The United States has agreed to consider maintaining quotas on cotton trousers from China, reports "Emerging Textiles", an international textile and clothing information website.
According to "Emerging Textiles," Pakistan and other countries like Egypt, India and Bangladesh would be greatly benefited from any US decision to maintain limits on import of trousers from China.
The report said that the US trade administration accepted examining a petition aimed at maintaining quotas on trouser imports from China. "This is the first time a China safeguard petition is accepted, although based on a future threat and not on an effective surge in shipments," it said.
The US Committee for Implementation of Textile (Cita) announced on Friday that it would consider petition to impose an annual limit on cotton trousers (Cats: 347 and 348) from China. The same body last week announced it would re-impose quotas on sock imports from China.
Beijing strongly denounced this second move in a week. It said that the Chinese government reserved the rights to take further action under the framework of the World Trade Organisation (WTO), said a spokesman for China's Ministry of Commerce.
The US trade administration already re-imposed limits on a small number of products from China under the agreement related to China's WTO accession.
The textile website said that this was the first time a petition only based on a threat of market disruption and not also on effective surge in shipments was considered by Washington.
The US imports of cotton trousers reached 11.3 billion dollars in 2003 or 18.60 percent of the total apparel imports. China was the 24th supplier to the US in the first 10 months of 2004 after imports fell more than 33 percent in volume terms.
The US administration will announce in about three months if it finally decides maintaining a quota.
As another sign of the current swiftness of the US administration, consultations with China were requested last Friday over re-imposing quotas on sock imports.
The official notice was released only a few days after an announcement that a petition related to socks was accepted. As a consequence, the quota period began as soon as last Friday with the US annual limit set at 42.44 million pairs of socks.