Reducing Barriers to Trade Between the United States and the Least Developed Countries: A Congressional Policy Forum

On January 1, 2005, all WTO members eliminated their long-standing global quotas on textile and apparel products. The end of the quota regime is expected to have major ramifications for the global textile and apparel trade. Under the quota regime, many smaller developing countries were able to develop textile and apparel industries. With the elimination of quota restrictions, industry analysts predict that China and three or four other countries will come to dominate textile and apparel production. Larger, industrialized developing countries are expected to gain their market share at the expense of poorer developing countries (for example, Nepal, Sri Lanka, and Bangladesh). Such an outcome will likely result in significant economic and political turmoil in already distressed regions, and could have serious security repercussions beyond these countries’ immediate borders.

This policy forum was designed to discuss steps that the United States could take to mitigate the adverse impacts of quota elimination on some of the poorest countries in the world. Much of the discussion was focused on pending legislation to extend trade preferences to countries not covered under U.S. regional trade preference programs (such as the African Growth and Opportunity Act (AGOA) and the Caribbean Basin Initiative (CBI)). Speakers at the event included:

• Representative Jim Kolbe (R-8th/AZ)
• Representative Joseph Crowley (D-7th/NY)
• Dr. Muhammad Yunus (Founder of the Grameen Bank)
• Orson Porter (Deputy Director of Government Relations, Nike)
• Kimberly Elliott (Center for Global Development, Institute for International Economics)
• Viji Rangaswami (Carnegie Endowment)
• Katherine Daniels (Oxfam America)