The U.S. warns China about unfair textile trade, citing factory closures and rising cheap imports that are hurting local industries.

China's trade practices in the textile and garment industry have drawn a harsh warning from the US, which points to a pattern of non-market measures.

In the last 22 months, 28 US manufacturing plants have shuttered, indicating an increasing burden on US companies, according to the Office of the USTR. China accounted for 21% of the 79.3 billion USD in apparel that the US purchased in 2024.

The USTR wrote in a post shared on X, "They are highlighting the unfair trade practices that are harming the American textile and clothing industry on National Textile Day". China's textile and apparel industry's non-market rules and practices give its domestic producers unfair competitive advantages by allowing them to set artificially low prices for their goods. The US textile and apparel industry has suffered as a result of the closure of 28 mills in the last 22 months.

According to a different USTR tweet, 21% of the $79.3 billion in clothing imports into the US in 2024 came from China. More than 30% of all daily de minimis shipments into the US came from Chinese e-commerce businesses, which flooded their market with low-cost clothing items while avoiding tariffs and trade enforcement procedures. Local industries have been severely damaged by the flood of low-cost clothing, especially in the Southeast United States.