2017 is an important year for implementing favorable policies during the "13th Five-Year Plan" period. Textile and garment exports may reverse the downward trend for two consecutive years and enter a period of great development and major readjustment.

Since the beginning of this year, the textile industry in our country has responded more enthusiastically to the call of the "Belt and Road Initiative" and has been developing in depth. China's textile backbone enterprises take the initiative to actively promote the international distribution of consciousness. At the same time, with the steady rise of foreign trade, the textile and garment industry in our country is also facing a severe situation of trade friction this year. The rise of international trade protectionism has led the developed countries and emerging economies to double squeeze China's foreign trade exports. In the meantime, frequent occurrences of the "Black Swan Incident" such as the Trump New Deal and the Brexit made the growth of China's textile and apparel trade toward a sharp increase in the uncertainties.

Trend 1

Textile industry "going global" to develop in depth

Since the beginning of this year, the textile industry in our country has responded more enthusiastically to the call of the "Belt and Road Initiative" and has been developing in depth. With the continuous communication of policies and communication, unification of facilities, unimpeded flow of trade, smooth integration of funds and mutual benefits among the public, the "five links" have been continuously strengthened. The ability of Chinese textile industry in global distribution and capacity cooperation in "going global" has been continuously improved.

News Review China Textile Industry Federation formally announced in Shanghai in March "China Textile International Capacity Cooperative Enterprise Alliance" was established. As of the end of November, the total number of members of China Textile International Capacity Cooperation Enterprise Union reached 104. This is a major measure taken by China's textile industry to integrate into the "Belt and Road Initiative" of the country and also marks a major turning point in China's textile industry from an export-oriented product export to an international export-led capacity-building partnership. This year, the pace of "going global" in China's textile industry has further accelerated with footprints in Vietnam, Myanmar, Morocco, Tunisia, Hungary, Romania, South Africa, Italy and the United States. In September, the "going out" conference of 2017 China textile industry, sponsored by China Textile International Capacity Cooperative Enterprise Union, was held in Nanjing. During the meeting, heavyweights from multiple countries competed to speak, triggering heated discussions on the "going global" of China's textile industry.

In the case of Ethiopia, Ethiopia is an important country along the "Belt and Road". In May this year, Ethiopian Prime Minister and Chinese textile entrepreneurs will meet in Beijing. Chinese textile enterprise representatives took this rare exchange opportunity and conducted in-depth communication with the Prime Minister and Ethiopian representatives. In June, the leaders of China Textiles Alliance led the delegation for the third time to conduct investment research in Ethiopia. The delegation held a meeting with Ethiopian Prime Minister Advisor Dr. Alkabay at the Prime Minister's Office. The two sides conducted exchanges and discussions on the next step in the cooperation memorandum. In November, China Textile Association visited Ethiopia for the fourth time. The delegation held a working meeting with Ethiopian special representatives of Ethiopian Prime Ministers and other Ethiopian Investment Committees and with the Chargé d'Affaires of the Chinese Embassy in Ethiopia. The delegation believes that China's textile enterprises have great room for cooperation with Egypt in the sub-sectors such as automotive textiles and recycled fibers. Ethiopia attaches great importance to its cooperation with Chinese textile enterprises. It not only ranks the textile and garment industry as a key development sector of the country, but also sets up a China office in the government departments such as the Ministry of Finance, the Customs and Investment Committee and assists Chinese enterprises in their investment and cooperation in Ethiopia. At present, China Textile Alliance has listed Ethiopia as a key country for international capacity cooperation in textiles.

Trend 2

Foreign trade stabilized down significantly

2017 is an important year for implementing favorable policies during the "13th Five-Year Plan" period. With the deepening of supply-side reform and the accelerated transformation and upgrading of enterprises, the structure of foreign trade has been further optimized. Statistics show that in 2017 China's textile and apparel exports are expected to reverse the downward trend for two consecutive years. The annual export growth rate will be between 1% and 2% in U.S. dollars.

News Review In the first half of the year, China's textile and clothing exports were 53.15 billion U.S. dollars and 71.120 billion U.S. dollars respectively, while textiles increased by 1.7% over the same period of last year. The export volume of the major categories of goods all maintained a year-on-year growth: yarn and fabric increased by 5.2% and 7.9% respectively, while needle-woven garments totaled 3.9%. From January to June, the trade volume of China's textile and clothing reached 135.78 billion U.S. dollars, up 0.4% over the same period of last year, of which exports were 124.27 billion U.S. dollars, unchanged from the same period of last year.

Compared with the second half of the month, in July, the trade volume of China's textile and apparel was 27.57 billion U.S. dollars, up 1.6% over the same period of last year, of which exports reached 25.49 billion U.S. dollars, up 1.4%. From January to July, the trade volume of China's textile and clothing reached 163.35 billion U.S. dollars, up by 0.6% over the same period of last year. Of this total, exports reached 149.75 billion U.S. dollars, up 0.3%. In August, rapid fluctuations in the exchange rate in the short run were not conducive to exports, to a certain extent, hinder the steady growth of exports in August. The monthly export of textile and apparel showed a negative growth after experiencing 5 consecutive months of growth, but the decline was not large. And the export volume still maintained its expansion trend. The growth rate was on a ring-by-ring basis, and the overall export situation remained positive. In September, the trade volume of China's textile and apparel reached 25.98 billion U.S. dollars, up 5.1% over the same period of last year, of which exports reached 23.75 billion U.S. dollars, up 4.3%. In the first nine months of this year, the trade volume of China's textile and clothing totaled USD217.86 billion, an increase of 0.3% over the same period of last year, of which, the export value to China was 197.8 billion U.S. dollars, down 0.1%. In October, the trade volume of China's textile and apparel reached 23.68 billion U.S. dollars, up 1.9% over the same period of last year, of which exports reached 21.68 billion U.S. dollars, up 1.2%. January-October trade in textiles and garments was 241.54 billion U.S. dollars, up 0.4% over the same period of last year, of which exports were 221.46 billion U.S. dollars, down 0.01%, basically the same. In November, the total textile and apparel exports totaled 23.115 billion U.S. dollars, up 8.02% from the same period of last year and up 6.7 percentage points from the previous month. Among them, the month of exports of textiles 9.989 billion US dollars, an increase of 11.31%; clothing exports in January of 13.226 billion US dollars, an increase of 5.65%. From January to November, the total textile and apparel exports nationwide totaled 243.257 billion U.S. dollars, up 1.57% over the same period of last year. Among them, the total textile exports totaled 99.786 billion US dollars, an increase of 4.02%.

From the above data, we can predict that in 2017 China's textile and apparel exports will achieve a slight increase, significantly improving over last year.

Trend 3

"Black Swan" incident caused a chain reaction

In January of this year, Trump was officially sworn in as president of the United States. Since he took office, he actively promoted the New Deal with frequent moves. In August, Trump signed an administrative memorandum to authorize the U.S. trade representative to decide whether to start a "301 investigation" of the so-called "unfair trade practices in China" in order to push the manufacturing industry back to the United States and reduce its foreign trade deficit. Following the continuation of "alternative country" practices in its anti-dumping investigations against China, the Trump administration formally informed the World Trade Organization in November that the United States opposes China's acquisition of a market economy status. In December, the Trump administration's first national security strategy report was released, listing China as a "competitor." Recently, Trump also signed the largest tax relief act in the United States since 1986, and the bill will be implemented in January 2018.

Britain launched the Brexit process in March this year. Recently, the European Council formally approved the outcome of the first phase of the negotiations between the United Kingdom and the EU and announced that the EU agreed to launch the second phase of the negotiations, with a sharp increase in the uncertainties.

News Review According to the statistics of China's General Administration of Customs, in October this year, China's exports of textiles and garments to the United States maintained a growth of 2.9%. Among them, textiles and clothing increased by 9.2% and 0.6% respectively. For the first 10 months, U.S. exports totaled 37.89 billion U.S. dollars, up slightly by 0.4%, of which exports of needle-woven garments rose 2.5%. In terms of exporting countries, the amount of China's textile and apparel exports to the United States accounts for about 16.6% of the total amount of China's exports of textile and apparel. According to U.S. customs statistics, in the first nine months, the United States imported 88.110 billion U.S. dollars of textile and apparel from the world, with China accounting for 36.2% of the market. Visible, China's textile and apparel exports to the United States market is relatively stable, and achieve a slight increase. From the recent obvious export phenomenon, the prospect of export trade in the US textile and apparel industry can be expected. Moreover, the tax cuts in the United States are beneficial to China's export-oriented enterprises in the short term, and long-term benefits to be observed.

Although the "301 investigation" move has aroused concern from all walks of life to take unilateral actions against the United States and undermine the economic and trade relations between China and the United States, the textile industry has not become the main target of the Trump administration's trade investigation this year, in part because the trade in textiles between China and the United States is two-way. In the past 10 years, the total amount of China's exports of textiles to the United States has risen sharply. China is now also the fourth largest market for U.S. textile exports. In addition, in 2016, the bilateral trade volume of goods between China and the United States reached 524.3 billion U.S. dollars, an increase of 209 times over the beginning of the establishment of diplomatic relations. The bilateral trade in services surpassed 110 billion U.S. dollars and the bilateral investment totaled over 200 billion U.S. dollars. In the meantime, from 1980 to 2016, the total amount involved in U.S. trade remedy investigations against China in these 36 years was less than 30 billion U.S. dollars. The comparison of the two sets of data has made it very clear that the economic and trade exchanges between China and the United States and the win-win cooperation are the mainstream.

Since the fourth quarter of last year, China's textile and apparel exports to the United Kingdom began to decline. This year, my exports to the United Kingdom continued to decline, with a cumulative decrease of 9.7% in the first three quarters. On the contrary, China's exports to the EU in the past two months continued to increase slightly, up by 3.5% in October from a year earlier, with the increase of 5.6% in textiles and 2.7% in apparel after a four-month decline. However, the foundation of the EU's growth remains weak. Whether the growth momentum can be maintained remains to be seen.

Trend 4

Corporate mergers and acquisitions to speed up the pace of international brands

This year, China's textile backbone enterprises actively raise their awareness of international layout and use their global perspective to carry out investment and mergers and acquisitions in areas such as high-quality resources upstream and downstream of the industry chain, advanced research and development capabilities, and technology and terminal channels, thus establishing a new international competition Advantage. Enterprises to invest overseas cooperation, on the one hand to avoid trade barriers and reduce production costs, on the other hand the enterprise's marketing network, logistics channels and R & D center built to the international market for product sales through the production, research and development, logistics, distribution, Marketing all aspects of the optimal allocation of resources, effectively integrate the two markets at home and abroad.

News Review More than 20 Chinese textile enterprises represented by Sunshine, Huafang, UNIFEM, Wuxi Yimian, Wuxi Jinmao and Guangdong Huida signed memorandums of investment cooperation or formal agreement with Ethiopia one after another, and some of the projects have landed. Tianhong and Hundred Longtanfang, Huafu Color Spinning, Younger, Luthai, Xindadong, Yu Lun and other companies in the total investment in Vietnam has more than 2.5 million spindles; Shenzhou International, that hair, Dongdu and other knitwear large enterprises have basically built China and Southeast Asia, closely matching the production capacity of the order mode; in France, Italy, Australia, the United States, Canada and New Zealand and other countries and regions, the Chinese textile enterprises take the initiative to integrate the global industry chain quality resources, such as Jiangsu Tianyuan to clothing intelligent production , Successfully entered the United States.

Particularly worth mentioning is that Shandong Ruyi Group continued its large-scale acquisitions this year. In March this year, the British century-old brand Aquascutum (Jacques Lion) sold for $ 117 million. In October, Ruyi signed a definitive agreement to acquire the Invista apparel and premium fabrics from American polymer and fiber supplier, including the well-known brand Leica. In November, Ruyi also acquired a 54% stake in Bagir, an Israeli menswear group, for 16.5 million U.S. dollars, becoming the controlling shareholder of the latter. This relatively large-scale textile and garment industry chain is relatively complete business is expanding its tentacles of globalization more and more widely. Merger and acquisition of the road to wishful further integration of global quality resources, the rapid expansion of its international industrial layout.

Trend 5

Industry actively respond to frequent trade friction

With the steady rise of foreign trade, the textile and garment industry in our country is also facing a severe situation of trade friction this year. From the perspective of the form of trade remedy cases, the trend of diversification is further manifested. In addition to the traditional anti-dumping investigations, cases involving double counter-crimes and anti-evasions are all involved. In the past, the countries that initiated trade remedy cases were mostly using anti-dumping or anti-subsidy measures alone, and the situation of simultaneous use now appears. In other words, the developed countries use trade remedies more mature, developing countries from law, legislation and government agencies to actively follow-up and use of the above means, which made China's textile enterprises in response to the higher professionalism . It should be noted that the negative impact of international trade protectionism will persist for a long time. Developed countries and emerging economies will double the export of China's exports.

News Review In the first half of 2017, China's textile industry encountered 8 cases of new trade relief cases and 2 cases of early warning involving many countries and regions such as the United States, India, Colombia and Turkey. The number of cases increased by 33% over the same period of last year. New cases involved in the amount of nearly 430 million US dollars. Early warning cases involved in the amount of nearly 1.07 billion US dollars. Trade relief cases encountered by China's textile industry in the first half of the year showed several prominent features: First, India once again entered the high incidence of the case. In the first half of the eight cases, six were from India. Early warning cases of man-made fiber fabric anti-dumping investigations involving up to 950 million U.S. dollars, a greater impact on exports; second, the United States came back. In recent years, the initiating countries in the field of textile and clothing are mostly concentrated in developing countries. However, in the first half of this year, the United States launched a double-reverse survey on my polyester staple fiber, which is the first retrial on the textile and garment industry after a lapse of 6 years. The trend of development behind it deserves our attention. Thirdly, chemical fiber products are concentrated in 10 cases Eight of the cases involved chemical fiber products: 2 polyester staple fibers, 1 synthetic fiber, polyester filament yarn, acrylic fabric, viscose filament yarn, partially oriented yarn (POY) and high tenacity yarn . In particular, polyester staple fiber products, is the hardest hit by trade remedy investigations.

In the second half of the year, the Indian Ministry of Commerce and Industry issued a public notice on August 23 to launch an anti-dumping investigation on Belting Fabrics. On October 27, Indonesia's anti-dumping committee (KADI) decided to launch an anti-dumping investigation against SpinDrawnYarn, the polyester yarn that I exported to Indonesia. In November, there were 52 recalled textile and footwear products in the United States, Canada, the EU and Australia, of which 19 were related to China. Although there are many trade remedy cases encountered in the industry, it is gratifying to note that in recent years, with the maturing of the four-body linkage reaction mechanism led by the Ministry of Commerce, the enthusiasm of enterprises has been raised. With the active efforts of all parties, the cases are controlled to the minimum extent that they have the least impact on the export of Chinese enterprises. They actively contact importers and downstream industries through relevant agencies in the industry and establish defensive alliances so as to strive for the best possible results.