[Congressional Record Volume 151, Number 38 (Wednesday, April 6, 2005)]
[Senate]
[Pages S3315-S3316]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]

      By Mr. SPECTER:
  S. 738. A bill to provide relief for the cotton shirt industry; to 
the Committee on Finance.
  Mr. SPECTER. Mr. President, today I seek recognition to introduce 
legislation entitled the ``Cotton Shirt Industry Tariff Relief and 
Technical Corrections Act.'' This legislation will strengthen our 
domestic dress shirt manufacturers and the pima cotton growers. My bill 
is a technical correction that levels the playing field by correcting 
an anomaly from previous trade agreements that has unfairly advantaged 
foreign producers and sent hundreds of jobs offshore.
  This legislation reduces duties levied on cotton shirting fabric that 
is not made in the United States. Currently, U.S. law recognizes this 
lack of fabric availability and grants special favorable trade 
concessions to manufacturers in Canada, Mexico, the Caribbean, the 
Andean region, and Africa. The U.S. has allowed shirts to enter this 
country duty-free from many other countries, while we have failed to 
reduce tariffs on those manufacturers that stayed in the U.S. and were 
forced to compete on these uneven terms. My bill will correct this 
inequity.
  This legislation also recognizes the need to creatively promote the 
U.S. shirting manufacturing and textiles sectors, and does so through 
the creation of a Cotton Competitiveness grant program, which is funded 
through a portion of previously collected duties.
  Our country has experienced an enormous loss of jobs in the 
manufacturing sector. It is critical that our domestic manufacturers 
are able to compete on a level playing field. In the case of the 
domestic dress shirt industry, the problem is our own government 
imposing a tariff of up to eleven percent upon the import of fabric 
made from U.S. pima cotton. My legislation is a concrete step that this 
Congress can take to reduce the hemorrhaging of U.S. manufacturing 
jobs.
  One group of beneficiaries of this amendment is a Gitman Brothers 
factory in Ashland, PA. The Ashland Shirt and Pajama factory was built 
in 1948 and employs 265 workers. This factory in the Lehigh Valley 
turns out world class shirts with such labels as Burberry and Saks 
Fifth Avenue that are shipped across the U.S. Currently, Gitman pays an 
average tariff of eleven percent on the fabric it imports to make 
shirts. Their shirts are made of pima cotton that is grown in the 
Southwestern U.S., but spun into fabric only by special mills in 
Western Europe. Gitman must compete against Canadian shirt companies 
that import the same fabric tariff-free and who can then ship their 
shirts into the U.S. tariff-free under NAFTA. These workers and their 
families deserve trade laws that do not chase their jobs offshore.
  This legislation enjoys the support of the domestic shirting 
industry, UNITE, and the Pima cotton associations. I offer this 
legislation on behalf of the men and women of the Gitman factory in 
Ashland, the domestic dress shirting industry, and the pima cotton 
growers, so that for them free trade will indeed be fair trade as well.

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