Last month, USFIA and the UN Global Compact hosted a roundtable on the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). As corporate sustainability becomes mainstream and awareness of the SDGs grows rapidly, you may be wondering why you should align your program with the SDGs, and what do next. 

Why should you align your corporate sustainability efforts to the Sustainable Development Goals?
The SDGs provide a powerful plan of action for humanity to solve our toughest challenges by the year 2030: poverty, inequality, climate change, and more. Business can and must play a role. The SDGs provide a shared roadmap for all sectors of society from all corners of the globe to work toward the same 17 goals. Companies that are making the SDGs a priority on their strategic agenda are discovering new business opportunities, attracting and retaining employees, gaining efficiencies, and ensuring their license to operate. 

How can the UN Global Compact help you?
As the UN's corporate sustainability initiative, we have the tools & resources, expertise, global reach and local networks to translate the SDGs for business and help you create and implement a sustainability strategy aligned with the SDGs. One of the tools we shared is the SDG Compass. The SDG Compass is a practical, 5-step management model designed to help companies understand, prioritize, set targets, take action, and communicate their core business activities that help achieve the SDGs.

Below, you’ll find a sampling of the UN’s working groups, tools, and upcoming events in New York. 

USFIA Roundtable Materials:

• UN Global Compact Workshop Presentation
• UN Global Compact Presentation on Engaging the Fashion Industry
• Goal 12 Handout
• SDG Workshop Handout

Events:

• 17 July | SDG Business Forum 
• 24 September | UN Global Compact Leaders Summit

Tools & Resources:

• Guide to Traceability in Global Supply Chains
• Code of Conduct and Manual for the Fashion & Textile Industry
• Gender Gap Analysis Tool

Working Groups:

• Water Stewardship Apparel Initiative
• Decent Work in Global Supply Chains
• Science-Based Targets

The UN Global Compact invites you to get more involved and take action by joining as a corporate participant. Contact Claire Kells, Senior Manager of Participant Engagement, at This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. for more information.

Mr. Steve Goes to Washington

In April, Levi Strauss & Co. was among the companies who came to Washington, D.C., for the U.S. Global Value Chain Coalition Fly-In. He wrote about his first time lobbying Members of Congress and staffers to educate them on the impact of policy on American jobs in our industry. Click here to read his blog post on the Levi Strauss & Co. website.

Do you want the chance to speak with your Member of Congress about trade policy? USFIA members are invited to our lobbying day on July 11^th, the day before the Washington Trade Symposium on Capitol Hill. Click here for more information.

PwC’s Trade Intelligence Asia Pacific for April/May 2018

USFIA Premier Partner PwC has published its bimonthly trade intelligence on the Asia Pacific region. This issue covers topics including details on New Zealand’s new Customs & Excise Act, customs valuation rulings in Taiwan, and “on-the-spot” export and reimport in Vietnam. Click here to download it.

Calendar of Events

July 11 (Washington, D.C.): USFIA will host our lobby day on Capitol Hill. The lobby day will be followed by a networking reception hosted by Barnes & Thornburg, with support from GEODIS USA. For information about the lobby day, contact Sarah Raney at This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. or 202-419-0444.

July 12 (Washington, D.C.): USFIA will host the Washington Trade Symposium on Capitol Hill.

July 13 (Washington, D.C.): The USFIA Board of Directors will meet. RSVP to Samantha at This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it..

July 18 (Online): Save the Date! USFIA and USFIA Premier Partner PwC will host a webinar on what’s next for the Trans-Pacific Partnership.

July 26 (Online): USFIA and USFIA Innovation Partner Bamboo Rose will host a webinar, Trade Wars, Tariffs, & Natural Disasters: Mitigating Retail Risk.

November 6-7 (New York City): Save the Date for the USFIA annual conference and member meeting in New York City. We’ll announce more details in August.

November 8 (New York City): The USFIA Board of Directors will meet.

Millennials. Gen-X. Baby Boomers. The Silent Generation. Once, these generations were in agreement about the need for American internationalism. More recently, however, doubts have begun to surface among the younger generations. Speakers an event at the Cato Institute, The Clash of Generations, discussed the differences in policy opinions among the four oldest generations right now—Millennials (1981-1996), Gen-X (1965-1980), Baby Boomers (1946-1964), and the Silent Generation (1928-1948)—and the impact on American internationalism and policy, including trade.

Dina Smeltz, Senior Fellow at the Chicago Council on Global Affairs, said foreign policy used to be an area where most Americans were in agreement, but since 2001, there have been widening partisan opinions, as well as generational divisions. The Chicago Council released a new study on this trend, focusing on generational attitudes toward U.S. engagement in world affairs, support for maintaining U.S. military superiority, and views on trade and globalization. While the majority of Americans consistently favor active U.S. engagement in world affairs, each generation is less likely than predecessors to support active U.S. engagement; sometimes, this difference split Millennials from older Americans; at other times, Millennials and Gen Xers both differ from prior generations. The Silent Generation views trade as beneficial for the economy, consumers, and job creation at much higher rates (79 percent, 82 percent, and 66 percent, respectively) than Millennials (73 percent, 80 percent, and 54 percent, respectively). However, it’s important to note that younger generations are actually more supportive of free trade agreements than older ones, with 62 percent of Millennials expressing support for NAFTA and 63 percent for the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP), while among the Silent Generation, 45 percent support NAFTA and 58 percent support TPP. (The entire study is available here.)

Will Ruger, Vice President of Research and Policy at the Charles Koch Institute, noted that as more people challenge the status quo of foreign policy, it’s interesting to see how the opinions of the generations will impact policy. For example, Millennials are less likely than older generations to think it’s important to maintain superior military power worldwide, friendlier to cutting defense spending, and less likely to see the United States as threatened by other world powers. It remains to be seen whether Millennials will pursue a new approach to foreign policy, a less militarized version focused more on engagement in the world through diplomacy and trade.

Trevor Thrall, Senior Fellow at the Cato Institute and Associate Professor at George Mason University, said the study reveals the differences that exist between generations, but the next step is discovering why the differences exist. There are several hypotheses that are part of the answer. First, as people age, they tend to become more engaged in what is happening in the world. Second, period events may lead to either more engagement, or a step back from engagement, temporarily, and older generations are generally less concerned about period events than younger ones. Third, social and demographic changes and cohort effects can have an impact.

So, where does this lead us? Should the United States take an active role in world affairs, and what does that role look like? Smeltz said very few of the survey respondents said the United States should have no leadership role, and while opinions do differ on how the United States should be engaged, the consensus is that there will continue to be engagement. Most importantly, concluded Ruger, it’s important to continue to have an open discussion with all generations.

Click here to read the study from the Chicago Council on Global Affairs.

USFIA Communications Coordinator Molly McNulty contributed to this report.

May is World Trade Month, and it certainly was a busy one for those of us in Washington, D.C., who care about U.S.-China trade relations and the need to reduce barriers to trade. Keep reading for more about our advocacy and media efforts to talk about the importance of this trade relationship for U.S. jobs and our work to keep textiles and apparel off the list of products subject to new tariffs.

For anyone interested in trade, you already know that during this week, the Office of the U.S. Trade Representative (USTR) held a three-day hearing on the proposal to add new products to a list of products from China subject to tariffs under Section 301 of the Trade Act of 1974. USFIA President Julia K. Hughes testified on Day #2 of the hearing, explaining how trade supports jobs across the global value chain—and how new tariffs would constitute a huge, regressive tax increase on American families. POLITICO PRO covered the debate between the fashion and retail industry and the domestic textile producers, and explained just how many American jobs (1 in 4!) in our industry are supported by imports from China.

The day after we testified, Sourcing Journal published an op-ed by Hughes explaining how new tariffs on China won’t bode well for “skirting” a trade war. (We love a good fashion pun!)

In case you missed any of the comments, the links are below.

• USFIA Testimony
• USFIA Op-Ed in Sourcing Journal
• USFIA Post-Hearing Rebuttal Comments
• U.S. Global Value Chain Coalition Post-Hearing Comments
• Multi-Industry Association Post-Hearing Comments

Hughes also participated in a timely event hosted by the Washington International Trade Association (WITA) featuring U.S. Rep. Rick Larsen (D-WA), who serves as co-chair of the U.S.-China Working Group, and association presidents from the American Chemistry Council, Information Technology Industry Council, Alliance for American Manufacturing, U.S. Grains Council, and of course, USFIA.

Larsen expressed his opposition to the Section 232 tariffs, saying that U.S. trade policy right now is an approach “straight out of the 80s—the 1880s!” He said the United States must be “forward-thinking in setting the rules of trade,” because “we have a lot to lose if we don’t.” He also said we need to get back in the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) because we are losing our competitive advantage to TPP-11 and China. Following his remarks, the other panelists discussed trade and tariffs, and generally agreed that we need to find ways to deal with the China IP challenges, though there was some disagreement on whether tariffs work or not. (You know where we stand!)

While the 301 tariffs seem to be delayed, for the moment, don’t expect this issue to go away any time soon—and definitely don’t expect to see a drastic change in U.S. trade policy or the rhetoric from the Trump Administration about imports and tariffs. We encourage all members to join us in Washington in July to hear from policymakers first-hand and express your concerns with personalized meetings on Capitol Hill. Click here for details and registration.