The NY Times reports:
White House Moves to Impose Quotas on Chinese TextilesThe Bush administration, in a further escalation of trade tensions between the United States and China, announced Tuesday it had decided to impose quotas on three types of textile products in an effort to give the U.S. textile industry temporary breathing room from a flood of Chinese imports.
U.S. Rep. Jim DeMint, R-S.C., one of the lawmakers who pushed for the quotas, praised the administration's decision.
"We have to have the means to hold countries like China accountable if they refuse to play by the rules," DeMint said. "This decision will help level the playing field and ensure that trade will be both free and fair."
Unfortunately, nothing in the article stated what the unfairness was. The whole point of free trade is so that countries with comparative advantages can exploit them and everyone is better off for it. I don't believe wholeheartedly in unconditional free trade, but if you promote free trade in your speeches while putting quotas in place for political expediency, you'd be rightly called a hypocrite.
Along with the steel tariffs that have been ruled a violation by the WTO and our farm subsidies that kill agriculture markets in other countries, this textile quota will increase the perception that in the U.S., "free and fair" means "stupid mercantilist supremacy".