The European Union's trade chief vowed on Tuesday to stand by next month's liberalisation of the global textiles and clothing market, the prospect of which has brought US pressure on China to limit its exports. The expiry of a decades-old quota system on January 1 is expected to bring a flood of cheap Chinese textiles and apparel into the world market, endangering jobs in developing nations and challenging producers in both Europe and the United States.
"Our first responsibility is to make sure that we maintain the prize of liberalisation in this sector," European Trade Commissioner Peter Mandelson told a news conference.
"The removal of quotas is ... a tremendous achievement and advance for the international trading system, and I don't intend to do anything to diminish that prize or put that advance in jeopardy."
China responded this month to concerns over the big bang, which have been voiced mostly in the United States, announcing that it will impose a tax on some textiles and clothing exports.
China made 17 percent of the world's textiles and clothes in 2003, but the World Trade Organisation (WTO) sees that market share rocketing above 50 percent within three years after the import quota system ends on January 1, 2005.
Smaller producers such as Bangladesh and Mauritius, many of which have thrived on quotas guaranteed to them by rich country importers, fear they will be driven out of business by more competitive big producers in China and India.
Mandelson said it was important that the changes do not send shockwaves through the trading system, and in particular that "weak and vulnerable countries are not sent reeling".
He said the EU had set up a special monitoring system for textiles from China and was working on guidelines for triggering the imposition of emergency import restrictions.
Beijing agreed to a special safeguard when it joined the WTO, allowing other members to restrict textile and apparel imports from China in response to market-disrupting increases until 2008.
The EU has so far avoided suggestions that it would readily resort to safeguard measures, but in the United States textile producers have filed a dozen petitions asking the Bush administration to impose emergency quotas on certain clothing from China next year.
The WTO estimates that clothing from China could make up half of all US apparel imports once the quotas disappear, up from about 16 percent in 2002.
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