The Office of Textiles and Apparel (OTEXA) of the U.S. Government published the data for United States’ apparel import for the period of January-May 2023. I am sharing a brief analysis of the USA’s overall apparel imports from the world as well as from the top sourcing countries.
As per the official data, USA’s apparel import from the world has declined by 22.92%, i.e. to US$ 31.51 billion in January-May 2023 from US$ 40.89 billion in January-May 2022. If we look at the volume wise data measured in Square Meter Equivalent (SME), in January-May 2023, USA’s import from the world has slowed down by 30.48%, i.e. import dropped to 9.58 billion SMEs from 13.79 billion SMEs during the first five months of the consecutive years.
During the mentioned period, all the top apparel import sources of USA including China, Vietnam, Bangladesh, Indonesia and India have shown significant decline in terms of both value and volume.
During the mentioned period, import from China saw a decline by 30.44% in dollar terms and 31.44 % in terms of quantity. USA’s import from Vietnam, the second largest source of apparel import, has also shown negative growth of 28.07% in dollar values and dropped by 33.51% in quantity, whereas import from Bangladesh dropped by 19.16% in dollar values and 30.91% in quantity. At the same time, negative growth was observed in case of other top sourcing countries such as: Indonesia at 27.57%, India at 20.80%, Mexico at 7.50%, Cambodia at 34.42%, and Pakistan at 31.98%.
As far as unit price per SME (Square Meter Equivalent) is concerned, USA’s aggregate unit price of import from the world increased by 10.88% in January-May 2023, and this increase from Bangladesh is recorded the highest by 17.01%. This is the reason between the deviation of our growth in dollar value and quantity value. The major reason of the unit price surge is the input cost hike and inflation. However, it also proves our progress toward higher value addition as our manufacturers are now investing in higher value added, sophisticated items which has immense scope to grow further.
