Slaughter Secures Relief for Hickey Freeman in Farm Bill

Press Release

Rochester, NY -- Today, Congresswoman Louise Slaughter (D-NY), Chair of the Congressional Bipartisan Upstate New York Caucus and Ranking Member on the House Rules Committee, announced that she has secured a provision in the Farm Bill to improve and extend the Wool Trust Fund, a program that helps domestic textile and apparel companies, including Hickey Freeman, disadvantaged by unfair trade agreements. Slaughter has been working behind the scenes for more than a year to secure bipartisan support for the provision, which extends the program until 2019.

"The Wool Trust Fund keeps hundreds of good paying jobs in Rochester by ensuring American manufacturers like Hickey Freeman can compete with foreign companies by lessening the damaging impacts of past trade agreements," said Rep. Slaughter. "In order to strengthen our economy, we must work together to revitalize and protect American industry so that more goods are produced, bought, and sold here at home, which is why I will continue to fight to level the playing field for our nation's manufacturers."

Slaughter has also been working with the Obama Administration and United States Trade Representative (USTR) to block a harmful provision from being added to the proposed Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) that would unfairly benefit foreign textile and apparel competitors of Hickey Freeman. Slaughter has twice met with senior USTR officials responsible for negotiating textile provisions in TPP and has corresponded with President Obama and Trade Representative Ambassador Michael Froman urging them to block the harmful provision.

The Wool Trust Fund, established with the Congresswoman's leadership in 2000, provides tariff refund payments to U.S. suit makers and others in the industry to compensate for competitive damage caused by an "inverted tariff," where the import of a finished product is lower than the duty of the materials used to make the finished product. For example, suits from Canada and many other countries enter the United States duty-free, but U.S. suit makers pay a duty of 25 percent on wool fabric imports. The trust fund also makes payments to U.S. wool fabric and yarn producers, as well as sheep growers, to encourage more U.S. production of higher quality wool and wool fabrics. The Agricultural Act of 2014 modernizes and extends the Wool Trust Fund until 2019 and states the program is to be "used for the purpose of reducing the injury to domestic manufacturers resulting from tariffs on wool fabric that are higher than tariffs on certain apparel articles made of wool fabric."

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