Policy Brief: A new world map in textiles and clothing, October 2004

The textile and clothing industries provide employment for tens of million of people, primarily in developing countries, and accounted for USD 350 billion in merchandise exports in 2002, or 5.6% of the world total. The current rules governing world trade in textiles and clothing would change drastically at the end of 2004, when countries would no longer be able to protect their own industries by means of quantitative restrictions on imports of textile and clothing products.
What would this mean for cotton growers in Burkina Faso and Turkey, fashion retailers in France and the United States, or shirt factories in Bangladesh, the Dominican Republic or China?