Weaving fair trade

The game of global trade became a fairer competition with the new year, as richer nations were forced to lift their 30-year-old quotas on imported textiles and apparel. The United States and European nations should not renege on this commitment by erecting new barriers to trade that amount to phantom quotas that perpetuate inequities.

Trade, however, is not always a two-dimensional, north-versus- south game. The losers in what many are predicting will be among the largest migrations of manufacturing jobs in history will not only be workers in U.S. and European textile industries, but also in impoverished countries in Central America, Africa and Asia, who will find it impossible to compete with China.

What no one anticipated when talk of ending the quotas began was dramatic economic growth in China and India. The two countries plan to pair armies of underemployed workers with high- tech apparel machinery to sew circles around competitors that count cheap labor as their only advantage.

The quota system needed to be dismantled. Washington should not try to resist this inevitability, and should act to lessen the hardship suffered by some as a result of free trade.

That means reinvigorating Trade Adjustment Assistance programs for American workers who will migrate toward other industries, as well as development assistance and preferential trade deals for some of the world's poorest nations that will also be affected. The trick is to find new export markets that will enable workers here and in poor countries to benefit from globalization. -- Los Angeles Times