, November 14, 2004 After decades of decline, the once vibrant textile industry that transformed North Jersey into an industrial powerhouse is facing what leaders say could be its death knell.On Jan. 1, the United States and many other countries will remove the last remaining import "quotas" protecting their textile and garment industries by limiting the flow of competing products across their borders.That will allow an unlimited number of wool, yarn, clothing, sheets and other fabric items - most made by workers earning a fraction of American wages - into the...

MAIDEN, N.C. - Steve Dobbins in the past four years has closed 10 plants, laid off 1,400 workers and refocused his textile company on products that won't go toe-to-toe with competition from lower-cost factories in China, India and a handful of other nations. But he's still not certain that Carolina Mills, a company that today employs 1,200 in a 30-mile radius around this small North Carolina town, will survive a massive change in the clothing and textile markets slated for Jan. 1. "We're busting our cans trying to find ways [to compete]. We don't know whether or not we will...

Trade Pact Concerns Textile Industry WASHINGTON - Some Southern lawmakers, anxious to protect their states' struggling clothing and textile industries, fear they may have bartered away their best leverage when they reluctantly voted to broaden President Bush (news - web sites)'s power to negotiate trade pacts. The United States announced this month a trade proposal that would eliminate tariffs over the next 13 years on manufactured goods, including textiles and apparel. The proposal shocked textile businesses and their congressional defenders, including several who agreed to grant Bush trade promotion authority last summer in exchange for renewed protections for textiles, an...

<p>President Bush said Wednesday he has a strategy to help a textile industry whose executives say is on the brink of financial collapse because of foreign competition.</p> <p>But he offered no details, and critics of the administration's trade policies later said the president is long on talk, but short on action when it comes to textiles.</p>