There is also a new threat on the horizon. A proposed free trade agreement with South Korea, which the House and Senate are scheduled to consider this week, would open the American market to a manufacturing powerhouse that has its own high-technology textile industry.
The South Korea deal, and companion pacts with Colombia and Panama, are sailing toward approval. Both political parties are eager to show they are doing something to revive the ailing economy, and there is a broad consensus among the Obama administration, Republican leaders in Congress and many moderate Democrats that the deals will reduce costs for American consumers and increase foreign purchases of American goods and services.
That has left opponents of trade deals, like the textile industry, struggling to be heard. They say past trade agreements, which remove tariffs and other protections for domestic manufacturers, have eroded the nation’s industrial strength. The new round of deals will repeat that pattern, they say, allowing South Korean companies to flood the domestic market without creating significant export opportunities for American manufacturers.
“We are very much in favor of global trade, but we’re just not about having agreements that are unfair to the U.S. textile industry,” said Allen E. Gant Jr., chief executive of Glen Raven, a family-owned company that employs 1,500 people in the United States. “The U.S. needs every single job that we can get.”
The Obama administration renegotiated some elements of the deals — first authored by the Bush administration — to address concerns raised by trade unions and industries including automakers. The agreements are a centerpiece of its strategy to increase exports as a driver of faster economic growth, and the White House is pushing to seal the deals in time for a state visit to Washington this week by President Lee Myung-bak of South Korea.
Votes in both chambers of Congress could come as soon as Wednesday, during Mr. Lee’s scheduled visit.
“These agreements will support tens of thousands of jobs across the country for workers making products stamped with three proud words: Made in America,” President Obama said in a statement last week when he submitted the deals to Congress.
Economists generally argue that free trade agreements benefit all participating countries by creating a larger market for goods and services. But that benefit derives in part from the movement of some activities to the lower-cost countries. In other words, even if the deal is good for the United States as a whole, it is likely to create clear losers.
The government estimated in 2007 that the deals would increase annual economic output by up to $14.4 billion, or about one-tenth of one percent. Most of that demand would come from South Korea, which would join a short list of developed nations that have free trade pacts with the United States, including Australia, Canada, Israel and Singapore.
But the study by the United States International Trade Commission found that the deals would cost jobs in some industries, and it singled out the textile industry as one likely to face the largest blow.
Highland Industries, a Greensboro, N.C., company that employs 680 people at two factories, manufactures a kind of fabric that is used to reinforce the roof coverings on commercial buildings like big-box stores. The massive rolls of fabric can be 12 feet wide and 5,000 yards in length.
South Korean companies already sell similar material at prices 15 to 20 percent below Highland’s. Bret Kelley, a Highland executive, said the company was able to compete on speed and customer service, but he said that could change if the trade agreement passed because the tariff reductions would allow South Korean companies to lower prices by another 10 percent.
“We’re quick and nimble, and we forge strong relationships, but what we’re selling is a commoditized product,” Mr. Kelley said. “Those companies will start looking away for savings of 25 and 30 percent.”
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