AAFA Urges Congress to Renew Haiti HOPE-HELP Acts Amid Humanitarian Crisis
As civil unrest in Haiti reaches a boiling point, the American Apparel and Footwear Association (AAFA) is calling on Congress to renew a trade program that could safeguard the Caribbean nation’s embattled apparel and textile sector.
The Washington, D.C. trade group’s president and CEO, Steve Lamar, wrote to Speaker of the House Mike Johnson, House Minority Leader Hakim Jeffries, Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer and Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell last week to urge Congress to take “immediate action” to renew the Haitian Hemispheric Opportunity through Partnership Encouragement (HOPE) and the Haiti Economic Lift Program (HELP) Acts. More commonly known as HOPE-HELP, the programs expire in September 2025, and are eligible for a decade-long renewal under House and Senate companion bills.
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With the extension of the state of emergency and the recent resignation of Prime Minister Ariel Henry, Haiti is at a “critical juncture,” Lamar wrote. Gang violence has forced the closure of the country’s airport as well as its main port, making doing business with Haitian suppliers a challenge. “Our hope is that the U.S. Government will continue to support measures that will bring about an end to violence, support democratic institutions, and enable quick economic recovery to avoid a worsening humanitarian crisis in our neighborhood,” he added.
HOPE-HELP provides certain apparel items made in Haiti with duty-free access to the U.S. market, and has created over 50,000 jobs for citizens, the letter said. Workers’ salaries support tens of thousands more people across Haitian communities, and without the continuance of the trade agreement, their livelihoods are at risk.
Lamar wrote that American brands are also having to guess whether they should place orders that would be imported after the programs’ scheduled expiration date. The air of uncertainty is “eroding future business,” he noted. U.S. enterprises need assurance that HELP-HOPE will continue without interruption in order to maintain their investment in the country. While apparel production and transport logistics have been disrupted by the humanitarian crisis, certain plants in Northern Haiti, and some on the border of the Dominican Republic, have continued to operate.
The trade preference programs have been widely utilized since they were passed in 2006 and 2010, with up to 70 percent of apparel imports from Haiti entering the U.S. under HOPE-HELP, Lamar told Sourcing Journal. The apparel sector stands to be “the backbone of recovery” when Haiti emerges from this period of instability, and if the agreements expire, it could cost the country’s workforce “a big chunk of business.”
There’s already a tangible cost to legislative foot-dragging, Lamar said. U.S. apparel imports from Haiti dropped 35 percent between 2021 and 2023. Figures from January 2023 and the first month of this year show a 15-percent decline. These shifts are likely attributable to supply chain disruptions as well as pullback from brands. “We need to arrest that, and send a very strong message to the industry. ‘Stay down there. Keep people employed,’” the AAFA lead added. “It’s a very tough situation, but we don’t want lack of action by Congress to make a tough situation even worse.”
According to Lamar, lawmakers likely don’t see HOPE-HELP as a matter of urgency, but they should. “This is not the measure to address gang violence, it is not the measure to restore democratic institutions,” but it is a tool that will enable the country to build up its economic stability when those issues are addressed, he said. “When that happens, there will be an industry that’s operating, that’s fully functioning, that can quickly employ Haitians.”
With the programs set to lapse next fall, AAFA is working to ensure that they don’t go the way of the Generalized System of Preferences (GSP). The widely supported trade program lapsed more than three years ago, and despite bipartisan urging and calls from the industry, it has not been reinstated. The Africa Growth and Opportunity Act (AGOA) will also expire next fall, and while members Congress, the Office of the U.S. Trade Representative (USTR) and the president have all endorsed its renewal, it has seen similar stagnation.
Runway is running out for these programs, and Lamar said the lack of action surrounding their renewal sends mixed messages to an industry that has been encouraged for years to divest from China. A report from QIMA released last week illuminated two prevailing trends across consumer goods sectors: reinvigorated China sourcing, and a higher-than-ever interest in nearshoring. While those interests might seem to compete, Lamar said they illuminate the current state of sourcing. “People want to nearshore, but trade policy doesn’t help them meet those needs.”
“Every policymaker talks about nearshoring as something they really want to encourage, and we’ve signed on to that; a lot of our members are the ones that are going to make that happen,” he said. “But they need trade policy that gives them an opportunity to build those investments and capacity. And if trade policy doesn’t stay updated, relevant or even intact, companies are going to have to make decisions based on action, not rhetoric.”