On the 23rd local time, the International Textile Fair was held in Sao Paulo, Brazil, but it was very uneasy outside the venue. Thousands of Brazilian textile industry workers held demonstrations outside the venue to protest against the large-scale export of textiles from China, India and other countries to Brazil, which led to the closure of Brazilian textile factories and the unemployment of workers. It is reported that the demonstration was organized by the Brazilian Textile Association and labor unions. The protesters waved banners that read “Defend the national industry and our jobs.” They even chanted the slogan “Chinese products leave Brazil.”
The organizers called the demonstration a “screaming alarm” to attract the attention of Brazilian government departments. According to data provided by the National Institute of Geography and Statistics of Brazil, since the beginning of this year, there have been 55,000 workers in the Brazilian textile industry. unemployment.
According to union organizers, about 1,000 workers gathered near the exhibition venue that day, but there were only about 100 police officers responsible for maintaining order. According to workers and Brazilian businessmen who witnessed the demonstration, the demonstration broke out because Chinese exhibitors put out the slogan “Looking for more imported retailers (in Brazil)”. Some textile workers believe that this means more Brazilian importers will import Chinese textile products to Brazil, making local Brazilian textiles lose their competitiveness, causing a large number of factories to close down and workers to be laid off.
Aguinaldo, chairman of the Brazilian Textile Association, said in an interview with the local Brazilian media “São Paulo Weekly” that the competition in the textile industry is no longer a competition between companies, but a competition between countries. “In addition to fighting unfair imports, Brazil urgently needs to become an industrially competitive country rather than deindustrializing”.
Reinaldo, chairman of the Brazilian Garment Association, said in an interview with the media that if relevant protective measures are not taken, Brazil’s textile industry may disappear in more than ten years, leaving only those retail importers. “What will happen to our two million textile industry workers then?” asked the union organizing the demonstration.
However, Pan Fangfa, the organizer of the trade fair and general manager of the China Foreign Trade Center in Brazil, said that this was a misunderstanding of the trade fair by Brazilian workers. He said in the statement that the purpose of the trade fair is to promote fair trade, mainly to provide a platform for information and technology exchanges between textile industry professionals from China and Pakistan.
