U.S. textile groups seeking new restrictions on clothing imports from China won a victory when an American lawmaker requested the U.S. International Trade Commission to collect data on the trade.

Industry groups applauded a request for federal monitoring of Chinese textile imports as protections for the domestic textile industry will expire  in 2009.

U.S. representatives and several textile industry groups have asked that the U.S. International Trade Commission investigate and monitor certain imports from China next year.

Safeguards against a flood of cheap goods and apparel from the country expire at the end of the year.

U.S. Rep. Charles Rangel, chairman of the House Committee on Ways and Means, formally requested the investigation to begin in January, 2009.

China's dominance for cotton consumption has posed a difficult balance problem for the United States. Growers support a domestic textile industry that would suffer if the country could dump its goods in the U.S. market.

An estimated 60% of the U.S. milling operations have vanished over the last decade, said Malcolm Lange, the National Cotton Council's Vice President of policy analysis. But China is the world's largest purchaser of raw cotton and the country's biggest customer and the farmers across the southern High Plains would love for the country to purchase even more, added Malcolm Lange.