Apparel exports to US de-accelerate, while those of Vietnam grow

01 Dec '08

1 min read

News emanating from the website of China Ministry of Commerce mentions that the financial crisis has brought about a heavy blow to Chinese exporters and China's apparel exports to the United States in particular is witnessing an accelerated decline.

According to the statistics from Textiles and Apparel Office of the U.S. Department of Commerce, from January to September this year, U.S. apparel imports from the world touched 17.14 billion square meters, a year-on-year drop of 3.26 percent.

Of this, imports from China were 5.792 billion square meters, accounting for 33.79 percent of total U.S global imports from the sector, representing a year-on-year decline of 5.1 percent.

As China's price competitiveness gradually sees a decline, U.S. importers have shifted to more competitive and emerging countries like Vietnam, India and Bangladesh. According to data from the U.S. Department of Commerce, Vietnamese garment exports to the United States reached a total of 1.143 billion square meters in the first three quarters of this year.

This represents a hike of 22.75 percent year on year and accounted for 6.67 percent of all imports from the industry and in the process, Vietnam became the second largest supplier of clothing to the U.S.

Fibre2fashion News Desk - China

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