Abstract
The UK textile industry was very prosperous in the past but in the 1970s Britain started to import textile materials from abroad. Since 1990, half of its textile materials have been imported from the EEA (European Economic Area), ASEAN (Association of Southeast Asian Nations) and North America countries. Meanwhile, UK imports from China have increased dramatically. Through comparisons, this paper calculates the trade competitiveness index and relative competitive advantages of regions and investigates the impact of Chinese textiles on UK imports from three key free trade regions across the textile sectors in the period 1990–2016 on the basis of United Nation Comtrade Rev. 3. We find that China’s textile prices, product techniques, political trade barriers and even tax system have made a varied impact on the UK’s imports across related sectors in the context of green trade and the strengthening of barriers, which helps us recognize China’s competitiveness in international trading and also provides advice on China’s sustainable development of textile exports.
Highlights
The UK, as the oldest developed country whose textile industry used to be leading in the world, domestic raw textile production can satisfy the needs of its whole textile industry
When the relative price of UK imports from the Economic Area (EEA) increased by 10%, UK relative imports in fabrics woven of man-made textile materials fell by 11.57%, knitted or crocheted fabrics fell by 10.96% and floor coverings fell by 12.31%
We investigate the role of China in the UK relative imports with EEA, Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) and North America and analyze the impact of factors including relative prices at each sector, China entry in WTO in 2000, cancellation of Multifiber Arrangement (MFA) in 1995 and China domestic tax policy in 2005 as well as environmental and ecological labeling starting in 1992 on the UK raw textile imports in relation to China
Summary
The UK, as the oldest developed country whose textile industry used to be leading in the world, domestic raw textile production can satisfy the needs of its whole textile industry. Res. Public Health 2017, 14, 1481 production structure, the ASEAN countries have characteristics similar to China’s, such as having the comparative advantages of labor and price. In terms of the volume of textile products, the North America free trade region has special advantages for its exports. Even though EEA and ASEAN countries have obvious comparative advantages in raw textile, UK imports from China changed from 2% in 1990 to 20% in 2016. This paper further investigates the impact of dramatically increased UK imports of Chinese textile raw materials on its imports from the three large trade regions, the EEA, ASEAN and North America by comparisons and will suggest countermeasures whereby Chinese raw materials can maintain their international competitiveness and sustainable development. The study includes other sections as follows, section two introduces the UK textile raw materials imports from three large trade regions, section three is the modeling and data description, section four briefly describe the econometric modeling used in this empirical study, section five draws some conclusions
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