Summary of Textile Foreign Trade in 2022 and Expectations in 2023

In the case of complicated domestic and foreign situations and a high base in the previous year, my country's clothing exports will still achieve a certain growth in 2022, but the growth rate will drop significantly. According to China Customs statistics, from January to December, my country's clothing (including clothing accessories, the same below) accumulatively exported 175.4 billion US dollars, a year-on-year increase of 3.2%, and the growth rate continued to slow down by 1.4 percentage points compared with the previous 11 months. In November and December, apparel exports were US$13.12 billion and US$14.29 billion, down 14.5% and 10.1% year-on-year, respectively. Compared with the 16.8% decline in October, the decline slowed down slightly.

From the perspective of quarterly trends, my country's clothing exports in the four quarters of 2022 will be 7.4%, 16.1%, 6.3% and -13.9% year-on-year respectively. % growth, hard-won achievements. In the past three years of the epidemic, my country has reversed the year-by-year decline in clothing exports after peaking in 2014, and the export scale has increased by about 20% compared with 2019 before the epidemic, which fully reflects the impact on the global supply chain and the imbalance between market supply and demand since the outbreak of the epidemic. Under the circumstances, China's garment industry has the characteristics of great resilience, sufficient potential and strong competitiveness. Looking forward to the future, under the multiple pressures of weak international demand, overseas low-cost competition, intensified trade frictions, and "de-Sinicization" of the supply chain, my country's garment export industry will face more severe challenges.

The trend of "de-sinicization" is the main uncertain factor in the future

The trend of "friendly shore outsourcing" and "decoupling and breaking chains" in the United States and Western countries is intensifying. The "Xinjiang-related Act" implemented in June 2022 severely hit the willingness of American buyers to import from China. Not only did the procurement strategy of cotton products be greatly adjusted, but the export of other products to the United States was also affected to a certain extent. According to a report released by the American Fashion Industry Association in July 2022, 80% of American companies plan to continue to reduce purchases from China in the next two years, and this proportion will be 63% in 2021. 86% of American companies plan to reduce the purchase of cotton clothing from China, and 45% of American companies plan to reduce the purchase of non-cotton clothing from China. In response to the restrictive measures of the United States, on June 9, 2022, the European Parliament passed the "Resolution on Anti-Forced Labor Customs Measures" with a high vote. On September 14, the European Commission published the draft Regulations on Products Prohibiting Forced Labor in the EU Market. On January 1, 2023, Germany officially implemented the "Supply Chain Enterprise Due Diligence Act". Recently, the U.S. Customs and Border Protection cited the "Countering U.S. Adversaries Through Sanctions Act" and will detain the products of three Chinese companies at the port of entry from March 14, 2023 on the grounds that "North Korean labor is involved."

The trend of industrial transfer is obvious, and transformation and upgrading need to be accelerated

At present, overseas supply chains cannot pose a fundamental challenge to China in the short term, regardless of the scale of production capacity, product structure or the integrity of the industrial chain. Its products are highly concentrated in final consumer goods such as clothing and home textiles, and it still needs a process to reach or surpass China in terms of scale or structure. Neighboring countries have a high degree of dependence on Chinese-made textile raw materials, especially chemical fiber products. Vietnam, Bangladesh and other countries import more than 60% of their textile raw materials from China. We should fully grasp the opportunity when neighboring countries are still highly dependent on China, take advantage of RCEP opportunities, rationally deploy industries and trade, accelerate transformation and upgrading, and avoid the negative impact of excessive industrial transfer as much as possible.

my country's garment export industry still has strong endogenous competitiveness

First, China has a complete textile and garment industry chain and an efficient supply chain. Second, China has comprehensive advantages in software and hardware, which offsets the disadvantage of labor costs to a certain extent. Third, the development momentum of new foreign trade formats is sufficient. New business forms such as cross-border e-commerce have high requirements for rapid response and flexible production. In recent years, it has been relying on China's flexible, efficient and highly digitalized manufacturing base to develop rapidly. However, the production capacity of Southeast Asian countries is concentrated in large-volume, basic products, and it is still difficult to undertake the "small and fast" trade model. Fourth, the implementation of RCEP will help China and ASEAN, the two largest textile and garment production centers in the world, further integrate, realize the big cycle in the RCEP region, and complete the development and development from "RCEP manufacturing" to "RCEP consumption" to "RCEP brand". leap. Fifth, China's super-large single market scale provides a steady stream of development momentum for the industry's production capacity and development space.

In 2023, the external environment will become more complex and severe, uncertain and unstable factors will increase, and insufficient external demand will become a prominent challenge. The impact of the historically high base will continue to appear, and the operation of clothing foreign trade will be further under pressure. In the first half of the year, especially in the first quarter, exports will face greater downward pressure. It will continue or even intensify the negative growth trend in the fourth quarter of 2022 (2022Q4 clothing exports fell by 13.9% year-on-year). At the same time, it should also be noted that after decades of development, my country already has a clear competitive advantage in the global textile and apparel supply chain, and is even more at the core of the Asian supply chain. In particular, China's economy will achieve an overall improvement in 2023. Provide strong support for stabilizing foreign trade. In the future, on the one hand, it is necessary to promote the steady increase of the international market share of high value-added products, and on the other hand, it is also necessary to avoid the rapid decline of the international market share of low-end and mid-end products. On the basis of maintaining a basically stable export scale, accelerate the transformation and upgrading of the industry, explore trade innovation growth points, enhance comprehensive competitiveness, and achieve high-quality development of clothing foreign trade exports.