Creative Editing
Chapter 4
Exercise 9
9. Edit this story.
skivvies
WASHINGTON (AP) -- American taxpayers have spent more than a million dollars to help one of Japans biggest underwear makers pitch it's skivvies in Japan.
Gunze is just one of over a hundred foreign firms that have benefited from taxper-financed advertising in Europe and Asia worth $20,000,000, according to USDA documents obtained by The Associated Press.
The promotions feature home furnishings and clothing -- from baby wear and boxer shorts to Scottish knits and Italian bluejeans -- made over seas by foreign workers in mostly foreign-owned plants using U.S. cotton.
Gunze, the Japanese underwear manufacturer, benefited from advertising worth $1. 15 M in 1992 and 1993, the USDA reported.
Sheets and sweaters made by Benetton, a trendy Italian clothing maker that has annual sales of two billion dollars, were promoted in advertising worth another $1.3 million.
"Why should we promote sales of Japanese underwear, manufactured by Japanese companies for sale to the Japanese, in Japan? Give me a break!" said Rep. Peter H. Kostmayer, (D-Pa.). who's investigation of the USDA's Market Promotion Program turned up the list of foreign participants.
Under the program, USDA gives $200 million a year to industry associations and private companies for overseas promotions of products containing U.S. comodities.
In the case of cotton, the industry's Cotton Council International has received about $64 million since 1990 for overseas promotions. Another $15.8 M is set aside for 1994.
No money actually changes hands between the cotton Council and the individual textile and apparrel manufacturers. Instead, the cotton Council spends its money on ads touting U.S. cotton. Some mention specific products.
In return, the firms mention U.S. cotton in there own advertising and display the cotton USA trademark. Featured items must be made from at least 50% U.S. cotton.
"We give them some recognition, but its more self-serving -- to identify and link in the consumers mind products that use American cotton so that we can build market share," said Adrain Hunnings, Executive Director of Cotton Council Internatl.
He said USDA's figures show the entire value of an advertising campaign, when mention of a company may only amount to a few seconds of broadcast time or 1" on a magazine page.
"Never was payment made to Benetton, never did we put any money into their ad campaign," Hunnings said.
One ad begins like this" "Ingredients for a lazy morning: Fresh coffee from Brazil. Relaxed cat from Persia. Sheets from Benetton. Cotton from America."
The next 3 paragraphs tout the fresh crisp comfortable feel of cotton, especially cotton from America. Pictured is a square-inch Benetton logo and the Cotton USA mark.
A current Benetton add pictures a dying A. I. D. S. victim. Earlier ads showed a black woman nursing a white baby and a priest and nun kissing.
Kostmayer and Sen Patrick Leahy, D-Vt., chairperson of the Senate Agriculture Cte., say it is wrong to spend tax payer money to help foreign companies advertise.
"our textile market is hurting terribly in this country. There are clothing products, textile products being manufactured in the United States by American workers that now are having to compete overseas with foreign products getting U.S. subsidies," Kostmeyer said.
A USDA official, however, said the purpose of the program is to move U.S. commodoties off the farm.
"We have not discriminated between U. S. and foreign companies and big companies and little companies. If they have a project that appears to move the product, we've treated them all equally," said Phil Mackie, Assistant Administrator for commodity and Marketing Programs at USDA's Foreign Agricultural Service.
Mackie, however, conceedes that its hard to measure the success of the cotton promotion program, as with any advertisingampaign.
Total exports of U.S. cotton have jumped from 6.7 million bails in 1990, when the cotton Council received it's first grant, to a high to 7.8 bails in 1992. Exports are expected to fall to six point eight million bails in the 1994 marketing year, which ends July 31.
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