Business | The textile industry

The great stitch-up

Restricting Chinese textile exports will only rebound on America and Europe

|brussels, delhi, hong kong, paris and washington, dc

IT TAKES a lot of chutzpah to plead lack of preparation when a development has been ten years in the making. That, however, is precisely what western clothing manufacturers are doing. This January saw the end of the decade-long phase-out of a quota system that had protected the world's biggest textile markets—America and the European Union (EU)—from cheap imports, largely from Asia, for 40 years.

This article appeared in the Business section of the print edition under the headline “The great stitch-up”

A song for Europe

From the May 28th 2005 edition

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