Dated:___________

The Honorable George W. Bush

The White House

1600 Pennsylvania Avenue

Washington, DC 20502

Dear President Bush:

Due to an unprecedented flood of imports from China, my livelihood and the future of the American apparel and textile industry as a whole, is on the line. This is why I’m asking you, Mr. President, to protect my job and those of the nearly one million other Americans who work in the textile and apparel industry.

Since January 1, 2002, Chinese imports to the U.S. in 29 recently decontrolled textile categories have increased by more than 400 percent! China has already captured 40 percent of the U.S. market in those categories and will take between 65 and 75 percent by the end of the year.

The surge of low-cost and often illegally subsidized textile and apparel imports has destroyed more than 300,000 textile and apparel jobs since you became President. That number represents nearly 30 percent of the entire textile and apparel-manufacturing workforce in the United States!

Mr. President, if your Administration does not act soon, beginning in mid 2004, a new and even more enormous wave of plant closings and workers layoffs will occur in the country’s major textile areas as orders for yarns, fabrics, home furnishings products, and apparel are diverted to China. My job could very well be one of those that are lost.

On July 24, 2003, the textile/fiber industry filed petitions to invoke the special textile China safeguard on knit fabric, brassieres and dressing gowns. If approved, these petitions would dramatically slow the surge of Chinese imports that are destroying tens of thousands of textile jobs.

Mr. President, I cannot afford to have my government take a half-hearted approach to this problem. Please personally intervene and tell the Committee for the Implementation of Textile Agreements (CITA) that the China safeguard must be invoked if the U.S. textile and apparel industry is to be saved. If you, Mr. President, made a statement supporting the China safeguard petitions, I’m sure CITA will approve them.

I look forward to your response. I hope it is a statement in support of the industry’s China safeguard petitions.

Sincerely,