A visiting Washington official pointed to the sensitivity of the issue amid tough economic conditions that have led to job losses for Americans.
The Obama administration is also not playing an active role in U.S. congressional deliberations on the measure being pushed by Philippine garments exporters and their American clients, the Save Our Industries Act of 2010 or the SAVE Act, said Barbara Weisel, assistant U.S. trade representative for Southeast Asia and the Pacific.
“The market access under consideration in Congress is something for Congress to decide. The administration doesn’t really have a role in that,” Weisel told a press round table on Tuesday.
“These are very sensitive issues as they are here.”
Weisel visited Manila to discuss trade relations between the U.S. and the Philippines under the new Aquino administration.
The U.S. is the Philippines’ top trading partner, but Manila lost duty-free privileges for garments five years ago when quotas were abolished under a World Trade Organization agreement.
The SAVE Act, based on U.S. congressional records, remains pending in the Ways and Means Committee of the U.S. House of Representatives and the U.S. Senate Finance Committee.
Fourteen congressmen and three senators are sponsoring the bill, which seeks 10 years of preferential tariffs for Philippine garments.
It invokes the “deep historical and cultural connections” between the U.S. and its former colony, pointing out that Washington had “developed preferential trading relations with [other] former colonies” such as the Marshall Islands, the Federated States of Micronesia, and the Republic of Palau.
While the bill will create Philippine jobs, U.S. textile manufacturers are supposed to benefit as it requires the use of American raw materials. “The potential for export growth in this area can sustain and create thousands of jobs,” the bill states. In the first place, the U.S. apparel fabrics industry is “heavily dependent on sewing outside the United States.”
Last year the U.S. exported $13.5 million worth of broad-woven, industrial or specialty and nonwoven fabrics to the Philippines for reprocessing, and this is expected to grow to $500 million in five years under the bill, the foreign affairs department has said.
Philippine garment exports to the U.S., the country’s main market, plunged to $1 billion last year from $3 billion annually before the abolition of quotas, drastically reducing the work force to 200,000 from as much as 600,000 amid competition from cheaper producers such as China.
The U.S. midterm elections are threatening to sidetrack controversial economic bills, with all House seats and more than a third of the Senate up for grabs in polls on Nov. 2.
