Indian Texpreneurs Federation (ITF) recently said that since the Chinese share in US apparel is declining from 2018, the Indian apparel clusters can take advantage of the situation and focus on this market.
The year 2019 witnessed around Rs 20,000-crore market share loss for China in the apparel segment alone and post-COVID- 19, the declining trend has been accelerating.
This may create a 10-billion US dollar opportunity in the American markets in the segment alone for other countries, including India.
After the EU-Vietnam FTA (free trade agreement), Vietnam’s duty-free access may create further pressure on our apparel exports to the EU/.
However, India and competing nations like Vietnam and Bangladesh have a level-playing field in the US because all of these countries do not have an FTA with the US as of now.
Due to COVID-19 implications, the overall US apparel imports dropped by 30 percent in the first seven months of 2020, while their import of Chinese apparel dropped by 49 percent.
Moreover, reports about recent US’s action on trade restrictions on Chinese apparel and other products from one of the major textile regions – Xinjiang leads to a notion that it would accelerate the trend further.