In between, he meted out five rules that helped Bassett stay in business, interspersing anecdotes and humor throughout. In a nutshell, those rules are:

 

1. Have a positive attitude. “If you don’t think you’re going to win, you are going to lose,” he said. “America has to get this mindset. We need to believe in this country again. We (Vaughn-Basset) had become quitters, and we had to turn that attitude around.”
    

2. Have strong leadership. “It’s got to start at the top, guys,” he said. “When everyone is running for the fences, somebody has to get up and lead. I told my supervisors, ‘don’t ever show fear. If you have fear in your eyes, they will have fear in their hearts.’ It’s up to us, the 1 percent, to lead the 99 percent.”
    

3. Change and improve – again and again and again. “And you have to drive it,” he said. “We’ve got to have the best plants, the most efficient plants and we have to compete against everybody in the world.”
    

4. Don’t panic. “I’ve never seen a good business succeed when there’s panic,” he said. “And panic is contagious. There’s an old Southern phrase, ‘the dance card is filling in.’ Someone once asked me, ‘John, when the dance card fills up, what are you going to do?’ I answered, ‘I’m going to bring my own date!’ Muhammed Ali once said, ‘he can run but he cannot hide.’ And we are not going to hide. They are not as good as they think they are. It’s just like a sports team. You can literally watch the momentum change. Around 2007, we didn’t know the financial crisis was coming, and about that time the Chinese knocked off our best suite. So we reengineered it. I didn’t brow beat our people. But we did it. The Chinese couldn’t believe this. But we did it. And we did it with and because of our people.”
    

5. Have good teamwork and communication. “We proved to our people that they we are part of the team. They learned that we are all in this together. We are extremely close to our people. And guess what? We are the only ones left.”
    

That morning, the group also heard from Joe Nicosia, CEO of Allenburg Cotton Co. and global platform head of Louis Dreyfus Co., who offered an in-depth cotton market outlook; and Dr. Henry Hobbs, region manager, South, Georgia Tech, who presented an insightful look at working with Baby Boomers, Gen Xers and Millennials in a  discussion titled, “Bridging the Generational Divide.”

 

U.S. textiles making ‘maximum impact’ on economy

 

Likewise, the Day 2 general session brought three speakers presenting highly distinct topics. Among them were Auggie Tantillo, president & CEO of the National Council of Textile Organizations (NCTO), who provided an update on the council’s work in Washington, D.C., since his presentation to the group last year. A South Carolina native and Clemson University graduate, he said has seen numerous changes during his time Inside the Beltway.

 

“When I first came to Washington 30 years ago, there were 1.8 million people employed in the U.S. textile sector,” Tantillo said. “Today, we employ 580,000 people. We have gone through some tough times, but we have bounced back. And we are adding employment now. In 2015, the value of shipments for textiles, apparel and manufactured fibers was $76 billion, and we are exporting 35 percent of our product – and people say we can’t compete.

 

“So our job is to help people in Washington understand this: That we’re not making a minimal impact – we’re making a maximum impact – on the U.S. economy.”

 

Capital investment in U.S. textile manufacturing, he added, is up $848 million in last six years, and the industry is investing about $2 billion each year. “We hit rock bottom in 2009 but we’ve been on a steady incline ever since,” he said. “We’re having Chinese companies, Indian companies and Canadian companies coming to the U.S. to make fiber and fabric. Who would’ve ever thought that would happen?”

 

He continued: “We are vibrant, we’re doing the things we need to do, we’re reinvesting in our companies and in our communities. We want these policy positions to be constructed in a balanced way and for people to know that it’s still conducive to make textiles in the United States.”

 

With that, he reminded the audience that the NCTO’s objectives were achieved in language inside the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP), including:

 

• the yarn-forward rule of origin mirrors NAFTA/CAFTA;

• duties for most sensitive items phased out over 10-12 years;

• most sensitive items for the Western Hemisphere covered by yarn-forward and afforded 10-12 year tariff phase-outs; and

• Customs language captures the stronger enforcement provisions from previous agreements.

 

“The NCTO endorsed the agreement in January,” Tantillo said. “That’s something we don’t normally do. Why did we do that? Because these four items didn’t happen by coincidence. Three years ago, we told the administration that if they included these provisions, we would endorse the TPP. We had an administration that was committed to doing a deal and they were going to do it with or without us. We decided they were going to do it with us.”

 

With the TPP now negotiated, the pact is now in the hands of Congress and the governments of the other 11 signatory countries.

 

“A lot of people ask me if TPP is going to pass,” Tantillo said. “Don’t ask me.”

 

He noted that Congress has a limited agenda between now and the general election, with only 30 legislative days scheduled between now and November 8. A lame-duck session is scheduled for late November through mid-December, which is a short window, he said.

 

“Will the newly elected president ask Congress to vote on TPP during the lame duck?” he asked. “How far does Hillary Clinton walk to the left to appease the unions? And, of course, I think Donald Trump is pretty clear where he stands. But that doesn’t mean it won’t happen. It just simply means the ante has been upped and there’s a higher level of uncertainty. If they don’t vote in the lame duck, it could sit for two or three years.”

 

Tantillo went on to provide updates on the proposed Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP) and certain provisions the NCTO opposes, including: the European Union’s favoring a fabric-forward rule of origin instead of yarn forward and the EU’s pushing for access to U.S. military contracts.

 

The best news he covered for the industry, perhaps, was the recently announced Revolutionary Fibers and Textiles-Manufacturing Innovation Institute (RFI-MII) and the NCTO’s newly launched public relations campaign.