QINGDAO, China - Row after row of young women, most of them farmers' daughters, sit every working day in the Qingdao Nannan Co. factory, stitching together with assembly-line determination thousands of bras destined for the U.S. market for $3 to $4 a day, comfortably more than their parents make.
But in the same factory are rows of vacant desks with sewing machines draped in plastic, the work stations of employees laid off in recent months. The workers and officials at Qingdao Nannan, China's third-largest exporter of bras to the United States, are learning a difficult lesson in U.S.-China trade politics.
In recent months, orders from companies such as Victoria's Secret, Maidenform and Target - all customers of Qingdao Nannan - have plummeted as word spread that the Bush administration might limit textile imports from China. The factory laid off 300 workers, roughly a tenth of its work force, in the past two months and plans to lay off at least 300 more.
The layoffs are among the costs of the latest international trade skirmish, a dispute that has been replayed around the world for decades but foreshadows a much larger trade battle between the United States and China. China enjoyed a $103 billion trade surplus with the United States last year, and its entry into the World Trade Organization has enhanced its position as the factory for the globe.
In the past two years, that has become especially true for some Chinese textiles no longer subject to quotas, including bras, dressing gowns and knit fabrics. A U.S. trade panel ruled last week in favor of imposing a limit on China's sales of those specific products to the United States.
It was only one salvo in a larger, intensifying effort by some political, corporate and labor interests in the United States to portray China as a rising economic power unfairly taking jobs from U.S. workers. The textile ruling would affect just a small fraction of each country's economy, but Qingdao Nannan's experience shows how even a minor trade dispute can have a painful effect on the factory grounds.
"It's inconsiderate for the United States to impose a quota on a developing country that relies a lot on labor-intensive industries," said Yu Yantao, manager of overseas sales for Qingdao Nannan, a South Korean-owned company in this port city on China's thriving east coast.
With millions working for the textile industry, Yu said, "What will these people eat if they lose their jobs?"
