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US textile makers, feeling forgotten by Trump, hope boom days are ahead
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An employee works at Greenwood Mills in Greenwood, South Carolina, on June 6.
PHOTO: KAOLY GUTIERREZ/NYTIMES
Alan Rappeport
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GAFFNEY, South Carolina – As the pandemic raged in 2020, White House trade adviser Peter Navarro called chief executive officer Andy Warlick of Parkdale Mills, a textile manufacturer with a large factory in South Carolina, with an urgent request. The US needed millions of masks, and he wanted Parkdale to find a way to make them.
“I figure if you can make a bra, half a bra is a face mask,” Mr Navarro told Mr Warlick, according to Mr Warlick’s recounting.
