Posted on 01/31/2004 7:41:18 PM PST by TaxRelief
GEORGETOWN, S.C. -- Joe Gamble climbs into his black Chevy pickup and leaves the auto glass repair shop, where he spent 20 fruitless minutes trying to persuade workers to vote for Howard Dean.
Like many of the 600 steelworkers laid off in October in this small town south of Myrtle Beach, Gamble, 49, is convinced foreign trade cost him his job. But even here, where the jobless rate is among the state's highest at nearly 15 percent, converting that outrage into political power is proving to be a tough task.
Neither of the two workers at the glass-repair shop last week plans to vote. "Somebody's got to abstain," one told him.
Even though South Carolina has lost about one in every five manufacturing jobs over the last three years, the issue of foreign trade isn't gaining traction with S.C. voters as Tuesday's Democratic presidential primary approaches.
Textile executives have tried to push the issue into the spotlight, as have textile unions and Georgetown's steelworkers.
But Gamble's experience at the glass-repair shop, as well as interviews with more than two dozen Georgetown residents, illustrate the difficulties in trying to mobilize voters to reverse the decades-long trend toward free trade.
Around Georgetown, population 9,000, residents are concerned about the scarcity of jobs and want the economy to improve. But they hold out little hope that politicians will make any serious effort to stop low-cost goods from flooding the country and putting people out of work.
Still, that hasn't stopped politicians from descending on Georgetown, 200 miles southeast of Charlotte. John Edwards is expected this weekend, and Dean and Dick Gephardt visited in the last month.
Gephardt, the most outspoken opponent of free trade in the Democratic field, dropped out of the race last week after a poor showing in the Iowa caucuses. Polls there showed just 4 percent of caucus-goers identified trade as the major issue.
"It's a real hard issue to explain and connect on," said David Woodard, a political science professor at Clemson University. "People just glaze over it."
A long history of prosperity
Georgetown has a long history with international trade. Founded in 1729 as South Carolina's third city, development took off when it opened its port three years later.By the mid-19th century, indigo and rice had helped make the area wealthy, and Georgetown's port exported more rice than any other port in the world, local historians say.
Today, Georgetown's charming downtown lures tourists from nearby Myrtle Beach and Charleston. Just blocks away lies the Georgetown Steel mill, built in 1969, and beyond that the International Paper mill, built in 1936, supplied by a steady stream of timber trucks on U.S. 17.
Neither is universally loved, particularly among the town's growing crop of retirees, which helps explain why enlisting residents to combat free trade at the polls is so difficult. Residents complain that the steel mill cast off reddish dust that discolored nearby homes, and the paper mill produces an occasional yet unmistakable stench.
When the steel mill closed, not everyone mourned, said Wendy Jordan, 32, a waitress at Thomas' Cafe downtown.
"Some people's really upset, and some people's not," she said. "I have heard that Georgetown would look better without the steel mill. That could be true. I don't know."
The mill made wire rods, used in products such as tire cord, brake pads, coat hangers and fish hooks. In bankruptcy court documents, Georgetown Steel explained that it was forced to shut down because costs of natural gas and scrap metal rose dramatically while foreign competition left it unable to raise prices.
The federal government deemed that the layoffs were the result of imports, which provides workers additional tax money for retraining.
But around town, there are plenty of other villains, which complicate efforts to blame foreign trade exclusively.
Some suspect that the mill's owner, a local conservationist, bought the company in 2002 for the purpose of shutting it down and redeveloping the waterfront property -- a charge the owner has denied.
Others blame the union, which rejected pay cuts that the owner said would help keep the mill afloat.
Steelworkers say local politicians didn't try hard enough to broker a deal that might have kept the mill running.
"Everybody's got their own opinion about things," Jordan said.
At the union hall a few blocks from the dormant factory, James Sanderson stands in the parking lot, talking with a half-dozen steelworkers about their support for Dean.
Sanderson, the president of the local union, says Dean will fight for workers. The media give Dean a bum wrap for being angry, says Sanderson, who can become a bit animated himself.
"People in this country should be angry," he said. "These jobs need to come back."
People don't realize that the taxes paid by big manufacturers help keep property taxes low and fund firefighters and police officers, he says. They don't see that their jobs could be the next to be shipped overseas.
"If they knew their jobs were next, they would get upset," he said. "But for whatever reason, people don't do nothing unless they're affected by it."
(Excerpt) Read more at charlotte.com ...
and besides we don't have free trade in the real sense of the word.
The really silly thing is that Democrats and Republicans have almost exactly the same Laissez-Faire positions on trade. It's 6 of one and a half-dozen of the other, and yet these union dummies still think the Democrats are going to save them. Who do they think signed NAFTA, for pete's sake?
"NAFTA. It's for the consumers." Hillary Limbaugh.
One in every five manufacturing jobs were "lost" in the last three years???? Give me an F'ing break.
Did this "Fact" come off a DNC Fax or something? 20% of manufacturing Employees are unemployed in SC?
When I worked there, we couldn't find enough SKILLED manufacturing employees.
Congressman Billybob
Why should I be forced to subsidize the purchase of "cheap" foreign goods? Think about it... when the US factory closes, my taxes go up, to pay for the loss of property taxes paid by that factory & it's former employees. My taxes go up to pay for social-welfare costs of those unemployed workers. My taxes go up to cover job-retraining programs. My taxes even go up to cover the costs of the increased volume of imports (port infrastructure, customs, transportation networks, etc).
Face it... as long as this is a social-welfare state, "free trade" doesn't benefit the average american much, if at all. All it does is pass the costs from one, rapidly growing group (unemployed, under-employed, low-income) to the shrinking middle class.
Free trade, along with the importation of millions of poor, uneducated turd-worlders, is slowly stratifying this nation into the classic third-world model of a small, isolated elite ruling class and the masses of angry poor.
We all know that liberty can't survive without a large, prosperous middle class, which seems to be our largest export item these days.
Please name the specific plant closings in SC. SC is not a old factory, high wage rust belt state. The only companies I know of in SC that have less employees now than in 1999 when I left the state are the outdated textile mills.
Employees get replace with automation. It's a GOOD thing. There is no F'ing way 20% (or 15% or even 5%) of SC Jobs were lost in the last 3 years. Those people are still working there, they just aren't out on the floor pushing a button when the green light comes on.
BMW in spartanburg had A HUGE expansion in the last 3 years. That would have not been possible without free trade.
If only that were true. Unfortunately for the children of this nation, the true cost of this disaster is being heaped upon them in the form of massive federal debt. That and the fact they will be stripped naked, left without a manufacturing base, the means of protecting themselves in the future.
Myrtle Beach residents have successfully conveyed their disgust and the attendance there last year was down by at least half.
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