Washington, DC, Dec. 03, 2020 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) — WASHINGTON — National Council of Textile Organizations (NCTO) President and CEO Kim Glas issued a statement today outlining immediate steps President-elect Joe Biden’s administration and a new Congress can take to bolster the U.S. manufacturing sector. As President-elect Biden has named several key members of his economic team in recent days, the U.S. textile industry stands ready to work with this critical team. NCTO is also eager to work with the new Congress on advancing these bipartisan priorities.
The U.S. textile industry looks forward to working with President-elect Joe Biden’s transition team and his administration to provide input on key policies outlined in the campaign to prioritize investing in American manufacturing and its workforce, onshoring critical supply chains, and cracking down on the predatory trade practices that have harmed the manufacturing sector and U.S. jobs. We agree with the President-elect that we must not revert to status quo trade policies that have undermined our nation’s resilience and exacerbated income inequality by impacting the manufacturing sector and promoting a race to the bottom that have especially hurt the nearly two-thirds of the American workforce without college degrees.
As domestic manufacturers, the U.S. textile industry fully supports the President-elect’s campaign pledge to strengthen ‘Buy American’ rules and invest in government purchases of American-made products. It is imperative that we strengthen the domestic personal protective equipment (PPE) supply chain to achieve a long-term goal of ending our over-reliance on China and begin onshoring the production of critical medical textiles. We look forward to working with the President-elect and his team to strengthen and maintain these supply chains, which is a paramount national and healthcare security issue. Further, we are prepared to engage with leaders in Congress to enact bipartisan legislation to ensure we can make the long-term investments needed to fully bring critical PPE production back to the United States.
