NCTO Launches Video Campaign Highlighting Heroic Healthcare Workers & U.S. PPE Supply Chain; Calls for Strategic Government Plan to Onshore Critical Medical Supplies

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WASHINGTON—The National Council of Textile Organizations (NCTO), representing the full spectrum of U.S. textiles, from fiber through finished sewn products, released an illuminating video and social media campaign today detailing the heroic efforts of U.S. textile manufacturers to supply desperately needed medical personal protective equipment (PPE) at the height of the COVID-19 pandemic. The video features interviews with healthcare workers who confronted a once-in-a-generation health crisis and American textile and apparel executives, who came together to manufacture lifesaving PPE as the pandemic intensified and, once again in 2021, when President Biden issued a call to deliver 20 million American-made face masks for underserved communities in 60 days.

To view the video and Call to Action, please click here.

NCTO President and CEO Kim Glas, said, “Our video, ‘American Textiles: The Story of American-Made PPE,’ underscores the need for urgent government support of a vital domestic PPE supply chain, while also shining a light on an agile manufacturing engine that grew out of the pandemic and is fully capable of supplying our nation’s PPE.  I want to sincerely thank all of our partners who participated in this film and commend the critical domestic textile supply chain that ramped up a thousand times over during the pandemic to respond to the crisis overnight.

These supply chains reconstituted overnight will be predominantly offshored if we don’t get critical policy solutions over the finish line.  There is a sense of urgency to this work and getting this down.  Highlighting this important effort to key policy makers is part of our education campaign.”

Davis Warlick, executive vice president, Parkdale Mills: “Parkdale is proud to be part of the domestic supply chain that provided 20 million reusable, American-made face masks to the administration for underserved communities, in addition to the effort that has produced more than a billion critical medical items since the pandemic began.  This video captures an incredible American story of companies coming together to build a supply chain virtually from scratch to provide desperately needed PPE for our frontline workers and citizens.  By procuring 100% American-made masks, the government put thousands of workers across the United States to work and further proved that the U.S. textile industry has the expertise, capacity, and capability to thrive when given the opportunity.”

Gabrielle Ferrara, chief operating officer and owner of Ferrara Manufacturing: “This film vividly portrays the incredible resiliency of our industry to ramp up and produce critical PPE, delivering it quickly to those who need it the most. This is a story of American innovation and the dedication and teamwork of our manufacturing base and frontline workers, all of which demonstrated true heroism in the face of a once-in-a-generation health crisis. We greatly appreciate the administration’s support of our workforce; the men and women at our facilities were tremendously dedicated in producing millions of masks, gowns, and other lifesaving items. We are also thankful for the strong support and partnership of Workers United/SEIU to help bolster this critical supply chain.”

The National Council of Textile Organizations is asking the U.S. government to take bipartisan action to:

NCTO would like to acknowledge all of the companies involved in this critical supply chain and extend a special thanks to the SEIU/Workers United and their healthcare workers who participated. Please see a list of our partners who made this happen here.

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NCTO is a Washington, DC-based trade association that represents domestic textile manufacturers.

  • U.S. employment in the textile supply chain was 530,000 in 2020.
  • The value of shipments for U.S. textiles and apparel was $64.4 billion in 2020.
  • U.S. exports of fiber, textiles and apparel were $25.4 billion in 2020.
  • Capital expenditures for textiles and apparel production totaled $2.38 billion in 2019, the last year for which data is available.

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Kristi Ellis

Vice President, Communications

National Council of Textile Organizations

kellis@ncto.org  |  202.281.9305

NCTO Issues Statement Following President Biden’s Remarks on Global Supply Chain Crisis; Stresses Importance of Onshoring and Nearshoring

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WASHINGTON—The National Council of Textile Organizations (NCTO) President and CEO Kim Glas issued a statement today following President Biden’s remarks on the global supply chain crisis and stressed the importance of investing onshoring and nearshoring.

National Council of Textile Organizations President and CEO Kim Glas issued the following statement:

We appreciate President Biden’s call to ensure we are building more resilient and reliable supply chains and to invest in our manufacturing industries here at home, in his address earlier today.

There is a reason we got into this mess and there is a reason we have a global supply chain crisis. Years of offshoring production in a race to the bottom –exacerbated by predatory trade practices that have undermined so many manufacturing industries–has led to a tipping point. In fact, it was not too long ago that nurses in New York City and beyond were wearing garbage bags as gowns as our overreliance on Chinese production chains exposed severe fragilities in keeping our health care workers safe during the height of the pandemic.

China’s virtually unlimited and unrealistic pricing power coupled with its subsidies and lack of enforceable environmental standards strips benefits and undermines policy objectives, and leaves us in an untenable situation of overreliance on a foreign supply chain for critical products and raw materials. This must change.

We must hold China accountable for predatory trade practices that have offshored our industries and our jobs. We must onshore and nearshore more textile and apparel production chains out of Asia to the U.S. and also to Western Hemisphere trade partners. This has a multitude of benefits to ensure more reliability in production and also has remarkable job benefits to U.S. manufacturers and our allied trading partners who adhere to higher labor and environmental standards. Further, it will help address the migration crisis and grow better paying jobs.

Now is the time to we need to unlock long-term commitments to source product from the USA and from our Hemispheric partners.  If we moved another 10 percent of global production to the U.S. and the Hemisphere, imagine the benefits that could be achieved.  Ensuring further verticalization and investment in all aspects of the industry, from raw materials to finished products, is good for the American economy and workers in the U.S. and in the region.

Our industry stands ready to help and provide the solutions to onshore and nearshore these production chains that benefit manufacturing workers, the U.S. economy, our Western Hemisphere allies, and consumers.   Further, onshoring and nearshoring these critical production chains has remarkable benefits for the environment and addresses the growing, systemic and alarming issues associated with climate change.

It is critical that supply chains mitigate risks so that we are never in this situation again.  We appreciate President Biden recognizing the value of onshoring these critical production chains and stand ready to work with the administration in these efforts.

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NCTO is a Washington, DC-based trade association that represents domestic textile manufacturers.

  • U.S. employment in the textile supply chain was 530,000 in 2020.
  • The value of shipments for U.S. textiles and apparel was $64.4 billion in 2020.
  • U.S. exports of fiber, textiles and apparel were $25.4 billion in 2020.
  • Capital expenditures for textiles and apparel production totaled $2.38 billion in 2019, the last year for which data is available.

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CONTACT:

Kristi Ellis

Vice President, Communications

National Council of Textile Organizations

kellis@ncto.org  |  202.684.3091

NCTO Issues Statement in Support of Biden Administration’s New China Trade Policy Framework

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WASHINGTON—The National Council of Textile Organizations (NCTO) President and CEO Kim Glas issued a statement today following U.S. Trade Representative Katherine Tai’s speech at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, outlining the Biden administration’s China trade policy.

National Council of Textile Organizations President and CEO Kim Glas issued the following statement:

We support the Biden administration’s plan outlined today by U.S. Trade Representative, Ambassador Katherine Tai, to enforce the Phase One deal with China and maintain tariffs on finished textile and apparel products. We believe it’s important to hold China accountable for pervasive intellectual property theft and persistent predatory trade practices that have undermined U.S. manufacturers and its workforce.

China’s rampant abuse of intellectual property rights and other illegal trade activity has gone on for far too long at the direct expense of U.S. manufacturers and the loss of millions of U.S. manufacturing jobs. The U.S. textile industry supports the president’s authority to use Section 301 to address China’s unfettered practice of intellectual property theft, which has had a damaging impact on the entire U.S. textile and apparel production chain and other manufacturing industries for decades.

NCTO has strongly supported applying tariffs on finished products in our sector as a key negotiating leverage with the Chinese. NCTO also supports a targeted and limited exclusion process for a small list of inputs such as dyes, chemicals and textile machinery that are not available domestically and that enable U.S. manufacturers to compete in the global marketplace.

We also appreciate the administration’s support for strengthening Buy American policies and investing in the U.S. manufacturing base.  We urge the administration to impose duties on finished medical protective equipment (PPE) to support domestic textile companies that have produced over a billion PPE items since the COVID pandemic began. While tariffs aren’t the only mechanism in the toolbox, it’s necessary to ensure a holistic approach to onshoring and nearshoring these critical supply chains, a key priority for the Biden administration and our domestic manufacturers who ramped up production overnight to help in the current crisis.

Finally, we strongly support the administration’s intention to address broader, systemic issues in our trading relationship with China—specifically, the need to remedy unfair advantages that stem from rampant state ownership of manufacturing and the pervasive use of production and export subsidies that displace U.S. textile manufacturers in markets both at home and abroad. 

We appreciate the Ambassador’s thoughtful approach on addressing these complicated matters in a way that ensures that workers and manufacturing sectors are the center of the trade approach with China.

We appreciate Ambassador Tai and the Biden administration recognizing the critical need for a strong resilient manufacturing sector and look forward to working closely with the administration to implement a strategic vision that helps strengthen our middle class.

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NCTO is a Washington, DC-based trade association that represents domestic textile manufacturers.

  • U.S. employment in the textile supply chain was 530,000 in 2020.
  • The value of shipments for U.S. textiles and apparel was $64.4 billion in 2020.
  • U.S. exports of fiber, textiles and apparel were $25.4 billion in 2020.
  • Capital expenditures for textiles and apparel production totaled $2.38 billion in 2019, the last year for which data is available.

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Kristi Ellis

Vice President, Communications

National Council of Textile Organizations

kellis@ncto.org  |  202.684.3091

 

 

Two One Two New York Hosts State Senator Phil Boyle on plant tour and discussion

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Two One Two New York, Inc. (212NY), a well-known and respected PPE, sweater, sweater-knit and apparel manufacturer based in Long Island, N.Y., hosted New York state Senator Phil Boyle at its state-of-the art manufacturing facility on September 9.

Senator Boyle visits 212 NY headquarters in Long Island, NY.

Principle Marisa Fumei-South and Controller Carole Schultz hosted the Senator on a tour of the company, one of the largest fully vertical, women-owned, family- operated textile manufacturers on the East Coast, which expanded its operations to produce PPE during the COVID-19 pandemic, despite shutdowns and an economic downturn that saw many in the industry pull back and idle production.

Fumei-South said she took the opportunity to demonstrate Two One Two New York’s capabilities and capacity housed in an 85,000-square-foot facility in Edgewood, Long Island that produces up to 48,000 dozen sweaters per month.

“They were able to see the production sweaters as well as masks in process for other government contracts. They were impressed with the organization as a whole, the substantial infrastructure and the fact that are positioned to turn quickly at any given time,” she said. “They were appreciative of our dedication to domestic manufacturing, to keeping our employees working and that we’ve remained in New York for over 30 years despite the challenges we face having to compete with imports.”

“We spoke about opportunities that could be generated for Long Island as well as New York and U.S. manufacturers and their respective supply chains as well as concerns we have in regards to policy,” Fumei-South said. “We also discussed the critical and urgent support we need to sustain the robust supply chain that we created during the pandemic before it disappears and how important it is that we keep Americans working.”

Fumei-South said she is looking forward to having follow-up conversations about mandated state procurement for PPE for New York state manufactures.

U.S. Trade Representative Katherine Tai Makes First Visit to Heart of U.S. Textile Industry

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U.S. Trade Representative Katherine Tai made her first trip as the nation’s top trade chief to the Southeast in a one-day visit to two U.S. textile companies where she had a first-hand look at state-of-the-art facilities and met with industry executives.

Ambassador Tai visited Milliken & Company’s Magnolia plant in Blacksburg, S.C. and American & Efird’s plant in Mount Holly, N.C. and gained insight into the opportunities and challenges that exist for the industry.

The Ambassador participated in a Women in Textiles roundtable at Milliken and in a separate Industry Executive roundtable at A&E on September 23.

Industry leaders discussed a wide range of critical topics, ranging from the competitiveness and sustainability of the domestic industry to priority issues in Washington, the critical Western Hemisphere co-production chain, PPE, and Berry Amendment and Buy American policies.

At Milliken & Company, Ambassador Tai said in a short interview with a broadcast station, “I am so impressed by what they are making here, how they are making it under an environmental sustainability program here. I think what I’ve been most impressed by is the pride that folks here have in what they are making.

“I got to model one of the U.S. Olympic jackets just now and putting that on reminds me of the kind of pride that we feel once every four years watching the Olympics. We should feel [that kind of pride] in a company like Milliken every single day.”

Later, at an industry executive roundtable hosted by A&E, Ambassador Tai took note of North Carolina’s $2 billion in textile exports—making it the number one textile-exporting state.

“I understand the A&E Mount Holly plant exports products to 57 different countries,” she said. “As U.S. Trade Representative I am committed to helping A&E and all of your companies build on this success by finding more market opportunities…”

The Ambassador also noted that both the Milliken and A&E plants export a significant portion of their production to such U.S. trading partners as Mexico, Canada and Central America.

“The production linkage with Central America is especially important as the Biden-Harris administration works with our partners in the region to increase economic opportunity in the Northern Triangle counties of El Salvador, Guatemala and Honduras,” she said in opening remarks at the roundtable, noting she was eager to hear from the group of industry leaders at the roundtable about suggestions to further strengthen the co-production chain.

She also gave special recognition to the industry for making “great strides and commitments” in implementing sustainable practices and commended the entire industry for its “heroic” role in answering the call of the nation at the height of the pandemic to ramp up production of personal protective equipment (PPE).

“…Many of you in this room stepped up courageously and reconfigured your production lines to make protective equipment that was in high demand and in short supply. This quick turnaround was nothing short of heroic. And I want to personally thank you for the lives you saved and the people you protected. We do not want to be caught in the same situation twice,” she noted, adding that the Biden administration is committed to learning lessons and determining how it can be more prepared in the future.

In a separate interview with a broadcast station, Ambassador Tai also weighed in on where she sees the future of the industry moving, after hearing from women textile leaders about the significant enrollment of women at North Carolina State University’s Wilson College of Textiles.

“The women that I talked to today talked about the opportunities that they got and wanting to create more opportunities for women and a more diverse workforce. Folks here really believe that the future of this industry is female.”