Renewed vitality in domestic manufacturing

August 28th, 2023

Since the pandemic, the world economy has been run by anomalies. With a strong labor market, one normally expects higher demand in daily nonessentials such as clothing, home textiles and home accessories; the financial reports of major retailers, such as Walmart and Canadian retailer Loblaws, show that year-on-year sales have increased. But an analysis of […]

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Doing business with China

January 10th, 2022

by Janet Preus I’ve learned a lot about the textile industry during my time at IFAI. I feel especially good about becoming conversant, at least, in the advanced textiles arena. There are other issues of importance to the textile industry, however, where I am fundamentally lost.  Such as international trade. I can ask intelligent questions […]

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Understanding the U.S. trade agenda

November 22nd, 2021

What companies in the advanced textiles industry need to know.  by Janet Preus A panel lead by trade attorney Nate Bolin, partner, DLA Piper, with the Hon. Bill Jackson, asst. U.S. trade representative for textiles, and John Macisso, legal counsel and director of global trade compliance, Albany International Corp., discussed priorities of the Biden administration […]

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U.S./international textile trade

March 22nd, 2021

The top five challenges and opportunities facing the industry in 2021.  by Nate Bolin The list of trade issues facing Washington policymakers in 2021 is long and growing. Indeed, from the ongoing U.S.–China trade dispute, to new trade and investment rules for U.S. manufacturers, importers and exporters, there seems to be no end to the […]

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Trade: Bring in the experts

February 24th, 2020

by Janet Preus I would not qualify as an expert in textile technology, but for topics discussed in our features, I can generally come up with a correlation that makes sense and provides some illumination from a journalist’s perspective. Then there’s international trade. I’m going to have to go way back in my history and […]

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Trade, tariffs and textiles

February 24th, 2020

The impact of the Trump administration’s trade actions on the textile industry. by Lawrence A. Ward and Dave Townsend Textile trade has long been complicated, requiring careful attention to the source and production methods throughout the supply chain to determine whether imports were allowed under quotas, or what tariff rate applied to the imports. Although […]

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Regional supply chains and global trade

January 21st, 2020

According to a recent Behind the Seams article, the regional production and trade network (RPTN) concept says that geographically proximate countries form regional supply chains, with three primary textile and apparel regional supply chains in operation: Asia, European and Western Hemisphere.  In the Asia RPTN, the supply chain dynamic boils down to more economically advanced countries like […]

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The waiting game

October 21st, 2019

Businesses are challenged with making decisions in an uncertain trade environment. by Marie O’Mahony Editor’s note: The issue of U.S. trade is unusually dynamic and evolving today. This article represents information available when the speaker presented at IFAI Expo in early October. With international trade in a state of flux, it’s understandable that the advanced […]

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