Why South Carolina’s Textile Manufacturers Want to Talk To Scott Bessent
Jasmin Malik Chua
5 min read
South Carolina’s textile producers want to make it clear to Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent that they’re not involved with “jobs of the past,” as the Palmetto State native suggested in a press conference late last month, but rather a vital—and indeed, still thriving—part of the country’s national and economic security.
Writing in a letter organized by the National Council of Textile Organizations, or NCTO, on Friday, more than 30 manufacturing CEOs and cotton farmers asked Bessent if they could disabuse him of the notion that “we don’t need to necessarily have a booming textile industry where I grew up.”
They said that it isn’t for nothing that the United States is one of the largest exporters of textiles in the world with more than $64 billion in shipments in 2024. The industry continues to employ 471,000 workers—15,000 in South Carolina alone—that produce more than 8,000 products for the American military and supplies fibers, yarns and fabrics to free-trade zones covered under the likes of U.S.-Mexico-Canada Agreement and the Central America-Dominican Republic Free Trade Agreement.
“While hearing your comments was disappointing, the sentiment you expressed is understandable,” the letter read. “It is a common misconception that we no longer have an American textile industry, the result of decades of headlines about the offshoring of apparel assembly jobs in response to unfair, predatory global competition. Rather than offshore, however, the U.S. textile industry adapted, innovated and embraced advanced manufacturing technologies. Today, South Carolina is home to some of the most sophisticated textile operations in the world because of these investments.”
Reshoring domestic manufacturing has been a tentpole of the Trump administration’s policymaking. Bessent was defending the White House’s aggressive “reciprocal” tariff plan as a way to bring back what he dubbed “high-quality industrial jobs” such as auto and precision manufacturing to make trade “free and fair” while reducing the United States’ reliance on overseas supply chains that could get cut off like they did during the pandemic. He also dismissed the idea that uncertainty around tariffs, by blunting trade and investment, would damage the economy.
On Monday, Bessent told CNBC that the new trade truce with China would help the United States “decouple” for “strategic necessities,” such as those it was unable to obtain at the height of Covid-19.
“It’s my perception that he confuses apparel assembly jobs and textiles,” said James C. Self, III, president and CEO of Greenwood Mills, the largest U.S. supplier of spun nylon/cotton fabrics to the American military and one of the letter’s signatories. “He wants us all in one group, and that’s just simply not the case. My initial reaction was that he’s misinformed about what the textile industry is.”
NCTO says it hasn’t heard back yet about a possible meeting with the secretary, whose press office didn’t respond to a request for comment. The call-out is a rare moment of pushback against the Trump administration from the organization, which has previously praised the president for preserving duty-free trade for USMCA-compliant imports from Mexico and Canada and “getting tough” on “unfair” Asian nations that have long undercut domestic production. NCTO’s members have also supported the closure of the so-called de minimis loophole with China, though they would also like to see greater enhancements of USMCA and CAFTA-DR that could swing the pendulum even further in their direction.
“I certainly think the rebalancing of trade is a net positive for U.S. textiles,” said James McKinnon, CEO of Cotswold Industries/Central Textiles, a third-generation producer of technical and apparel textiles who also signed the letter to Bessent. “I think if given a level playing field, we could succeed. We are also very actively in favor of finding trade laws that incentivize additional investment and are very hopeful that a lot of these things can get codified into law at some point where our customers and ourselves can plan out three to five to 10 years with confidence.”
While the White House announced this week that it will be cutting the de minimis tariff on sub-$800 shipments from China from 120 percent to 54 percent—while maintaining the flat $100 fee option—a ban on de minimis for all countries could also be forthcoming in the House Ways and Means Committee’s reconciliation of President Trump’s “big beautiful bill” on Tuesday. If greenlit, this could spell an end to the exemption on July 1, 2027, though NCTO CEO Kim Glas says she would prefer to see a more accelerated timeline given the “significant harm to manufacturers, retailers and the fight against fentanyl and other illegal products.”
“Express shippers have already transitioned to processing all Chinese imports through sophisticated logistics systems, demonstrating their ability to comply with the president’s executive orders and pivot quickly,” she said. “We recognize the committee’s leadership in moving forward with a permanent global solution that will help spur more investment and job growth.”
McKinnon would be happy to talk to Bessent, U.S. Trade Representative Jamieson Greer or anyone on Capitol Hill who will listen. Any conversation presents an opportunity to educate and “move the ball forward,” he said. “The American textile industry is quite resilient. We just need to be three steps ahead of whatever happens. We need to make sure that our children’s children have the ability to clothe themselves.”
