USA witnessed a decent growth in swimwear imports both in volumes and values during January to May 2018 period. The country imported 24.40 million kg of swimwear marking a surge of 6 per cent from the corresponding period last year.
According to the released data by OTEXA and analysed by Apparel Resources, values of swimwear import too upped by 5.81 per cent from 2017 to reach at US $ 700.16 million in the first 5 months of 2018.
The increased swimwear demand in the USA was an opportunity for the Asian countries and they capitalised on it. China, Vietnam and Indonesia continued their dominance in supplying swimwear to the USA and secured top 3 positions in swimwear exporters list to the USA, while Cambodia, 4th in the list, fell significantly.
The Asian manufacturing powerhouse China shipped swimwear to the USA worth US $ 342.14 million (up 3.93%) in the said period and remained unaffected from the ongoing trade war between USA and China, at least in swimwear exports.
Vietnam has continued becoming US favourite as far as apparel imports are concerned despite the fact that Trump demolished TPP last year. Vietnam grew by 24.48 per cent and clocked US $ 117.41 million as compared with US $ 94.32 million in the same period last year. In volume-terms, the South-East Asian hub posted a notable surge of 20.07 per cent and shipped 4.25 million kg of swimwear to the USA in the said period.
On the other hand, Indonesia posted quite a good growth (11.77%) tapping US $ 69.29 million in swimwear exports to the USA. Cambodia, however, downturned by 7.76 per cent and exported swimwear worth US $ 40.75 million facing a loss of US $ 3.43 million from the same period of last year.
Jordan took a quantum leap as far as swimwear category is concerned. In 2016, the total swimwear exports from Jordan to the USA was merely 60 kg, whereas it grew to 76,532 kg by 2017 and till May this year, the country massively mushroomed its exports by 351 per cent in the first 5 months of 2018 to ship 295,602 kg of swimwear to the USA worth US $ 6.50 million which was up 234 per cent on the yearly note.
