Sixteen members of the Congressional Textile Caucus have asked the U.S. Department of Homeland Security to tighten customs enforcement against textile imports they say evade tariffs through transshipment, naming China and Vietnam as the principal origins of the diverted goods.

Caucus co-chairs Rep. David Rouzer (R-NC-07) and Adriano Espaillat (D-NY-13) led the bipartisan letter to DHS Secretary Mullin, joined by fourteen other members of Congress. The letter urges three specific actions: stronger enforcement of existing trade laws, improved detection of customs fraud, and harsher measures against repeat offenders, including blacklisting.

The commercial stakes are quantified. The U.S. textile industry contributes more than $65 billion annually to the economy and ranks as the world's second largest exporter of textile products, according to the caucus. In Fiscal Year 2024, U.S. Customs and Border Protection collected $13.2 billion in textile-related duties — roughly 17 percent of all duties collected that year. That revenue line is what the lawmakers argue fraud directly erodes.

The enforcement gap the letter targets sits at the customs tier of the supply chain, at the point of entry. Foreign producers, particularly in China and Vietnam, are increasingly routing textile products through countries that hold free trade agreements with the United States, the caucus states. The practice lets goods enter at preferential or zero rates they do not qualify for, distorting competition for domestic mills and apparel manufacturers.

"North Carolina has remained a top textile manufacturer even with foreign actors and organized crime undermining our great industry when they illegally circumvent our customs process. It's time for that to end," Rouzer said. He credited Secretary Mullin's leadership and said enforcement "will be strengthened to protect North Carolina's textile industry by punishing and blacklisting bad actors."

Espaillat framed the request as a program-building exercise rather than case-by-case enforcement. "We are calling on DHS Secretary Mullin to develop a comprehensive program to safeguard the interests of American textile industry workers from unscrupulous practices that threaten billions of dollars from American taxpayers," he said. "Our priority is ensuring a strong domestic supply and holding bad actors accountable for practices that violate our trade laws and break the rules."

The letter also links textile enforcement to upstream agriculture, noting that protecting the industry supports domestic cotton growers and the broader farm economy. Rouzer has co-chaired the caucus since 2025 and has sat on the House Committee on Agriculture since entering Congress in 2015.

For sourcing teams, the letter signals where enforcement risk is concentrating: origin declarations on textile and apparel entries, particularly goods claiming FTA preference that CBP may trace back to Chinese or Vietnamese production. The caucus has not yet secured a formal DHS response, and no new enforcement program has been announced — the commitments described in Rouzer's statement reflect the caucus's expectations, not confirmed DHS action.

The decision the news forces is twofold. Importers routing textile orders through FTA countries should audit their origin documentation now, before any blacklisting regime takes shape. Buyers with U.S. mill dependencies should track whether DHS formalizes the requested program, since stronger entry enforcement would raise landed costs on non-compliant supply routes and shift the economics back toward qualified domestic and FTA-compliant production.