Calls for Berry Amendment to be protected in TTIP
Just Style | 29 October 2014
Calls for Berry Amendment to be protected in TTIP
By Richard Woodard
The Berry Amendment should be kept off the negotiating table when the US discusses new free trade agreement (FTA) deals, the American Apparel & Footwear Association (AAFA) says.
The organisation’s comments came in a letter to US Trade Representative Mike Froman, and follow a position paper on the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP) published by Euratex, the European Apparel and Textile Confederation.
Among other things, the paper called for the repeal of the Berry Amendment, which forbids the US Department of Defense from buying products not 100% made in the US, and claimed that it encouraged “discriminatory treatment”.
But the AAFA pledged to continue to fight to protect the Amendment and what it called “its role in the vitality of the domestic textile and apparel base”.
Any change, it claimed, would result in the loss of tens of thousands of American jobs, and the organisation added: “We believe it is critical that the US government take every measure to protect and enshrine the Berry Amendment in the TTIP.”
