Clothing manufacturers have won the Colombian fashion battle. Gustavo Petro’s government announced on Tuesday that it had issued a decree eliminating tariffs protecting cotton spinners, producers of raw materials. Clothing manufacturers will now be able to import these supplies at cheaper prices, something they claim is essential for their survival in the face of increasing competition from foreign retailers such as Shen and Timo. The National Association of Entrepreneurs (ANDI) confirmed that the decision “will end the thread industry” and 8,000 jobs will be lost. The president responded that the sector, which has been in crisis for decades, must reinvent itself.
The decree issued on November 14 stated that national spinners meet only 12% of the demand of clothing manufacturers. Clothing manufacturers are forced to import most of their raw materials from countries such as India, the United States and Mexico, with additional costs in the form of a 10% customs tariff. The government has confirmed that the latter sector employs more people (about 400,000) than spinners, whose numbers today are reduced to a few factories. He asserts that eliminating the tariff will provide them with “better conditions to compete with imported products.” Likewise, in a statement issued on Tuesday, the Ministry of Trade and Industry confirmed that this measure will protect 72,000 Colombian companies from “price distortions” in foreign markets. He stressed that “the government of change reaffirms its commitment to re-industrialization.”
The National Investment Development Agency, the country’s largest union to which the spinners belong, rejected this decision. “(The government) has just handed over the national market to producers from China, Vietnam, Cambodia, India and Turkey. 8,000 jobs and some of the most representative companies in the sector will disappear,” denounced the association’s president, Bruce McMaster, one of Petro’s usual critics. The president responded via the same social network: “You, Mr. Bruce, can gather the affected business leaders and work on a labor reconversion policy to move to clothing, which is what we want to strengthen for two years. (The sector) has hundreds of thousands of jobs, the majority of which are women entrepreneurs.”
McMaster raised his tone further after the president’s response. “It is the most neoliberal industrial policy we have ever known,” he denounced. “It is clearly just electoral calculations, where he tries to see where he got the most votes, and sacrifices the industries that got the least votes.” On the other hand, clothing manufacturers consider that the administrations that preceded the Petro government were biased against them. Colombian dressing room president Guillermo Criado questioned former Finance Minister José Manuel Restrepo at the beginning of the month after the latter opposed the abolition of the tariff on spinners. “You and former President Duque owe a lot to the national productive sector,” he commented in X.
In an interview with this newspaper, Criado pointed out a few weeks ago that the weight of clothing manufacturers must be taken into account. “This is a series in which we contribute 99% to employment and economic growth,” he stressed. Likewise, he explained, they are vulnerable to competition from platforms like Shin and Timo: purchases of less than $200 are exempt from VAT and can avoid a 40% tariff that protects Colombian clothing manufacturers. He stressed, “Their place is increasing. Today, 400,000 kilos enter daily without paying anything or creating job opportunities.”
The affected sector has warned for weeks that the measure would not only devastate them, but also cotton producers, who still produce textile fibers on about 10,000 hectares in Colombia – compared to about 300,000 hectares they cultivated in the last century. The unions denounced that the crisis of raw material producers is due to clothing manufacturers purchasing threads from foreign producers, despite customs duties. They also stressed that eliminating protection would not be enough for clothing manufacturers to move forward: thread, they said, represents only 1% of clothing costs. Instead, they suggested that the government remove the value-added tax exemptions enjoyed by retail platforms.
At the time, worker and unionist Luis Rodrigo Carmona told this newspaper that the situation for cotton spinning was completely different in 1987, when he entered the Fabricato factory in Bello (Antioquia) at the age of 18. He said: “We were a river of people: 15,000 workers. Now we are 1,200 workers and we see ourselves in the process of extinction.” He expressed concern about devoting four decades to spinning cotton: “I don’t know how to do anything else. Will the clothing makers hire me if I lose my job?” Criado, the union leader of clothing manufacturers, stressed that they will not be left alone and that they are needed to obtain commercial benefits for products produced entirely in a country. “They cannot condemn us to continue paying tariffs, but we want to help them,” he promised.
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