Textile and Apparel Imports See Sharp Monthly Decline

The Department of Commerce’s Office of Textiles and Apparel reports that monthly imports of cotton, wool, manmade fiber, silk blend, and non-cotton vegetable fiber textile and apparel products totaled 4.68 billion square meter equivalents in March, down 11.5 percent from February but up 4.7 percent from March 2017. Textile imports totaled 2.83 billion SME, down 6.0 percent for the month but up 11.4 percent from the previous year, while apparel imports of 1.85 billion SME were down 18.9 percent from March and 4.3 percent from a year before.

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Overall Imports. Total year-to-date imports were 15.6 billion SME, up 6.4 percent from the previous year, as textile imports gained 10.0 percent to 9.0 billion SME and apparel imports rose 1.7 percent to 6.5 billion SME.

For the year ending in March imports were 65.8 billion SME, up 4.4 percent from a year earlier, as textile imports increased 7.1 percent to 38.6 billion SME and apparel imports rose 0.8 percent to 27.2 billion SME.

Source Countries. OTEXA has reported the following statistics on textile and apparel imports from major source countries for March 2018.