China still dominates US textile and clothing imports
13/08/2009
US imports of textiles and clothing fell for the first time in seven years in 2008—by 5.2% to 50.4 billion sme (square metres equivalent)—after growing by an average of 8.4% each year between 2001 and 2007, a new report has said.
Within the 2008 total, imports of apparel fell by 2.7%, imports of made-up textiles by 5.4%, fabric imports by 9.3% and yarn imports by 11.1%. Of these four categories, apparel continued to account for the highest share of total imports.
In terms of fibre type, cotton dominated US apparel imports in 2008 with a share of 60.4%. But man-made fibres dominated imports of textile and apparel products as a whole with a 54.6% share.
Import prices rose for a third successive year in 2008, following several years of decline. The rise in 2008 was led by China. By contrast, there were falls in the average prices of imports from Vietnam and India—the US's second and third largest suppliers of textiles and apparel respectively.
The report, Trends in US Textile and Clothing Imports 2009, says China strengthened its lead as the biggest supplier in 2008, in both value and volume terms. However, growth in imports from China slowed to just 1.1% in value terms—and in volume terms imports from China actually fell by 3.6%.
Despite these developments, China's share of the US import market grew slightly in 2008—from 33.5% to 35.1% in value terms and from 40.3% to 40.9% in volume. The fastest growing supplier, however, was Vietnam, which became the US's second largest supplier in terms of value.
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