The chief supply officer at Levi Strauss testified in front of the House Ways & Means committee recently to encourage a stable, long-term trade preference program that encourages liberal rules of origin for raw materials and is easy for companies to utilize.
From the Journal of Commerce:
A successful trade preference program must be stable and predictable over a long term, the chief supply officer for Levi Strauss & Co. told the House Ways and Means Trade Subcommittee on Tuesday.
It should also have liberal rules of origin for raw materials, and once put in place, be allowed to continue unchanged, said Levi Strauss Senior Vice President David Love.
Love was the only importer among 18 government, trade, labor and humanitarian groups called to testify by Chairman Sander Levin, D-Mich., in the first step of a review of trade preference policy. The Senate Finance Committee will hold its own hearing on the subject on Thursday.
Love said that Levi Strauss had imported some 60 million units from Colombia under the Andean Trade Preference Act. The program was due to expire in 2006, and since then Congress has renewed it for only short intervals. As a result, Colombian imports have dropped to one or two million units.
“We cannot make commercial decisions based on three to six month timeframes,” Love said, “especially when orders are placed a year in advance.”
Read the complete summary of the hearing at the Journal of Commerce: Importer Calls for Stable Trade Preference Policy
