Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (T-TIP) for the Apparel Industry

The Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (T-TIP) was an ambitious, comprehensive trade and investment agreement negotiated between the United States and the European Union in the years after 2013. It aimed to unlock opportunity through increased access to European markets for made-in-America goods and services, promoting U.S. international competitiveness, jobs and growth, and to provide greater compatibility and transparency in trade and investment regulation while maintaining high levels of health, safety and environmental protection.

The negotiations did not produce a concluded agreement: talks stalled in 2016 and the proposals were later declared obsolete by the European Union, so no T-TIP duty treatment exists for apparel shipments today. The record below, first published in April 2015, is kept for historical reference — when researching trade agreements, always visit the official government websites for the most current details.

What T-TIP Meant for Textiles and Apparel

For this industry the goal was fully reciprocal access to the EU market for U.S. textile and apparel products, supported by effective and efficient customs cooperation and other rules to facilitate U.S.–EU trade in textiles and apparel. U.S. textile and apparel manufacturers sold nearly $2.4 billion worth of products to the EU in 2014; eliminating the remaining duties on U.S. exports was expected to create new opportunities for integration into European supply chains and to sell high-quality made-in-USA garments to European consumers. Enhanced U.S.–EU customs cooperation was also intended to help ensure that non-qualifying textiles and apparel from third countries were not imported into the United States under T-TIP.

Who Negotiated the Textile Chapter

USTR's Special Textile Negotiator's office was responsible for international trade negotiations affecting textile and apparel products at the multilateral, regional and bilateral level, with particular emphasis on opening foreign markets to domestic producers. The office also handled liaison with domestic stakeholders and Congress on trade policy decisions affecting the sector, worked with trading partners to implement existing agreements and maximize the industry's use of them, monitored partner markets for compliance, and provided technical and policy advice to other USTR and Administration offices on textile and apparel trade issues. The Office of Textiles and Apparel (OTEXA) at the Department of Commerce remains a working resource for the industry's trade questions today.

The 2015 Moment: Trade Promotion Authority

In April 2015 the debate around T-TIP ran through Congress. Announcing the Bipartisan Congressional Trade Priorities and Accountability Act on April 15, 2015, U.S. Trade Representative Michael Froman described the legislation as the most significant upgrade to the U.S. approach to trade in over four decades — including fully enforceable labor and environmental protections, new requirements for dealing with unfairly subsidized state-owned enterprises, balanced intellectual property protections, and new consultation and transparency requirements — and as a step toward delivering agreements like the Trans-Pacific Partnership and T-TIP, alongside Trade Adjustment Assistance and renewals of the African Growth and Opportunity Act (AGOA) and the Generalized System of Preferences (GSP).

That is where the record rests: the agreement was never concluded, and apparel trade between the U.S. and the EU continues under ordinary most-favored-nation duty rates and the customs rules covered elsewhere in this guide. U.S. apparel factories and manufacturers are listed in the manufacturers guide for readers comparing domestic production with transatlantic trade.