(FORTUNE Magazine) – Senator Ernest F. Hollings carries around identical men's shirts, one made in Taiwan, the other in the U.S. While the wholesale price of the imported shirt is less, retailers sell both for $18. His message: Curbing apparel imports will save jobs and probably won't cost you more at the store. Believe that and we'll sell you a bridge, say his opponents. Nonetheless the South Carolina Democrat has successfully talked a bill through the Senate that would restrict the growth of imports to 1% a year. Proponents argue quotas are necessary for an industry that they say has lost 350,000 jobs in the past eight years. Says Daniel K. Frierson, president of the American Textile Manufacturers Institute: ''Imports have been increasing at the rate of 16.5% a year, throwing people out of work and decimating small communities.''

Critics counter that protection limits competition and thus raises prices: Gary Hufbauer, professor of international finance at Georgetown University, maintains that by 1992 retailers would charge $20 for those shirts. The total cost of the bill to the consumer in 1992 alone would be $40 billion, all to save what the bill's supporters say would be about 325,000 jobs over the next five years. Some 1,500 quotas on textiles and apparel from 42 countries are in effect already and have cost consumers plenty (see chart). What's more, opponents say, the industry is hardly hanging by a thread. Domestic textile production rose 6.1% last year, and profits were up 8.6%, according to the Council of Economic Advisers. Hufbauer believes that more than half the job losses are due to new equipment that requires less labor. With a presidential veto firmly promised and the bill still facing a House vote to bring the measure it passed earlier into line with the Senate version, ) the showdown probably is a ways off. George Bush has opposed the bill; Michael Dukakis is still reviewing it. The textile industry is wooing both of them. ''The real politics will be extracting promises from Bush and Dukakis as to what they'll do to make the industry feel better,'' says Hufbauer. ''A lot is going on behind the scenes.''

CHART: NOT AVAILABLE CREDIT: SOURCE: GARY HUFBAUER CAPTION: GROWTH IN TEXTILE AND APPAREL IMPORTS

CHART: NOT AVAILABLE CREDIT: NO CREDIT CAPTION: COST OF IMPORT RESTRICTIONS