Free trade's victims turning against Bush, GOP

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.

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."

Sure, make me take the heat from the bush-bots...

Seriously, the misguided folks on this forum that think any country can survive by manipulation symbols need to try a little exercise.

For an entire day, write down everything you touch or use to survive. Start with the pencil and paper and go on from there. Note where each object is made.

At the end of the day, write a 200 word essay describing how you can get along with all those physical objects, because very soon, you're going to have to.

OPEN ASSIGNMENT
MISSION TO SAVE AMERICAN JOBS
August 25, 2003

President Bush:

Mr. President your mission, should you decide to accept it, is to recover the 3+ million jobs lost on your watch. You are to find where they went, recover them, and prevent this from happening again.

You have until November 2004 to complete this mission.

If you choose not to accept this mission, or are incapable of performing, don't run in the GOP Primary so another Republican can accept this important mission for America.

American Citizen Voter

PS Ronald Reagan was the last Republican to understand. Ross Perot sent a warning to your Dad but since then all we hear is the mantra, 'Perot gave us Clinton'. Actually your Dad gave us Perot.

This is sure to foment some lively discussion among NC Freepers.
Now, if you will excuse me, I will be back on this thread tonight.

NC ping!
Please FRmail me if you want to be added to or removed from this North Carolina ping list.

The CEO of the company I work is against sending jobs overseas and thinks it is slowly destroying the American Industrial base.

GW as well as Clinton in his days, worshipped at the altar of the Arabs for cheap oil and the Chinese for cheap labour. All this at the expence of the American Middle class. We are told to retrain...yet now high paying jobs technical jobs are going to Asia.

The only one's profiting form it are the Chinese dictators who get their cut, and the middle men who arrange those deals.

Is it free trade when a Chinese worker is forced to work for penies to the dollar by his dictatorial government? Some free trade.

The democrats and the republicans are guilty of this.

Yeah, we Southerners are treated the same by the yankee republican establishment as the RAT party treats the ni**ers up North. They think we'll vote for them regardless of how badly they screw us over.

Bless their souls, they even gave us a carpetbagger senator last year just like during reconstruction.

They might have a little surprise in 2004.

Everyone acts like the president can wave the magic wand and make this stop. In a lot of ways it reminds me in the 80's when everyone was scared "robots and "computers" were going to elimanate ones job.

These same people who are worried about outsourcing are the same people who probably are big fans of the Internet. Our Internet/Web Site could do the work that it would have taken 2 people to do 5 years ago.

Does that make me a "free trader?"

What's Dole's stance on this?

Who knows? She never says anything - she's too busy going to cocktail parties in her philosophical home D.C. and figuring out ways to make our government bigger and more intrusive.

Does she even have a website yet? She didn't about a month ago.

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