The Turkish Textile Industry Will Gain Market Share From USA

Uludağ Textile Exporters Association (UTİB) focused on its target market, the USA. 13 textile businesses that attended the “LA Textile Show September 2023” trade show, which took place in Los Angeles, California, between September 27 and 29, 2023, received significant orders and made new contacts.

UTİB, which aims to raise awareness of our sector at the fair with its trend area organization, draw attention to Turkish products and conduct buyer studies, exhibited a special design at its stand with samples of fabric and sustainable textile products that reflect the latest trends of the participants.

Evaluating the fair and the sector, UTİB President Pınar Taşdelen Engin said, “We exported textiles to 199 countries and regions in 2022. We reached a kilogram export value of 7.8 dollars. We continue our work on R&D, innovation, design, branding and ecologically friendly production in order for the sector to stand out in the global competitive environment. We exhibited our products with these features at this fair. The trend area created by our union also attracted attention and became the center of attention of foreigners. We want to increase our exports and improve ourselves with value-added production, effective participation in international fairs, and the support of commercial purchasing delegations.”

“We don’t think the quantity of exports we send to the biggest importer in the world is sufficient”

Underlining that the USA is a very important country for the textile industry, Taşdelen Engin said, “Together with the ready-made clothing industry, we are Turkey’s second largest exporter sector with an export of 31.6 billion dollars. We provide the highest foreign exchange inflow to Turkey with a foreign trade surplus of approximately 20 billion dollars. As two sectors, we exported over 1.5 billion dollars to the USA last year. While the USA imported 2.1 billion dollars in non-woven textile product groups in 2022, Turkey’s exports to the USA were 128.1 million dollars. We don’t think the quantity of exports we send to the biggest importer in the world is sufficient. We can show our quality, innovative and sustainable production power more clearly in this market and reach at least 1 billion dollars of exports in textiles alone.”

USA reached 3.3 trillion dollars in total imports

In 2022, US imports increased by 15% to 3.3 trillion dollars. The main import countries are China, Mexico, Canada, Japan, Germany, Vietnam, S. Korea, Taiwan, India and Ireland. Türkiye ranks 25th in the country’s imports with a share of 0.6 percent.

In 2022, our exports to the USA increased by 20 percent to 20 billion 428 million dollars, while our imports increased by 26 percent and reached 14 billion 993 million dollars.

While Turkey exported 1 billion dollars’ worth of ready-made clothing products to the USA with an increase of 6.3 percent last year, it exported 548 million dollars in textiles with an increase of 15.2 percent.