January 05, 2024
Us demand for textile and apparel imports has fallen
Since 2023, under the pressure of global economic growth, the contraction of trade activities, the inventory of brand owners is still high, and the risk of international trade environment is rising, the import demand of global textile and apparel key markets has shown a contraction trend. Among them, the United States to the global textile and apparel imports fell particularly significantly.
According to data from the Office of Textiles and Clothing of the US Department of Commerce, from January to October 2023, the United States imported $900.05 billion of textiles and clothing from the world, down 21.5% year-on-year. Affected by the weak demand for textile and apparel imports in the United States, China, Vietnam, India, Bangladesh, as the main source countries of textile and apparel imports in the United States, the export performance to the United States is relatively low. China is still the largest source of textile and apparel imports in the United States. From January to October 2023, the United States imported 21.59 billion U.S. dollars of textile and apparel from China, down 25.0% year-on-year, and its market share was 24.0%, down 1.1 percentage points from the same period last year. The import of textiles and clothing from Vietnam was 13.18 billion US dollars, down 23.6% year-on-year, accounting for 14.6%, down 0.4 percentage points from the same period last year; The import of textiles and clothing from India was 7.71 billion US dollars, down 20.2% year-on-year, accounting for 8.6%, 0.1 percentage points higher than the same period last year.
It is worth noting that from January to October 2023, the United States imported textiles and clothing from Bangladesh to 6.51 billion US dollars, down 25.3% year-on-year, the largest decline, accounting for 7.2%, down 0.4 percentage points from the same period last year. The main reason is that since 2023, the shortage of energy supply such as natural gas in Bangladesh has caused the normal production of factories, and the phenomenon of production reduction and production suspension is more common. In addition, Bangladeshi garment workers demanded higher minimum wages to improve treatment due to inflation and other reasons, and carried out a series of strikes and marches, which also caused a greater impact on clothing production capacity. During the same period, the United States from Mexico, Italy imports of textile clothing decreased by a narrower margin, down 5.3%, 2.4%. On the one hand, it is closely related to Mexico's geographical advantages and policy advantages as a member of the North American Free Trade Area.
On the other hand, in recent years, US fashion companies have continued to diversify their sourcing to mitigate various supply chain risks and rising geopolitical tensions. According to the Industrial economic Research Institute of China Textile Industry Federation, from January to October 2023, the HHI index of apparel imports in the United States was 0.1013, which was significantly lower than the level of the same period last year, indicating that the sources of apparel imports in the United States are more diversified.
(Source: Textile and Garment Weekly)
