The Textiles, Clothing and Footwear industry is one of Australia's main manufacturing sectors, providing employment to over 87 000 Australians and accounting for more than 4% of total manufacturing. The TCF industry is a significant employer of Australians in both cities and regional locations and a main exporter. The industry is comprised of every stage in the marketing process from processing raw materials to retailing intermediate and finished goods. A distinguishing feature of the Textiles, Clothing and Footwear …showed first 75 words of 1363 total…

…showed last 75 words of 1363 total…being very inefficiently used. In spite of the tariff reductions having detrimental results on the actual TCF industry, it was needed to try to improve productivity to obtain an internationally competitive industry. The reductions have illustrated that the Australian TCF industry is just not capable of competing on wage costs with China and other low-cost countries and perhaps that resources should be focussed on other areas and the principal of comparative advantage put into practice.