YORK – US textile industry leader Kim Glas tells Ecotextile Talks host Philip Berman the sector is struggling with uncertainty triggered by President Donald Trump’s sweeping import tariffs.
Glas, president and CEO of the National Council of Textile Organizations (NCTO), said that while 55% duties on imports from China and Vietnam had created opportunities for some US synthetic producers, overall the sector was seeing stalled investment and falling orders.
While the NCTO broadly supports Trump’s overall America First Trade Policy, the NCTO believes there needs to be critical refinements to his overall approach, saying that “eighty percent of my industry would say business is down.”
Key concerns include tariffs on machinery and raw materials no longer made domestically. These costs, Glas argued, risked pushing buyers toward Asian suppliers despite Washington’s objective of reviving US industry.
More than two dozen US textile mills have closed in the past two years, and Glas said uncertainty over Trump’s shifting trade policy had “paralysed” buyers. Nonetheless, she saw potential to reshore capacity if the rules were clarified.
“We have members who placed orders for equipment and simply stalled putting it in place. The uncertainty has paralysed buyers — they’re making phone calls, not placing orders.”
Glas also highlighted the fragility of crucial trade partnerships. More than half of US textile exports by value currently go to Mexico and Canada as part of integrated co-production chains under USMCA (United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement).
But Central American countries like Honduras and Guatemala, where US yarn is spun into finished garments, were currently subject to a new 10% tariff — a measure Glas described as harmful to US producers.
Framing the debate as both an economic and ethical issue, Glas argued that US manufacturing offered higher labour standards, domestic cotton sourcing and lower carbon emissions than Asian supply chains dependent on subsidised production and, in many cases, forced labour.
“Our industry wants to double production. We want to invest,” she concluded. “But nobody’s going to invest while the terrain shifts every day.”
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