US-EU Free Trade Agreement: What Will it Mean for Technical and Industrial Textiles.

In his recent guest commentary for BeaverLake6 Report, David Trumbull interviews Dr. Wolf-Rüdiger Baumann, Director General, Confederation of the German Textile and Fashion Industry, and raises topics of interest to American and European producers of technical, specialty, and industrial textiles in the context of the recently announced plans to negotiate a U.S.-E.U. free trade agreement. The commentary addresses, among other things, non-tariff barriers (regulations, procedures, and standards) on both sides of the Atlantic which add nearly 20% to the cost of trans-Atlantic trade. It gives special emphasis to the U.S. requirements for domestic sourcing of certain Department of Defense and Department of Homeland Security textile and clothing acquisitions. These rules, known as the Berry Amendment and Kissell Amendment, have been targeted by the European textile industry as non-tariff barriers to be negotiated away in the proposed agreement. For the full text of the article, go the the BeaverLake6 Report at http://www.beaverlake6.com/columns-and-blogs/commentary-by-david-trumbull/.