Despite pickup in demand and vaccine roll out, US apparel imports declined by 13.84 per cent to $10.92 billion in the first two months of 2021, reports OTEXA. Only imports from Pakistan increased by 13.45 per cent to $270 million while imports from China declined 9.22 per cent to $2.45 billion. Among the other major Asian producers, imports from Vietnam declined 12.09 per cent to $2.1 billion while those from Bangladesh fell 13.11 percent to $1 billion.

Imports from Cambodia decreased by 14.08 per cent to $451 million, India’s shipments declined by 21.89 per cent to $594 million and imports from Indonesia fell by 29.62 per cent to $553 million. Volume of US’ apparel imports in February on a Y-o-Y grew by 3.2 per cent to 2.07 billion sq. mt. equivalents (SME).

As per the US Census Bureau and Bureau of Economic Analysis, the US trade deficit increased $3.3 billion to $71.1 billion in February. This reflected an increase in the goods deficit of $2.8 billion to $88 billion and a decrease in the services surplus of $50 million to $16.9 billion.