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Businesswoman Giulia Gustafson reacted with a smile and a frown to recent news of a competitor's closing.

She smiled because the closing of Ack-Ti-Lining's necktie lining operations in North Carolina should increase demand for the niche products manufactured by Lincra USA, the Roanoke County-based company she operates with her husband, Michael Gustafson.

Ack-Ti-Lining, like Lincra USA, manufactured linings for high-end neckties. Ack-Ti-Lining was Lincra's sole remaining competitor in the U.S. Other competitors operate in China and elsewhere in the Orient.

Giulia Gustafson frowned because, in her view, Ack-Ti-Lining's exit stacked more tinder atop what is one of her long-burning worries -- the migration of American manufacturing jobs overseas.

"If we no longer make anything in this country, you really wonder what people are going to be doing in the future, what our kids will be doing, and what we'll export," she said. "There has to be some kind of plan [to retain American manufacturing]. You just can't pretend everything is going to be OK."

Lennox Allen, plant manager for Ack-Ti-Lining in Troy, N.C., said Thursday that the company has stopped taking new orders for necktie linings and will cease such production once previous orders are filled. Ack-Ti-Lining is a division of Joan Fabrics Corp.

"Imports are killing us," he said.

Lincra USA opened in 1999. It receives rolls of material and cardboard necktie patterns from Lincra, the parent company in Italy, and manufactures the linings that give neckties shape and bulk.

Giulia Gustafson is a native of Reggio Emilia, Italy, site of Lincra's headquarters.

Lincra USA has seven employees and during its most recent fiscal year had sales of about $2 million, she said.

In September 2003, Lincra USA had nine employees and reported annual sales of about $2.5 million. Customers include upscale clothier Brooks Brothers. The company operates out of a 12,000-square-foot building in ValleyTech Park.

Foreign competition has hurt Lincra USA too, said Gustafson, and cost it some customers. "We've had our share of hard times, and we still do," she said, adding that her company is grateful for ongoing financing support from FNB Salem.

She estimates Lincra USA's sales could jump about 50 percent in the wake of Ack-Ti-Lining's closing. Lincra USA might add one or two employees if orders increase as anticipated, she said.

Nationally, employment in textile and apparel manufacturing has declined steadily. According to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, the U.S. had 633,700 such jobs as of February, down from more than 1 million jobs in January 2001.

Which is the main reason news of Ack-Ti-Lining's closing was bittersweet for Giulia Gustafson.

She said she has just about given up trying to convince members of Congress that the loss of American manufacturing jobs overseas is a problem that requires more than lip service or pledges to help secure training for workers who have lost their factory jobs.

"Occasionally, I write a fax. But I don't like to talk to them on the phone anymore because they're infuriatingly ignorant [about the issues]," she said. "Nobody listens, and nobody cares."

A group that apparently does care is the American Manufacturing Trade Action Coalition, a trade association working to preserve and create American manufacturing jobs.

Lloyd Wood, a coalition spokesman, said Lincra USA and other textile and apparel companies that have survived have done so because, in most cases, they operate and produce efficiently.

"But the problem for these companies is, when your customers disappear, it doesn't matter how productive or efficient you are," said Wood.

And when competitors disappear, he said, there often are mixed feelings among the survivors -- sometimes because of professional and personal relationships forged through the years at industry trade shows; sometimes because of shared lobbying efforts and the loss of an ally; and sometimes because the surviving company wonders whether it will be the next to fall.