NCTO Urges Customs & Border Protection to Examine the Scope of Trade Under de Minimis Waivers and its Impact on U.S. Manufacturing

WASHINGTON, DC – Today, the National Council of Textile Organizations (NCTO) sent a letter to U.S. Customs and Border Protection, calling on the agency to conduct an immediate examination of the trade, economic, and health and safety impacts related to imports that seek de minimis waivers.

CBP recently stated in a Federal Register notice on September 13 that it receives 1.8 million de minimis shipments a day but “faces significant challenges in targeting Section 321 shipments.”

The notice goes on to state the agency does not “receive adequate advance information in order to effectively and efficiently assess the security risk” of those shipments each day.

“We share these fundamental concerns on what is a staggering amount of trade, about which we have virtually no information,” the NCTO letter states.

There has been an explosion in the amount of trade in the current de minimis structure and NCTO believes it is important that CBP release a publicly available analysis outlining the underlying impacts on U.S. manufacturing and our free trade agreement partners.

The full letter can be downloaded here: CBP 321 De Minimis Shipments.

NCTO is a Washington, DC-based trade association that represents domestic textile manufacturers, including artificial and synthetic filament and fiber producers.

  • U.S. employment in the textile supply chain was 594,147 in 2018.
  • The value of shipments for U.S. textiles and apparel was $76.8 billion in 2018.
  • U.S. exports of fiber, textiles and apparel were $30.1 billion in 2018.
  • Capital expenditures for textile and apparel production totaled $2.0 billion in 2017, the last year for which data is available.

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CONTACT: Kristi Ellis

(202) 684-3091

www.ncto.org