Mexican Pact Could Double Clothes Exports : Trade: A new agreement, opposed by many U.S. manufacturers, eliminates or increases most quotas. Experts say few U.S. jobs are at risk.

Mexican clothing and cloth exports to the United States could double to $1.3 billion over the next two years under a new pact that a U.S. trade official called “the most liberal agreement we’ve ever negotiated in textiles.”

The U.S.-Mexican agreement eliminates quotas on more than half of Mexican-made textiles and increases most remaining quotas by one-fourth. Mexico also will be allowed to request increases in its export limits as needed.

In disclosing details of the agreement Thursday, Mexico’s chief foreign trade negotiator, Miguel Angel Toro, said that, if Mexico can take full advantage of the new two-year agreement, exports to the United States could double from the 1989 level of $646 million.

Although many U.S. textile producers and apparel manufacturers have opposed the trade pact, which was signed last week, a number of experts said there would be few, if any, jobs lost at American companies because of the agreement.

Bernard Z. Brown, president of the Coalition of Apparel Industries in California, said apparel makers are reluctant to do business in Mexico because of product quality and transportation problems in the past. Nor does he expect attitudes to change quickly.

“No one I know is trying to get more production out of Mexico,” Brown said.

Experts also noted that Mexico is not one of the top textile and apparel exporters to the United States, shipping far less than China, South Korea, Taiwan and Hong Kong.

William Kay Daines, general counsel to the National Retail Federation, said that any domestic business lost by textile companies would be offset by increased shipments to Mexican apparel makers.

Daines, who said he helped U.S. trade officials craft the agreement with Mexico, also maintained that the extra apparel exports from Mexico would tend to be inexpensive merchandise that generally would replace imports from other nations rather than domestic goods.

Moreover, Daines said, the agreement should bring consumers lower prices on apparel. He explained that it is much cheaper to ship merchandise by land from Mexico than by air or sea from Asia.

Still, some observers regarded the agreement as a bad omen for two domestic industries that already have been battered by increasing imports.

Lawrence Mishel, research director for the labor-backed Economic Policy Institute, said the agreement was a “short-sighted” measure that will eliminate jobs for immigrants, minorities and others who have struggled to break into the U.S. labor market.

“We need our own industry in order to provide employment to Third World people here. Government should stop giving away the industry,” Mishel said.

In a prepared statement, Edward P. Schrum, president of the American Textile Manufacturers Institute, called the agreement “one of the biggest concessions made by the U.S. government in the entire history of the U.S. textile/apparel import program.”

“In only four years’ time, between 1985 and 1989, textile and apparel imports from Mexico have more than doubled . . . This apparently is not enough for Mexican exports; they want more. The new agreement assures that they will get it,” Schrum added.

According to the textile manufacturers group, the share of the U.S. apparel market garnered by imports rose from 28% in 1980 to 60% last year, when imports hit a record high of $26.5 billion. Over that period, apparel industry employment dropped from 1.26 million to 1.09 million, and further declines are expected in the 1990s.

Despite the nationwide job declines, apparel and textile employment climbed in Los Angeles during much of the 1980s, and it currently is the county’s second-largest manufacturing employer.

The United States regulates imports of clothing and other textiles by assigning quotas to more than 40 countries. Mexico, which ranks sixth among the countries exporting textiles to the U.S. market, has protested that the quotas are protectionist, particularly given the increased access U.S. garment makers have to the Mexican market.

“They made a good case,” said U.S. chief textile negotiator Ron Sorini. He called the arrangement “the most liberal agreement we’ve ever negotiated in textiles.”

“It is a recognition that we are exporting significant amounts of textiles to Mexico,” he said in a telephone interview from his Washington, D.C., office.

The changes are expected to be especially helpful to apparel-manufacturing maquiladoras, plants in Mexico that make garments from U.S.-made cloth. Maquiladoras account for 85% of Mexico’s textile exports, according to Alfonso Bustamante, president of the Mexican Maquiladora Assn.

More than one-third of the 278 garment-making maquiladoras are concentrated in Tijuana, he said, with the rest scattered among cities on the border and in the interior of Mexico.

Just as important as the 86% increase in garment quotas, he said, is the greater flexibility that will allow garment makers to respond to changes in fashion and demand.

That will help prevent situations such as that which occurred last year when Mexico used less than three-fourths of its overall quota. Quotas for some products were filled early because of high demand, while others were not filled because products did not sell well.

Non-garment textile categories, which account for a smaller portion of overall exports, will be allowed a greater percentage increase. Cloth exports, for example, would be allowed to rise 150% and exports of miscellaneous textiles could triple, Toro said.

However, Rodolfo Garcia Muriel, president of the Northern Textile Chamber, whose members produce almost one-third of Mexico’s cotton cloth, said Mexican manufacturers will not be able to take advantage of the opportunity unless they have funds available to invest in modernizing their plants.

Juanita Darling reported from Mexico City and Stuart Silverstein reported from Los Angeles.