Posted April 6, 2016

 

Editor’s note: In advance of the National Council of Textile Organization’s 13th Annual Meeting, eTextileCommunications.com caught up with Jeff Price, chairman of NCTO and president of Milliken & Company’s Specialty Fabrics Division, Spartanburg, S.C. His responses to questions submitted by eTC’s Devin Steele are below. The council meets April 12-14 in Washington, D.C.

 

eTC: Jeff, what it has meant to you to serve as NCTO chairman this past year and to lead the industry in such a high-profile role as it continues to increase its visibility and viability?
 

Price: It has been a privilege to serve as NCTO’s chairman this past year. I must admit that the past 12 months were more intense than I ever thought possible, especially as the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) negotiations drew to a close and other key policy initiatives were being debated. Having been associated with this industry for more than 37 years, I am honored that the U.S. textile industry allowed me to serve in this key role at such a critical time in Washington, D.C.

 

eTC: I guess you can call this year “eventful,” given that negotiations were concluded for the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP), a matter on which the council has worked diligently for several years. After NCTO worked with the administration and Congress to ensure that certain provisions were included in the final agreement, the individual councils and board voted to support the pact. Can you shed some light on the general feeling of members during and after the debate?

 

Price: It was certainly a lively, but very healthy and transparent debate within NCTO. Legitimate concerns were raised and I believe everyone within the organization recognized that the agreement is by no means perfect. With that said, when we studied the agreement in a universal fashion, we concluded that our key objectives were satisfied. These goals included:

 

• a strong yarn-forward rule of origin for the vast majority of products;

• reasonable duty phase-outs (10-12 years) for most sensitive products;

• overall provisions that will maintain a stable Western Hemisphere production chain; and

• customs provisions that capture the critical enforcement aspects of previous agreements.

 

Noting these achievements, I believe that most members feel that NCTO did an admirable job of navigating what is probably the most important policy issue to confront our industry in 20-plus years.  

 

eTC: Please tell my readers something about the TPP that they may not already know.

 

Price: If you do a side-by-side comparison with other recent U.S. free trade agreements, the domestic textile provisions in TPP are significantly better in a number of key areas. For example:

 

• Under TPP, 52 percent of Vietnam’s exports to the United States have a tariff phase-out period of 10 years or longer. By comparison, the last trade agreement with a major textile and apparel-producing country, the U.S.-South Korea FTA (KORUS), granted 86 percent of Korea’s textile and apparel exports duty-free treatment on day one and 96 percent by year five;  

• In contrast to NAFTA and CAFTA, TPP has a much more limited number of cut-and-sew exemptions; and

• TPP also does not include a generic tariff preference level (TPL) that would have allowed for a designated quantity of imports to gain duty-free access outside the rule of origin. The NAFTA, CAFTA-DR, Bahrain, Chile, Morocco and Oman FTAs all included TPLs.

 

eTC: NCTO President Auggie Tantillo recently speculated that a congressional vote on TPP might occur during a lame-duck session in late November or early December.  What work must NCTO do to ensure that its agreed-upon provisions are left intact whenever the agreement comes up for a vote?