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."
I think the proper spelling of the name above (as deemd by the anti-business socialists) is "Free Traitor."
Apparently anyone who believes in the free market is also a Red Chinese Commie Pinko. (according to all the anti-business-save-my-job-at-any-cost types)
I hope that helps you with your question.
Wrong. I've already got them.
Actually, there is an inverse correlation between poverty and longevity.
So to answer your question...Yes, statistically, you will die sooner than you otherwise would have if America becomes a third-world nation.
Naw...Darth Sidious already tried that and got banned.
I'm looking to vote for a candidate (of any party) which will stand up for the principles on which this nation was founded. Individual freedom, limited government, and rule of law.
Seen any lately?
Yes but I am one of the so-called "Free Trader Elite" so therefore I won't be listed among the downtrodden proletariat when third world status comes along. I will be in charge of funneling all of the economic aide provided by the European union to all of the unwashed masses. Therefore I will skim all the cream off the top and live like a king!
< /Sarcasm > (for the sarcasm impaired among you)
Bump, and highlight. This is the crux of my argument. Yes, you can get cheaper stuff at Wal-Mart, that somewhat compensates for the lower wages people make in the retail sector. However, the slow demolition of the manufacturing base, has created unwilling moms in the workforce. We know what this is doing to the fabric of our society. Latchkey kids tend to get into more trouble.
It's something both radical feminists and radical free traders don't address. What about the american family? Are your free trade ideals worth more than the family? We have opened up trade, we have let our manufacturing base go. Housing hasn't gotten any cheaper though. You still need manufacturing job wages to buy a home. Therefore, both parents work. It is tearing our nation apart at it's seams, and wild eyed feminists and free traders pretend the problem doesn't exist.
Hand in hand these two groups have destroyed 200 years of values, culture, identity in pursuit of the purity of their ideas. Are we better off than we were in 1970? Sure we might have computers, and dvd players... but are we a better people?
No, they can just stay home and not vote.
Wow, you should read Atlas Shrugged.
You wanna hear a giant sucking sound? Enact that law and watch how fast every blue chip company in America leaves US soil!
In the eighties via tariffs and quotas Ronald Reagan did address the problem.
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.
The concern is not increased productivity the concern is the subsidies for offshore investing the dispatrity of tariffs and the predatory trade practices of foreign governments like india and China.
India has the second hishest tariffs in the world.
Does that make me a "free trader?"
I don't know do you define Free Trader as one who suuports our current trade envirornment with aaverage 70% Chinese tariffs on American made consumer goods vs their preffered access to American markets? Adam Smith the definer of Free Trade theory would not have called this Free Trade and these conditions would meet his Free Trade definition or when to apply tariffs.
I feel your pain.
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