April 1, 2011
By Deborah Belgum, Senior Editor
...“It’s been a mixed bag,” said Julie Hughes, president of the United States Association of Importers of Textiles and Apparel in Washington, D.C., who was attending the Apparel Sourcing Show, held March 22–24. The free trade accord was launched right when apparel quotas were disappearing for Chinese-made goods. Everyone flocked to that super-cheap Asian country until last year, when Chinese apparel workers started drifting away to higherpaying jobs or decided to stay in their hometowns to work in burgeoning service-industry jobs. Only two of the six Central American countries in DR-CAFTA—Honduras and El Salvador—are among the top 10 apparel suppliers to the United States. “CAFTA is holding its own, but they still have a long ways to go,” Hughes said...