Americans bought 2.4 billion pairs of shoes in 2006, with most made overseas, according to the American Apparel & Footwear Association.
(Amy Sancetta/Associated Press)
WASHINGTON - Footwear makers and retailers are trying to stomp out a Depression-era US shoe tax, a move they say could save Americans hundreds of millions of dollars annually and kick-start relatively flat footwear sales.
Trade associations and their members, such as Payless ShoeSource, Nike Inc., and Columbia Sportswear Co., have been lobbying lawmakers since the summer to get them to exempt certain categories of footwear - including all children's shoes - from the import tariffs that run as high as 67.5 percent.
The groups created a website - EndtheShoeTax.org - to raise awareness and encourage people to tell lawmakers, via an e-mail prompt on the site, to pass the Affordable Footwear Act.
While the matter appears to have widespread industry support, its relative obscurity and low-level priority make passage of the bill anything but a shoe-in, several supporters say.
Imposed in the 1930s, the tariffs were designed to protect a domestic manufacturing industry from cheap imports. But that industry has largely disappeared over the past 20 years, as manufacturing overseas has become easier and cheaper.
"It's an anachronism," Peter T. Mangione, president of the Footwear Distributors and Retailers of America, said of the tariffs. "It's just completely out of synch with what we need today."
Of the 2.4 billion pairs of shoes Americans bought in 2006, nearly 99 percent were made overseas, mostly in China, according to the American Apparel & Footwear Association.
US shoe tariffs are among the highest in the world, compared with the European Union's 17 percent, Japan's 10 percent, or Chile's 6 percent duties, according to the centrist Progressive Policy Institute.
© Copyright 2007 Globe Newspaper Company.
