Posted on 08/25/2003 2:05:47 PM PDT by snopercod
CHARLOTTE, N.C. -- This year's highly publicized job losses in North Carolina manufacturing, including the Pillowtex bankruptcy, could mean trouble next year for President Bush in a region that was a stronghold in 2000.
Bush won more than 56 percent of the vote in both North Carolina and South Carolina in 2000. But his strong support of free trade has turned some against him in the South, where U.S. trade policies are blamed for the loss of jobs in textiles and other manufacturing sectors.
Andy Warlick, chief executive officer of Parkdale Mills in Gaston County, said he doubts he will repeat his 2000 vote for Bush next year.
"He made a lot of promises and he hasn't delivered on any of them," Warlick said. "I've had some firsthand experience of him sending down trade and commerce officials, but they're just photo ops. It's empty rhetoric."
Fred Reese, the president of Western N.C. Industries, an employers' association, said executives are beginning to raise their voices against Bush and are planning education and voter drives.
"We're seeing a new dynamic where the executives and employees are both beginning to see a real threat to their interests. You're going to see people who traditionally voted Republican switch over," Reese predicted.
The hard feelings were on display days after Pillowtex's July 30 bankruptcy filing, when Republican U.S. Rep. Robin Hayes walked into a Kannapolis auditorium to meet with former workers.
"Thanks for sending the jobs overseas, Robin!" shouted Brenda Miller, a longtime worker at the textile giant's Salisbury plant.
In December 2001 Hayes -- who is an heir to the Cannon family textile fortune -- cast the tie-breaking vote to give Bush the authority to negotiate "fast-track" trade agreements, trade treaties that Congress must vote up or down with no amendments.
At the time, Hayes said he won promises from the Bush administration that it would more strictly enforce existing trade agreements and pressure foreign countries to open their markets to U.S. textiles.
"Are we pleased with the way they responded? Absolutely," Hayes said. "Are we satisfied with where we are? Absolutely not."
Jobs in many industries have fled overseas since 1993, when Congress passed the Clinton-backed North American Free Trade Agreement, or NAFTA. About half the textile and apparel jobs that existed in 1994 are gone.
Since Bush took office in January 2001, it is estimated North Carolina and South Carolina have lost more than 180,000 manufacturing jobs.
And even more textile jobs could be out the door once quotas on Chinese imports expire at the end of next year.
Republican U.S. Rep. Cass Ballenger voted for NAFTA and fast-track, and has seen his 10th District lose nearly 40,000 jobs, primarily in the textile and furniture industries.
"Certainly, there's a political cost to any controversial vote no matter which side you take," he said. "People are casting stones, but we're trying to pick them up and build something."
Democratic U.S. Sen. John Edwards voted against fast-track in 2002 after voting for an earlier version. In 2000 he voted for permanent normal trade relations with China.
Recently, though, while campaigning for the Democratic presidential nomination, Edwards has attacked Bush's trade policies and called for fairer trade measures.
Robert Neal, vice president of the local chapter of the Pillowtex workers' union, said Hayes has worked to try to ease the impact of job losses in his district.
"Though he (Hayes) voted for fast-track, he is really concerned about the workers and their conditions in the state of North Carolina," Neal said.
Not everyone feels that way.
Reese is organizing 1,500 manufacturing companies across North Carolina in an effort to leverage what he calls a new voting bloc.
In South Carolina, voter drives are planned for the first time at Milliken & Co., which has about 30 plants in the state. Mount Vernon Mills of Greenville, S.C., is forming a political action committee.
The company's president Roger Chastain, a one-time Bush voter, doesn't expect to support the president or Jim DeMint, a Republican candidate for the U.S. Senate seat being vacated by Democrat Ernest Hollings.
"We're basically liquidating our whole middle class, polarizing people on the two extremes, have and have-nots," Chastain said of the manufacturing job losses. "We'll be a Third World country."
Ouch! Is this where the fireworks start?
And you can laugh at the plight of the Mexican people and the serious blows that NAFTA and globalism has made to their economy --- but what happens over there could affect us also.
Yup. Every problem has a solution that is simple, straight foreward, seductive, and WRONG.
Too bad most voters don't see the last bit until way after the elcetion...
Again --- it might be okay if wages do drop to the 1960's level for most people --- as long as housing, automobile, gasoline, food, and all the rest drops to those levels also --- we'd still have a middle class --- but with wages dropping to $6-7 an hour but gasoline at $2 a gallon and home prices at $100,000?
Ye Gods! You got it!!!
I don't disagree with you that people vote the economy. But that has nothing to do with understanding economics. That being said, this economy will be fine enough in 2004 for George W. Bush to win easily.
*sigh* You don't get it.
It already is right now.
Maybe on your planet...
You is preaching to the choir buddy!
I have been researching some new Computers for my business and home. I have been buying Gateways for a while but in the last couple of years all the tech staff has had very heavy accents. It was near impossible for me to get an answer to any problems let alone understand what I was being told due to the fact my techs could barely communicate in English.
Of course, these guys were all outsourced on these tech lines so I decided to drop Gateway and try Dell. On a whim, I called their tech line and sure enough, I ran into the same damned thing.
Long story short I am contracting with a local guy (who comes highly recommended from good business associates) for seven comps all custom made (my favorite is my balls to the wall home entertainment comp replete with a TIVO like Dolby Digital DVD recording system without the TIVO fees)
Bwah hahahahahah what economy? Tourist trade, Pot Growing, Narcotics?
That is rich.
That was one of the biggest globalist/free trade lies we were told --- that Mexico would quickly become middle class, immigration to the USA would end because they'd have all these great jobs in Mexico. Instead millions of Mexicans lost their homes and jobs and are risking death to get over the border, the Mexican economy is doing very poorly with factories shutting down on them daily.
They asked Fox to renegociate NAFTA --- he refused thinking he's some kind of globalist dictator, so the people spoke in July. Fox and the PAN party are history.
Interesting: Read this thread and tell me what you think of it.
I'm assuming you'd consider moving to a less expensive area of the country if your hubby lost his job? ~ MEGoody
I can't speak for luckystarmom or her hubby, but, I'm considering it. In the short term it might be a "good" move.
HOWEVER: the high cost of replacement housing, and the penalty of resetting the Prop 13 base line for taxes would make it a one way trip.
The industry is cyclical, when it is good there is quite literaly nowhere on earth with more opportunity.
I'd be moving from an area with hundreds of potential employers to an only-game-in-town single employer town. That worked really well for the Pillowtex employees, didn't it?
NAFTA was passed on CLINTON'S watch, yet when the bottom finally falls out on BUSH'S watch, the disenfranchised voters want to make HIM pay by voting for a Clintonista?
BINGO! we have a winna!!!
Sadly, that is exactly what will happen, then the dems will run against Dubya for decades, just like they did with Hoover, and Nixon.
No one ever went broke underestimating the stupidity of the masses.
All that counts is who's left standing when the music stops...
But what was the economy like in Mexicao before NAFTA? Surely you do not believe that NAFTA caused all the migration of Mexicans north do you? I mean do you think it was the implementation of free health care and schooling for illegals.
Hell I can remember watching illegals run over the border when I was on vacation in the west back in 1978. What part of NaAFTA was in place then?
Now that is the type of Freepers that I've grown to love and cherish.
Adapt, innovate, overcome!
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