American businesses want Chinese textiles to be added to the tariff roster. The National Council of Textile Organizations (NCTO) is pleased that some textile products are on the second list but feels there would be a greater deterring effect if more textile and apparel end products were included.

The NCTO has been pushing for these tariffs for some time now. It cites China's predatory, illegal trade actions, including intellectual property rights theft, with the loss of hundreds of thousands of manufacturing jobs in the textile industry. NCTO says, China's domination of the global textile market can be attributed in part to intellectual property theft.

China is said to have gained pricing advantages through blatantly illegal activities, from the violation of patents on high performance fibers, yarns and fabrics to the infringement of copyrighted designs on textile home furnishings. NCTO believes, putting tariffs on Chinese textile and apparel exports would send a long-overdue signal that these predatory actions will no longer be tolerated.

If textiles and clothing are added to the list, this could greatly affect the promotional apparel industry. Currently, the apparel industry has been left largely unaffected by the proposed tariffs. But a textiles inclusion could lead to price increases on Chinese-made apparel, forcing promotional products distributors and suppliers to either absorb the costs or pass them on to end buyers.