Clothing imports from Europe counteract the general downward trend in 2023

In 2023, the value of US apparel imports fell 22% to $77.8 billion. A recession that European-based suppliers managed to avoid, as US apparel imports from the European Union (EU), worth $3 billion, grew 2.4% in fiscal 2023.

Good news for European garment producers, who are facing a slowdown in local consumption and a drop in order values ​​within their own borders, as Europe was hit hard by inflation last year. Driven by the luxury sector, US imports from Italy and France grew by 3.5% (to $2 billion) and 10.8% (to $203 million), respectively, while imports from the United Kingdom United Kingdom remained stable at 126 million dollars.

It is worth noting that, in 2021, the United States imported 2.4 billion dollars in European clothing and surpassed the 3 billion dollar mark in 2022, a result that, however, was below the 3.8 billion dollars in goods imported in 2019, before the pandemic. However, the value of US apparel imports from all other regions of the world fell in 2023, so the fact that imports from the EU were on par with fiscal year 2022 was an exception to the general trend.

U.S. imports of apparel from China, which grew 11.3% in 2022, fell 25% last year to $16.3 billion. Imports from Vietnam, the second-largest U.S. apparel supplier, grew 27% in 2022 but fell 22.2% in 2023, to $14.1 billion. Unlike the previous two countries, Bangladesh managed to stay above the level reached in 2021, with exports worth $7.3 billion to the United States, which is however equivalent to a drop of 25% compared to 2023.

Western and American brands have generally placed very large orders ahead of fiscal 2022, predicting a strong post-pandemic recovery and trying to protect themselves from further shipping disruptions and, in some cases, get better prices from their suppliers. But selling such a large inventory turned out to be more difficult than expected, leading to a general drop in orders for 2023. A “normalization” that was also reflected in the EU supply figures (as reported in this article). .

Only European clothing producers have managed to escape the drop in orders placed by US buyers in 2023. Imports from India fell by 21.4%, those from Indonesia by 25.1%, those from Cambodia 22.5%, those from Honduras 23.6% and even imports from neighboring Mexico fell 10.9%.

US textile imports fell by 15.7% in 2023, to $27.1 billion, after remaining relatively stable at $31.1 billion in 2021 and 2022. In this sector, the EU was no exception to the general slowdown; its textile exports to the US falling 13% in 2023, to $2.3 billion.