By Deborah Belgum

With a new president in the White House, U.S. fashion manufacturers and retailers said their biggest concerns this year are about new trade barriers going up that would restrict apparel imports.

In a recent study conducted by the U.S. Fashion Industry Association, a Washington, D.C., group that works to eliminate tariffs and non-tariff barriers, nearly 70 percent of executives surveyed rated protectionist trade policies as their top concern, up from No. 10 last year. “Notably, since we began conducting the benchmarking study in 2014, trade protectionism in the United States has consistently been a medium-ranked business challenge [ranking between No. 8 and 11],” the study said. “This year’s ‘abnormal’ result reflects concerns about the unprecedented direction of U.S. trade policy in the Trump administration. These concerns are understandable—from pulling out of the Trans-Pacific Partnership to threatening to levy punitive tariffs on imports from major U.S. trading partners.”

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