10,000 in protest march
13/12/2007
Footwear manufacturers in Mexico brought the centre of León to a halt today with a protest march against the federal government's apparent lack of willingness to offer help to the sector after tariffs on imports from China end on December 31.
Industry leaders have been pressing the government of President Felipe Calderón, who has been in office for a year, for several months now, first asking for tariffs to remain, but in a press conference at the end of today's protest march, the footwear manufacturers' leaders seemed to have changed tack.
"This is not about competitiveness," said José Antonio Bugaber, president of the Guanajuato footwear industry chamber at the press conference. "We are more competitive than Chinese footwear producers. This is about subsidies."
He explained that the Mexican government had responded to appeals on tariffs by saying it could not break the rules of the World Trade Organisation (WTO), which had allowed tariffs to remain in place only until the end of 2007. However, Mr Bugaber insisted the Chinese government was also breaking WTO rules by providing the Asian country's footwear manufacturing firms with subsidies that allowed them to sell at lower prices.
"China agreed to remove those subsidies in 2001," he said, "but it hasn't done so. We would have no difficulty with the lifting of tariffs if China were charging a similar price for its shoes as other countries, but that's not the case today."
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