WASHINGTON (AFX) - The US government dropped all pending decisions to impose quotas on Chinese textile imports after the two nations clinched a deal to regulate the trade.
The Commerce Department said all 24 outstanding requests by US industry groups for so-called safeguards on textile imports had been scrapped in light of the agreement reached two weeks ago.
'The agreement establishes conditions on trade in the vast majority of products covered by these cases and provides a general framework for textile trade between the United States and China,' Franklin Lavin, undersecretary of commerce for international trade, said in a statement.
'Based on these considerations, CITA has ended further consideration of all pending textile safeguard petitions,' he said, referring to the department's Committee for the Implementation of Textile Agreements.
On Nov 8, the two countries signed a three-year deal to limit 34 types of Chinese exports of textiles and apparel to the US market, after they had rocketed this year to stoke trade tensions between the major economies.
In the absence of a comprehensive deal, the US had been resorting to quotas, or safeguards, that will now be replaced by caps allowed in the new agreement with China.
