How to Live in a Textile Quota-Free World (Report‪)‬

Its going to be an open arena, only fittest will survive, instead of governments, markets will determine whom to favour or not. There will be no textile quotas in the year 2005. The world has changed and it is going to change increasingly. It differs from the colonial patterns of trade and co-operation when only United Kingdom was the major player in the international trading arena. Now there are many leading trading nations in the world. In post World Trade Organisation era that is after January 1, 1995 at least on paper every country is equal partner in the global trading system. On ground there are big and small players in this equal paper partnership. United States continues to be the leading exporter and importer in the world with a share of 12.4 percent of total world exports and 18.0 percent of total world imports. The East Asian economies first tier, Singapore, Hung Kong, South Korea and Taiwan have climbed up on the Product Cycle ladder shifting from low value products to high value added exports like hi-tech electronics, the second tier of NIE's Malaysia, Indonesia, Thailand and Philippines have diverse exporting patterns. Excluding Malaysia, others are exporters of textiles and clothing with many other products. It is South Korea and Hung Kong in the first group that have significant share of textiles in exports and in total world trade of textiles, (Table 1). South Korea has share of more than 10 percent and Hung Kong's is more than 7 percent since 1995, in the total world trade of textiles. The tremendous growth in the region is in Chinese textile exports, which had highest, 28.0 percent share in world trade. It is shifting of comparative advantage of low labour cost to China from the industrialised economies of Asia. There is no significant upward or downward change in Pakistan's share, but Mexico since 1995 has doubled its percentage share in world trade of textiles and clothing.