In a statement on Friday, CITI chairman Sanjay K Jain said that due to the ongoing trade war between the US and China, the US has hiked additional tariff to 25% on $200 billion imports from China, applicable from May 10, 2019.
The recent US decision to increase additional tariff on imports from China is going to be an opportunity for the Indian textile industry. Under this additional tariff hike, the textile Chapters 50-60 have also been covered, hence India has a big opportunity to increase its exports, said the Confederation of Indian Textile Industry (CITI), the apex body for the sector in the country.
In a statement on Friday, CITI chairman Sanjay K Jain said that due to the ongoing trade war between the US and China, the US has hiked additional tariff to 25% on $200 billion imports from China, applicable from May 10, 2019. The additional tariff hike covers textile Chapters 50-60.
Based on our analysis, it has been observed that Chapters 50-60 which are part of the list of notified $200 billion imports from China and on which additional tariff has been increased to 25% reveals that India is at an advantageous position due to tariff hike on China’s textile products and we must grab this opportunity to increase our share of textiles exports to the US.
Quoting the Office of Textile and Apparel of the US, CITI said that under Chapters 50-60, the US imports of products such as silk, wool, cotton, other vegetable fibres, manmade filaments, manmade staple fibres, nonwovens cordage, floor coverings, special woven fabrics, coated and industrial fabrics, knitted fabrics from China were valued at $3.959 billion in 2018, while imports of these same products from India were pegged at $1.707 billion.
The CITI chairman mentioned that the value of above-mentioned textile products is approximately $3.96 billion in 2018 which is only 2% of the US’ notified $200 billion imports from China. Whereas, the US’ total imports of these textile products from India is approximately $1.71 billion in 2018, which is 43% of the US’ imports from China. Out of the total textile products, cotton textiles account for the largest number of tariff lines (520 at 10 digit level).
In terms of value, the most imported products belong to floor coverings, non-woven cordage and manmade filaments.
According to Jain, the additional tariff hike does not include garments and made-ups segments which means that there will be no additional advantage for the apparel & made-ups exporters from the above development.
The above-mentioned additional tariff hike provides an opportunity for the Indian textile industry to increase its exports to the US, particularly for the products belonging to cotton textiles, floor coverings and manmade filaments categories.
Published On : 18-05-2019
Source : Financial Express
