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U.S. Textile Makers, Feeling Forgotten by Trump, Hope Boom Days Are Ahead
As the pandemic raged in 2020, the White House trade adviser Peter Navarro called Andy Warlick, the chief executive of Parkdale Mills, a textile manufacturer with a large factory in South Carolina, with an urgent request. The United States needed millions of masks, and he wanted Parkdale to find a way to make them.
'I figure if you can make a bra, half a bra is a face mask,' Mr. Navarro told Mr. Warlick, according to Mr. Warlick's recounting.
The company quickly made a plan to produce 600 million surgical masks for medical workers around the country. The feat was hailed as an example of why a robust domestic textile supply chain is a matter of national security. But these days the industry sees itself as an afterthought in President Trump's second term, with a trade agenda that prioritizes protecting sectors like steel, aluminum, semiconductors and pharmaceuticals.
Mr. Trump has raised trade barriers to the highest levels in a century, enacting universal levies, imposing reciprocal tariffs and picking economic fights with China and Europe. The approach is designed to bolster domestic production, but manufacturers are learning that not all industries are created equal. The frustration of those that feel left behind reflects an intensifying debate over what kinds of jobs America needs as Republicans and Democrats commit to their respective visions of industrial policy.
As a flurry of memes of American sweatshops mocking Mr. Trump's desire to onshore production began circulating on social media this spring, the president's top advisers sought to clarify the administration's intentions.
'We don't need to necessarily have a booming textile industry like where I grew up again, but we do want to have precision manufacturing and bring that back,' Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said in late April.
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