The Department of Commerce’s Office of Textiles and Apparel of the US has reported that monthly imports of cotton, wool, man-made fiber, silk blend, and non-cotton vegetable fiber textile and apparel products totaled 5.49 billion square meter equivalents in September, down 9.6 per cent from August and 5.9 per cent from September 2015. Textile imports totaled 2.96 billion SME, down 12.8 per cent from August and 6.0 per cent from the previous year, while apparel imports of 2.53 billion SME were down 7.3 per cent from August and 5.8 per cent from a year earlier.

Total year-to-date imports were 47.3 billion SME, down 2.4 per cent from the previous year, as textile imports fell 3.0 per cent to 26.9 billion SME and apparel imports lost 1.6 per cent to 20.4 billion SME. For the year ending in September last, imports of textiles and apparel totaled 62.4 billion SME, down 1.5 per cent from the same period a year earlier, as textile imports dropped 2.5 per cent to 35.5 billion SME and apparel imports fell 0.3 per cent to 26.9 billion SME.