Apparel / Textiles & Accessories

When the new crown epidemic rages in the United States, China has exported tens of billions of masks to it to help fight the epidemic. Now, the U.S. mask resources are no longer in short supply. Some U.S. companies have begun to accuse China of squeezing their living space with low-cost masks. It's related to "national security".

On June 29, the Nikkei Asia News published an article titled "China's 1 Cent Masks Forces American Manufacturers to Nowhere", mentioning the difficulties faced by some small American companies in the competition of Chinese masks.

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According to the article, the monthly output of masks by the US manufacturer of personal protective equipment Premium-PPE dropped by nearly 90% from last year's peak, to 4 million to 5 million. The number of employees of the company was as high as 280 at one time, and currently there are only about 50. Premium-PPE claimed that it was the Chinese masks that caused the company's "fate reversal".

Premium-PPE was originally an e-cigarette seller. When the new crown virus spread to the United States in March 2020, the company switched to producing personal protective equipment. At that time, due to the shortage of domestic masks in the United States, the company's products were sold out.

The article pointed out that although the new crown vaccination is gradually advancing in the United States, the American people's demand for masks has not disappeared. However, with Chinese masks, few consumers are willing to spend 10 times the price of US-made masks. On the other hand, American manufacturers are unwilling to lower their prices. Brent Dillie, Chief Revenue Officer of Premium-PPE, said bluntly: “(Let us) sell masks for less than a cent. ."

At the beginning of this year, 26 small and medium-sized mask manufacturers in the United States including Premium-PPE established the American Mask Manufacturer's Association (AMMA). In an interview with National Public Radio (NPR) on June 25, Lloyd Armbrust, chairman of the association and founder of Armbrust American, a Texas mask manufacturer, stated that members of the association "will be 60- "Suspension of business within 90 days", and 5 companies have already stopped production.

On May 11, the American Mask Manufacturers Association sent a letter to President Biden. These American manufacturers complained to Biden, saying that if they cannot obtain government assistance immediately, they will have to cut production by half and cut thousands of them in the next 60 days. Jobs.

The American Mask Manufacturers Association called China's imported masks "unfair trade", claiming that this threatened the survival of the local mask manufacturing industry in the United States and the United States' efforts to respond to the epidemic. The letter also stated that maintaining the production of masks in the United States is a "national security issue." "This is not only about national security, but also about national pride."

The American Mask Manufacturers Association also put forward a series of requirements, including requiring the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) to exclude non-US manufacturers from its emergency use authorization (EUA) list; requiring the U.S. government and any agencies receiving federal subsidies to purchase U.S. manufacturing Masks; remove masks that do not meet U.S. standards from the purchase list; all hospitals that receive government funding will devote 40% of their personal protective equipment expenditures to local U.S. manufacturers by 2023...

In addition, the letter also proposed that the Biden government should purchase 260 million masks that were unsold by members of the American Mask Manufacturers Association.

After the American Mask Manufacturers Association issued this letter, the New York Times published an article on May 31 under the title "Oversupply of Chinese Masks Forces U.S. Companies to Bankrupt", saying that the decrease in demand for masks is to some extent related to the relaxation of epidemic prevention restrictions in the United States. , But the bigger factor stems from earlier this year that cheap anti-epidemic equipment from China began to flood the US market.

According to reports, the American Mask Manufacturers Association plans to file an “unfair trade” complaint with the World Trade Organization (WTO) on the grounds that most of the protective equipment imported from China is “below the production cost”. The report also pointed out that recently the price of some masks made in China has dropped to 1 cent, while the price of American masks using American raw materials is 10-15 cents.

However, the International Trade Administration under the US Department of Commerce declined to say whether it supports the complaint against China. A spokesperson for the agency told the New York Times that it would “continue to closely monitor market trends and evaluate various options to ensure that American manufacturers compete in a level environment.”