BEIJING, Sept. 1 -- China-US textile dispute talks concluded yesterday with no progress made.

    Cass Johnson, president of the US National Council of Textile Organizations, was quoted by Reuters as saying that the two-day closed-door negotiations had not narrowed the two sides' differences.

    Auggie Tantillo, executive director of the American Manufacturing Trade Action Coalition, who was in Beijing, said: "It appears that it's over this week, and no agreement has been reached."

    There was no official response from China's Ministry of Commerce.

    The US negotiating team is scheduled to head home today.

    The spokeswoman of the US Embassy in Beijing said the US Trade Representative Office would possibly publish a decision on whether to launch additional caps on Chinese products today. No information about its decision is available at the time of press.

    The US side promised to be prudent when initiating new safeguard measures on Chinese textile products at the Joint Commission on Commerce and Trade in July, which was attended by US and China's top trade officials. And it postponed the decision on new curbs to August 31.

    Insiders had expected that this round of talks, of a higher level than the previous rounds although still "technical," would be more likely to wrap up a deal. The talks in the past two days were chaired by China's vice-commerce minister Gao Hucheng.

    Compared with the EU-China agreement signed in June, "substantial differences" exist in how many categories the agreement should cover, how to calculate the base figure as well as the annual growth.

    The US textile industry claimed that the ending of a global textile quota regime in January this year would see cheap Chinese textile and apparel products flooding the US market and hurting local enterprises.

    The topic has grown hotter in the past couple of months, as the US Government re-imposed quotas on textile imports from China upon the industry's request in May, and the industrial association continued to file petitions for curbs on more categories. Enditem

    (Source: China Daily)