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."
Yes, so we MUST shut off economic freedom using the federal government before this happens. The Japanese bought Rockefeller Center for God's sake! We're all doomed!
Then they're really going to be mad when those home values start to fall ---- with the fast dropping wages --- that's almost sure to happen.
Myself.. I think it was issues, mainly NAFTA, that did the trick..
I like to think of Free Republic as a forum of generally decent people, but this "screw the unemployed" mentality of the free traders in this lot is very disheartening. There was a time when a guy with a high school education could support a family with a factory job. Now him and his wife both have to work retail. The family will have to wait.
Unemployment is over 7% where I live. That doesn't mean 7% of the population is out on the streets panhandling like pathetic lumps of crap. It means that the economy is in a wretched state and U.S. corporations exporting jobs overseas sure as hell isn't helping. It is quite possible for hard-working, decent people to lose their jobs. Telling someone that just lost a $20/hr job to shut up and go to McDonalds just validates the worst liberal stereotypes about Republicans.
I didn't blamed Perot .. I blamed the voters that voted for him
The facts? The facts that far more people are able to own or rent good homes today than ever before in America?
You go back and read whatever you like. We're not discussing what you said. We're discussing what I said.
Then go back and read #131 (your response to my post).
Once again, you go back and read what you want. I provided it to you and explained it to you.
1. I know what I was trying to say.
2. I said exactly what I wanted to say.
3. I went back and explained what I was trying to say.
4. You simply refuse to acknowledge that my comments and explanation say exactly what I intended to and you can't be adult enough to admit it.
You either tried to defend taxing US exports,
Wrong again...
or you had a severe case of neural flatulence.
If you're still pleading your losing arguement, one of us did indeed a brain fart.
Your imperfect command of the English language doesn't help others to understand your ramblings.
You're welcome to you thougts on this. Perhaps if you weren't on so much medication, or drinking so heavily, there wouldn't be a problem.
There you go again... MORE taxcuts for the rich while the poor guy gets screwed again!
You despicable Free-traitor-capitalist pig you!
< /sarcasm > (for the clueless among you)
Touche!
If average wages go up, the value of the house, there really is no problem. Again, since you ignore it, time and again. A blue collar guy could buy a home, support a wife, and kids 30 years ago. They can't now. The wife has to work, the kids are in day care. But, the people who are in the market, they are ok.
Let me try a different tact. The people who got in the market 30 years ago, and have seen their home value sky rocket, tend to not have kids at home any more.
Do you genuinely believe that there are no economic role whatsoever in social pathologies? Yes, there are dirt poor people with the world's greatest values, and wealthy who are amoral. My point again is, is it better for society for young married couples with children to both have to work in order to buy a home.
Let me repeat myself, in case you avoid that again. I am not saying it isn't sweet for people who gained alot of value in their home value. Bully for them. I am in no way suggesting that real estate go down. I am suggesting that we work to keep higher wage jobs here so people can afford those homes. 2 Wal-Mart Jobs do not equal 1 manufacturing job when it comes to buying a house.
I didn't really blame any of them...
I see these things like Market Share.
When someone gains allot, overnight.. naturally, I am interested in how they did it.
Right or wrong, he obviously appealed to these people on some level.
Imo, he did something that others could have possibly emulated.
Huh I guess having 3 tv's, central air conditioning, 3 bathrooms, a DVD, and a microwave in the average standard house today, is much worse than the no central air conditioning and 1 bathroom houses of the 60's.
You see the houses of today come with a lot more added features than those of the 50's and 60's.
BTW, do your statistics figure in property taxes, which have skyrocketed since the 60's.
Am I supposed to cry for you? Do you understand what life was like for the Americans that created this country for you? Do you realize they had many times in their lives where they would have killed to work for the wages and comfort that a McDonald's offered? The whining and class warfare from the "little men" at FR is what is truly a joke. You don't even realize that there are just as many conservatives and people on FR that are making no more than a lot of these people whining about being unemployed (on the freaking internet!) yet they actually believe in conservatism unlike these people whining and blaming George Bush and capitalism for their problems.
If the President deigned to answer you he would probably tell you that a hell of a lot of those jobs disappeared with the underfunded, overrated dot com companies. Those folks were no better than gerbels running on a treadmill - making a lot of heat but producing nothing.
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