Is the Office of Textiles and Apparels (OTEXA) something the U.S. still needs or is it a useless vestige of a bygone era when the textile and apparel industries were protected by quotas? While the ‘Textile Industrial Complex’ is relatively unheard of today, the textile and apparel industry used to rival ‘Big Oil’ in its political influence. The industry was so influential at one point in time that President Kennedy not only made promises to aid the industry during his campaign for President, he followed through on those promises months after taking office (Kennedy, 1961, 1962).
In April 1973, the apparel industry reached an all-time peak employment level of 1.4 million (Murray, 1995; Rowan, 2014). Today, apparel manufacturing is no longer a large employer and only employs roughly 135,000 workers (Maloney, 2016). A staggering 98% of Americans’ clothes are imported from other countries. The U.S. populace is around 4.4% of the world’s population, consumes 25% of the world’s apparel, and each person, on average, spent roughly $1,100 on apparel in 2014 (Donaldson, 2015). There are about 6,500 apparel- manufacturing establishments in the U.S. with a “combined annual revenue of about $12 billion (First Research, 2016).” This is significant because U.S. apparel manufacturers exported a meager $6.1 billion as opposed to the $87.9 billion in imports resulting in an $81.8 billion trade deficit in that sector (Maloney, 2016).
With most of the clothing in the U.S. being produced elsewhere and a trade deficit that increases each year, it is curious why the government would still fund an office dedicated to the textile and apparel industry. The goal of this research is to discover why OTEXA is needed given the state of today’s U.S. textile and apparel industry. This research will identify what led to the creation of OTEXA, if OTEXA is still fulfilling its initial purpose, if its purpose has evolved with the industry, and given the current state of the industry, if OTEXA is still necessary.
With most of the clothing in the U.S. being produced elsewhere and a trade deficit that increases each year, it is curious why the government would still fund an office dedicated to the textile and apparel industry. The goal of this research is to discover why OTEXA is needed given the state of today’s U.S. textile and apparel industry. This research will identify what led to the creation of OTEXA, if OTEXA is still fulfilling its initial purpose, if its purpose has evolved with the industry, and given the current state of the industry, if OTEXA is still necessary.
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