By Jasmin Malik Chua |
A nervous energy permeated the Apparel Importers Trade & Transportation Conference at the Fashion Institute of Technology in New York City on Wednesday. It was just over a week after Donald Trump handily trounced Kamala Harris in the polls to become the 47th president of the United States. News of political appointees—both rumored and confirmed—had already been trickling in, including ones that would most impact the textile and apparel industry: Former U.S. trade representative Bob Lighthizer for trade czar, South Dakota governor Kristi Noem for homeland security, former WWE exec Linda McMahon for commerce and Florida congressman Mike Waltz for national security. ...
Prepare to see a lot more people added to the UFLPA Entity List—the so-called “bad guys’ list” of companies with cited ties to the persecution of Turkic Muslim minorities—and increased enforcement of the rebuttable presumption that all goods made in whole or in part from the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region are the product of forced labor and therefore barred from entry, said David Spooner, partner at Barnes & Thornburg and Washington counsel at the United States Fashion Industry Association (USFIA), the trade group behind the event. …
Peals of laughter—albeit some that were pointedly strangled—rang out when Spooner clicked over to a slide that bore just one phrase: Tariff armageddon. “We’re downplaying it, right?” quipped Julia K. Hughes, president of the UFIA. Trump’s proposed tariffs—60 percent on Chinese imports, as much as 100 percent on Mexico’s and 10-20 percent for any other nation that’s been, in his words, “ripping off” America—are a topic that’s been on everyone’s mind. …
Hughes said that a lot of what will happen is hard to predict. Much also hinges on Trump’s nominees and how much shock and awe the administration will want to elicit out of the gate.
Read more on Sourcing Journal“My gut right now says it looks like the administration is looking for how much can we do this big splash on Day 1,” she said. “So that makes me anxious about what might be, what will be on the table. But I think we need to see who are going to be the people in the positions as well, so that we might understand better what the recommendations would be. We don’t have all the answers yet.”