US Apparel Market: Multinational Companies Catch Up With "Made In China"

Xiao Jiang, who lives in New York, bought several items of clothing during the recent US shopping season, and she found that there were "made in China" among them.

In the famous Messi department store in New York, a reporter looked at the trademark before a row of shirt counters, rich in origin, in addition to China, as well as Indonesia, Bangladesh, Vietnam, Peru and other places.

As for the field of clothing, "made in China" mainly occupies the middle and low end market in the United States.

In May this year, a newsletter released by the United Daily News Agency said that shipping data showed that American clothing and shoes

The report said that the share of labor intensive products imported from the United States is weakening. On the contrary, the share of products from Southeast Asia and Central America is increasing.

In addition, the latest data from the Department of textiles and clothing of the US Department of Commerce show that the proportion of clothing products imported from China this year is decreasing in the total import volume of clothing imports in the United States.

According to the data, by the end of October this year, the total amount of clothing imported from the United States accounted for about 37.8% of the total imports of clothing in the United States, compared with 39.2% last year.

Data show that the total import volume of Chinese clothing in the United States increased by 7.4% this year, but this is also a slowdown in the growth of Chinese clothing exports to the United States for second consecutive years.

China News Agency reporters also found that although the Chinese top three garment importing countries listed by the Department of textiles and clothing of the US Department of Commerce, although China still occupies the first place, no country's share growth is less than that of China during this year, and basically surpassed China in varying degrees.

Compared with China's 7.4%, some countries have increased by more than 30%.

At the same time, the unit price of Chinese export clothing is rising.

According to estimates from the Chinese textile and apparel industry, the price of Chinese clothing exports to the United States increased by 20% this year.

The total growth rate has weakened and the unit price has increased. So the Department of textiles and clothing of the US Department of Commerce concluded that Chinese clothing products, as a traditional labor-intensive export item, have been declining in the same import share of the United States.

Instead, Vietnam, Indonesia, Bangladesh, Mexico, India, Honduras, Kampuchea, Salvatore and other 8 countries.

This year, the total import of these 8 home apparel products by the United States has begun to surpass that of China.

The trend of China's declining share of US apparel exports is clearly inseparable from the appreciation of the renminbi and the rise in export prices caused by rising labor costs in China.

This problem also exists in the export of other labor-intensive industries in China, and the textile and garment industry is the representative of these industries. Besides, China's export to the United States has also been affected to different degrees by exporting to the United States this year.

In August, two senior economists from the Federal Reserve Bank's economic research department in San Francisco pointed out in a report that in 2010, the proportion of garments made in China occupied 35.6% of the total market in the United States, while that of garments made in the United States accounted for 24.9%.

This is the only item in the US market that China makes more than that made in the United States.