International Observation: China'S Textile And Clothing Import Market Share In The United States, European Union And Japan

Since 2021, the global economy has continued to recover in fluctuations, and industrial production and trade activities have exceeded the pre epidemic levels. Based on the advantages of vaccine R & D and vaccination, medical security and fiscal and monetary policy space advantages, developed economies such as the United States and the European Union have taken measures to deregulate the economy and make greater efforts to stimulate macro policies. As a result, the restriction of the epidemic situation on economic activities has been weakened, and has become the main engine driving global economic growth. The recovery of residents' employment and income has led to the continuous improvement of consumption ability and confidence. People have returned to shops, restaurants and various cultural places. The recovery of offline contact consumption, tourism, retail and other service industries has been significantly accelerated. The return of social scenes to the outside world has been accelerated, and the willingness to consume clothes has been significantly improved. However, Japan's epidemic situation has been repeated from time to time, the Industrial Differentiation and recovery has intensified, the supply bottleneck still exists, and the role of the Olympic economy in promoting economic recovery is limited. The macro policy space is also relatively limited, the residents' consumption is difficult to change and the consumption demand for textiles and clothing has declined.

In 2021, the overall performance of the U.S. economy is good, residents' clothing consumption is strong, and the import demand of textile and clothing products grows well. According to OTEXA data, from January to October, the total amount of textiles and clothing imported from the United States (excluding masks and protective clothing, the same below) totaled US $93.51 billion, a year-on-year increase of 25.6%, and a sharp increase of 50.1 percentage points over the same period of last year. China still ranks first in the import market, but its share has declined. From January to October, the amount of textiles and clothing imported from the United States was US $25.79 billion, an increase of 23.9% year-on-year, a sharp increase of 58.9 percentage points compared with the same period of last year, accounting for 27.6% of the import market share of the United States textile and clothing in the same period of last year, and decreased by 0.4% and 5.9% respectively compared with the level before the epidemic in the same period of last year and the same period of 2019. Vietnam, India, Bangladesh and Indonesia ranked second to fifth in the import market respectively. However, affected by repeated outbreaks of the mutant virus and supply interruption, the market shares of Vietnam and Indonesia in the United States were 14% and 3.9%, respectively, down 1.3% and 0.5% compared with the same period of last year; India's market share in the United States rose to 8.6%, 1.2 percentage points higher than the same period last year.

Figure 1: import market share of textiles and clothing in the United States

Data source: OTEXA

Driven by the improvement of vaccination rate and the improvement of the epidemic situation, the economic growth of EU has accelerated since the second quarter. With the reopening of the epidemic situation after the blockade of the epidemic, the driving force of private consumption has increased significantly. The pull rate of household expenditure on GDP growth in the third quarter reached 2.1 percentage points, the recovery of residents' consumption accelerated, and the import demand of textiles and clothing exceeded the level before the epidemic. According to the data of Eurostat, from January to August, the value of textiles and clothing imported from 27 EU countries was US $80.62 billion, a year-on-year decrease of 11.9%. The growth rate was 20.7 percentage points lower than the same period of last year, but increased by 7.8% compared with the level before the epidemic in 2019. Among them, due to the sharp decrease in import demand for epidemic prevention materials, the scale of imported textiles and clothing from EU has been significantly reduced. The import amount from January to August was 26.39 billion US dollars, a significant decrease of 36.6% year on year, but still increased by 16.4% compared with the level before the epidemic in 2019. As a result, China's share of the EU textile and clothing import market fell by 18.9 percentage points from the historical high of 51.7% in the same period of last year to the normal year level of 32.7%, and increased by 2.4 percentage points compared with the same period in 2019. In addition to China, Bangladesh, Turkey, India, Pakistan and other major import market shares remained generally stable. From January to August, the import market shares of textiles and clothing in the EU accounted for 12.8%, 12.8%, 5.7% and 4.6%, respectively, which increased by 0.9%, 2.3%, 0.9% and 0.6% respectively compared with the same period of last year. However, the supply chains of Bangladesh and India are still in the stage of gradual recovery due to the impact of the epidemic, The market share is still lower than 1.5 and 0.5 percentage points before the epidemic in 2019, respectively.

Figure 2: EU textile and clothing import market share

Source: Eurostat

The epidemic situation in Japan has not been effectively controlled. In January, April and September, the core economic zone entered into an emergency situation for three times. Factors such as repeated deterioration of the epidemic situation, downturn of manufacturing industry, downturn of service industry, shortage of chip supply and other factors continue to prolong the recovery time of economy. The pulling action of "Olympic economy" is very limited. Affected by the rising global inflation pressure, the rising prices further weaken the real purchasing power of residents, and it is difficult to reverse the weak trend of domestic consumption, and the import demand of textiles and clothing has declined significantly. According to Japanese customs data, from January to October, Japan imported 27.9 billion US dollars of textiles and clothing from the world, a year-on-year decrease of 5.5%, and the decline rate was 1.1 percentage points higher than that of the same period of last year. Among them, China's imports of textiles and clothing amounted to 15.79 billion US dollars, a year-on-year decrease of 8.8%, a decrease of 9.9 percentage points compared with the same period of last year, accounting for 56.6% of Japan's import market, down 2% compared with the same period of last year. The main import markets remained relatively stable, but the scale of textiles and clothing imported from Vietnam shrank significantly. From January to October, the import value was only 3.48 billion US dollars, a year-on-year decrease of 11.9%, and the market share decreased by 0.9% to 12.5% from 13.4% in the same period of last year; The import volume to Malaysia, Cambodia and Bangladesh increased significantly. The import volume from January to October increased by 70.4%, 6.7% and 13.7%, respectively, and their market share increased by 1.4%, 0.4 and 0.6 percentage points compared with the same period of last year.

Figure 3: import market share of Japanese textiles and clothing

Source: Japan Customs