By MARTIN CRUTSINGERAP Economics Writer

WASHINGTON (AP) — The Bush administration panel that reviews textile matters announced Thursday that it would proceed with seven cases filed by U.S. manufacturers seeking the return of quotas to protect the domestic industry from a surge in Chinese imports.

The Committee for the Implementation of Textile Agreements, chaired by the Commerce Department, said in a brief statement that the cases had cleared an initial technical hurdle and the panel would now consider the industry petitions on the merits of the requests.

The clothing items covered by the industry petitions include various types of shirts, blouses, sweaters, trousers, dressing gowns, bras and synthetic fabric.

The decision will trigger a 30-day comment period and after that the government will have 60 days to make a decision on whether to grant the industry’s request to re-impose quotas.

Industry officials contend that the government must move as quickly as possible to re-impose quotas to save thousands of U.S. jobs threatened by a surge in textile imports from China since Jan. 1, when global quotas in place for decades were eliminated.

In addition to the industry petitions, the administration on April 4 announced that it was bringing its own cases to determine whether quotas should be re-imposed on other clothing types, an action the industry had sought to speed up the time it would take for quotas to be re-imposed.

The public comment period on the government cases ends May 8 and the industry is hoping a decision to re-impose quotas on those products — cotton-knit shirts and blouses; cotton trousers and underwear made of cotton and man-made fibers — will come soon after that date.

‘‘They have the power to move quickly and, given the size of the Chinese surge in imports, they should act quickly,’’ said Cass Johnson, president of the National Council of Textile Organizations, an industry trade group.

The industry says that 17,000 U.S. textile and apparel jobs have been lost and 18 U.S. textile plants forced to close since the beginning of the year as some categories of Chinese clothing imports have registered increases of more than 1,000 percent.

American retailers, however, contend that the effort to re-impose quotas will mean higher clothing bills for consumers and will not save jobs in an industry that has been losing ground to foreign competition for decades.

The United States Association of Importers of Textiles and Apparel, the group fighting the quotas, suffered a setback on Wednesday when a federal appeals court in Washington lifted a court injunction that had been preventing the government from considering industry petitions that were filed last year based on the threat of possible harm to the industry before the quotas were lifted.

Commerce officials said on Thursday that they were still reviewing the appeals court ruling.