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."
Mo, there just aren't enough hard core conservatives or lib-uh-rhuls to elect anyone, or block the election of anyone. There are enough people in the squishy middle to swing it either way...
Hey, this thread being officially Merchantrein I wouldn't want to get kicked off.
Especially all those damn Merchants.
Great! So if you would so kidly get me on Charmed as Phoebe's love interest and bring Back Firefly while you're at it. (Stupid Fox Network!)
I think we can officially declare this thread hopelessly off-topic.
Off-topic? Sure. But if you're looking for where this thread really went wheels off, Post #357 is your culprit. Notice dogbyte12 put out that little doozy and then bolted.
Oh sorry... Down with all you Free-traitor-capitilist running-dog-merchants!!!!
Vote Dean!
< /sarcasm > (for the truly clueless among you)
I realize that and that is why I don't understand how anyone that calls themselves a conservative would take a chance and throw their vote away
So he did. And thus ruining my follow-up post about Bay Buchanan. The cur!!!
Take a good look around you. For all intents and purposes they've already done exactly that. They're moving their employment offshore, and when nobody can afford to buy their products, their sales will go offshore as well.
And Ayn Rand, who never ran a business in her life, would be standing on the sidelines cheering as hired guns like Robert Zoellick do their worst to gut the American economy and the American middle class along with it.
Robert Zoellick... I bet he is one of those damned Merchants!!!!
Nope. I was and am one of those who believe that our military can never be big enough.
Their tenacious pirating of our technology points out their Achilles' heel: they can't do any large-scale R&D of their own.
Oh yeah sure. Just like how Japan's copying of our technology got them into many of our now past industries, which they have advanced tremendously. Are you one of those that think Japan is a forever washed up industrial giant? LOL.
Let me tell you something that even an 8th grader would intuitively know, when a country cedes industry after industry to their overseas "competitors" without anything but trade deficits in return that country will most certainly reach a point where it loses the critical mass and technical know how to invent new industries. Common sense is obviously lost on you.
Oh you know it. So is Milton Friedman.
And Greenspan... don't forget Greenspan!
Look where it got them.
China's merely copying them.
BTW, Japan's one major R&D effort was the "fifth generation" of computers that would completely demolish the US technology lead.
It went...NOWHERE.
Are you one of those that think Japan is a forever washed up industrial giant? LOL.
Until they're willing to write off a few trillion dollars of their bad debt (imagine the US simply walking away from about $100 trillion of debt), that's EXACTLY what they'll remain.
The government is already being used to artificially raise the price of goods manufactured in America. Switching to a tariff based revenue system, rather than an income based one, would take away the economic bias against American manufacturing and put that bias on foreign manufacturers instead. Is there a reason that you prefer having the economic bias against American manufacturers rather than the Chicom manufacturers?
You think that it will be a SWITCH?
BWAHAHA!
They'll make it BOTH!
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.