The challenge before us is to meet the legitimate and pressing needs of nearly 2 million hard-working people in the textile and apparel industry and their dependents without causing irreparable damage to the international trading system. As it stands now, under this legislation, importers in restricted countries would have a strong incentive to declare fraudulent points of origin for their products or to transship those products through unrestricted countries. Also, a uniform, nondiscriminatory cap on import growth from all countries would be less likely to attract devastating retaliation than a discriminatory bill. This provision would assist countries in planning to meet the 6 percent annual growth limitation. We should also note that the last part of this amendment calls for a repeal of all provisions of this amendment in 10 years.
Permanent protection makes productivity improvement and innovation unprofitable.
In sum, this amendment would help us face the problems confronting the textile and apparel industry today by strengthening this legislation. There is no excuse for second-best trade policy.