Revealed: How Bra Wars devastate world’s poor:
More than 80 million items of clothing destined for Europe are in limbo, their import blocked by hastily imposed EU quotas designed to protect the continent from the recent deluge of cheaper Chinese goods.Retailers say that the quotas inhibit free trade and will hit consumers hardest, through price rises and shortages of jumpers, trousers and lingerie. But the real victims of the cut-price clothing wars being waged on the British high street – and the trade row between the EU and China – are the poorest nations.
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Retailers argue that trade should be completely liberalised with no quotas. Alisdair Gray, director of the British Retail Consortium (BRC) in Brussels, said: “We were not consulted at all about the way in which the MFA was scrapped or the quotas were brought in, and the officials in Brussels seemed to have no idea about how our industry works.“Clothes are clearly labelled and if someone doesn’t want to buy a T-shirt from China and instead pay twice as much for a European-made product, they can go and do so.”
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