GAFFNEY, S.C. — As the pandemic raged in 2020, White House trade adviser Peter Navarro called Andy Warlick, the CEO of Parkdale Mills, a textile manufacturer with a large factory in South Carolina, with an urgent request. The United States needed millions of masks, and he wanted Parkdale to find a way to make them.

“I figure if you can make a bra, half a bra is a face mask,” Navarro told Warlick, according to Warlick’s recounting.

The company quickly made a plan to produce 600 million surgical masks for medical workers around the country. The feat was hailed as an example of why a robust domestic textile supply chain is a matter of national security. But these days the industry sees itself as an afterthought in President Donald Trump’s second term, with a trade agenda that prioritizes protecting sectors like steel, aluminum, semiconductors and pharmaceuticals.

Trump has raised trade barriers to the highest levels in a century, enacting universal levies, imposing reciprocal tariffs and picking economic fights with China and Europe. The approach is designed to bolster domestic production, but manufacturers are learning that not all industries are created equal. The frustration of those that feel left behind reflects an intensifying debate over what kinds of jobs America needs as Republicans and Democrats commit to their respective visions of industrial policy.

As a flurry of memes of American sweatshops mocking Trump’s desire to onshore production began circulating on social media this spring, the president’s top advisers sought to clarify the administration’s intentions.

“We don’t need to necessarily have a booming textile industry like where I grew up again, but we do want to have precision manufacturing and bring that back,” Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said in late April.

Those comments drew sharp backlash from the American textile industry, which has withered in the face of rapid globalization and has sought greater trade protection from cheap Chinese fabric imports.

“It is concerning to hear that our industry, that pivoted to making lifesaving personal protective equipment during COVID, are not considered a strategic priority,” said Kim Glas, president of the National Council of Textile Organizations.

Fraying from globalization

America’s textile industry has experienced a drastic decline in the past 30 years in the face of the offshoring of garment production to Asia, Mexico and South America, and the rapid pace of automation. The sector, which employed about 1.5 million workers in the 1990s, now employs about 470,000.

The industry points to China’s state-sponsored subsidies and intellectual property theft as a key reason the U.S. textile industry fell behind.

Textile manufacturers also blame trade liberalization policies such as the admission of China to the World Trade Organization and the normalization of trade relations with Vietnam in 2001 as factors that hampered the domestic industry.

The United States is the world’s second-largest exporter of textiles. But China — the world’s largest textiles exporter — sells six times the amount of fibers, yarns and fabrics to customers globally. Over the past two years, 28 American textile plants have shuttered across the country, with several of them in the Carolinas. The United States trade representative attributes this to China’s nonmarket practices that allow Chinese textile manufacturers to charge artificially low prices.

Most of the textiles made in the United States are shipped to countries such as Mexico, Honduras and the Dominican Republic, where the fabric is cut and sewn into apparel and then sent back to the United States to retailers.Textile manufacturers have been generally supportive of the Trump administration’s trade agenda. But they have asked the administration to exempt textiles from the 10% universal tariff that has been applied to products coming from Central America. They also want even higher tariffs on Chinese fabric imports.

Booming backlash

Much of the U.S. textile industry is concentrated in the South, and the most vocal response to Bessent’s comments came from the treasury secretary’s home state, South Carolina.

In May, a group of more than 30 textile manufacturers from the state sent Bessent a letter expressing dismay that he appeared to view the industry as “outdated and diminished.” They invited him to tour their high-tech facilities that used advanced robotics and artificial intelligence to mill cotton and perform quality control.

At a congressional hearing last month, Bessent was pressed on his comments by Rep. William R. Timmons IV, R-S.C.

The treasury secretary then clarified his comments, saying: “Through good tariff policy, we can make sure these existing businesses can grow and thrive, especially in the high end. And again, anyone who has survived has done it through innovation, hard work.”

The Treasury Department declined to make Bessent available for an interview. The treasury secretary has yet to respond to the letters or invitations to visit the textile plants in South Carolina.

A spokesperson for Bessent said he intended to travel to the state at some point. He is expected to meet with representatives from the textile industry in Washington next month.

A modernized South Carolina sector

Parkdale’s factory in Gaffney produces 1.7 million miles of yarn every day. Parts of the operation are run by fully automated robotic carts that are adorned with blue lights and zip across the factory floor moving bundles of cotton. The bundles are delivered to machines that spin them into the materials that eventually go into products such as Hanes underwear and cotton swabs.

“This is where I think he got misaligned a little bit,” Warlick said of Bessent, who grew up near Myrtle Beach and recently sold his home in Charleston for $18.25 million. “This is not the textile industry of your father or your grandfather.”

The company, which has its headquarters in North Carolina, is one of the world’s largest producers of spun yarn and the largest consumer of cotton in the United States. It is working hard to develop innovations, including a way to make polyester fiber biodegradable, but has had to close several U.S. plants in recent years because of rising energy costs and competition from foreign companies.

Survival of the Fittest T-Shirts

Despite the technological advancements of the U.S. textile industry, the low cost of labor in Asia means that the apparel supply chain is likely to remain global — at least until cutting and sewing can be automated.

It appears unlikely, however, that the Trump administration will be investing in such technology. Speaking to reporters in New Jersey last month, Trump said his focus was on domestic production of computers, tanks and microchips.

“The textiles, you know I’m not looking to make T-shirts, to be honest. I’m not looking to make socks,” Trump said. “We can do that very well in other locations.”

The apparel industry tends to agree. Stephen Lamar, president of the American Apparel and Footwear Association, argues that many of Trump’s blanket tariffs on imports should be scaled back because it is unrealistic to expect American manufacturers to make shirts and shoes at a competitive price domestically.

“We’re not going to be able to bring the apparel and footwear industries back to the United States at scale,” Lamar said. “A lot of people talk about how they want more ‘Made in U.S.A.’ apparel, but they’re not willing to pay the prices for apparel that is made in U.S.A.”