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'd bet you it's because he's a Merchant.
Not either or, neither is what I prefer. Toss the income tax, toss the welfare state. Let capital compete in America again instead of pretending it doesn't have anywhere else to go.
And THEY will sell it to enough of WE to make it stick. ("Look! We're stealing more money from everyone else but YOU!")
I didn't bother reading past this. You don't get it. Trade (human action) isn't a math problem, your efforts to treat it as such reveal a overwhelming misunderstanding of the entire nature of economics (which is the study of human action). You can't measure what products I would have purchased, what industries I would have invested in, etc. when I can't do it because the money has been taken away. Simplistic economic models assuming 'everything else is equal' are absurd and can't be applied to human action, because there is no 'control group'. If you don't take my money in tariffs, what will I do with it? Tell me how you quantitatively measure what I didn't get a chance to do. ALL you can do is see that, barring your taking my money away from me under the guise of making someone else better off by compelling me to buy their product that I don't prefer, I have less wealth than I otherwise would. Your interference drives down my standard of living by raising my costs and funneling my money to bureaucrats.
Look where it got them.
Let me see China and Japan now have the second and third largest economies in the world and China is closing fast on our own. I'd say it got em' plenty. Wouldn't you? Where were these countries 30 years ago? Where was China just 15 years ago? Real comforting trend there Poohbah. Sure, our one way trading relationship with these 2 countries have nothing to do with this. Just keep telling yourself that.
China's merely copying them [Japan].
Yes, I know. They are obviously stupid. ////
Yup. China's economy is fast closing on our own. Why, their independent auditor, Arthur Andersen, said so, so it's got to be true, right?
Good grief. You really believe that centralized economic planning works. Every day on FR, I encounter more doctrinaire Marxists than I ever found in the economics department at my university.
Bottom line: Japan is so deep in a deflationary cycle that can't PAY people to borrow their money (their banks are literally telling you that if you borrow 100 yen today, then you only have to pay back 95 yen tomorrow--but nobody's buying).
China is Enron with a few nukes: their banking industry is fighting WTO transparency rules tooth and nail because then the world sees how much bad paper they're carrying.
When the Awful Truth finally comes out, China's going to go back to the warlord stage of their history for another 100 years or so.
Only because it would make taxation a voluntary act, and thus limit the federal government's size and scope as originally intended. I wouldn't support doing so at these taxation levels (federal government consumes more than 20% of GDP) because it would require tariffs of over 200% (assuming people continued to actually buy 1 trillon dollars worth of imported goods, which at those prices they wouldn't). The scope of imports (roughly 10% of GDP) really isn't very big, but choking off the efficiencies obtained by importing goods and resources that can be produced elsewhere more cheaply would have a negative effect on all industries requiring those goods, and furthermore set back living standards by raising the price of goods. I prefer we keep lowering income taxes and tariffs, and strangle the welfare state instead of expand it (prescription drugs today, will I have to buy old people Segways tomorrow just because they vote for them - screw that, I'll leave and let this place collapse like every other socialist experiment...)
I'll ask you essentially the same question I asked another above. Throwing aside, for the moment, your fear of what THEY are going to do to you, if the switch to a tariff based rather than an income based system of taxation were put to a vote, which way would you vote?
It's like asking if you'd rather have me cut off your hand or your foot. The tariff is paid by the American who buys the good, not the person who sells it. I believe nothing short of repealing the 16th amendment will return america to Constitutional government. The Baby Boomers will bankrupt the welfare state first, imo. They'll just vote us into oblivion. After our Soviet style welfare state meltdown we can try something different. My suggestion is to protect yourself as best you can with that in mind. Everytime you buy something, ask yourself if you need it more than your savings.
I would support a constitutional amendment straight excise tax on all retail purchases across the board, whether the goods or services are foreign or domestic, with the (very low) maximum rate explicitly stated in the amendment.
I do not support income taxes at all.
Neither do I support a tariff applied solely against foreign goods.
IMNHO, a choice between them is a choice between taking a chainsaw to my leg or drinking hemlock. Either one is likely to be fatal; I see no particular advantage in either one.
Indeed. Few have the ability to meld the sanctimonious with pomposity in the exotic way you do. You really are in a class by yourself there. So clever and elegant. LOL.
But I also wonder about the figures you use on percent of the GDP in imports. Can we for long balance a lawyer's bill against the cost of tool machines? The Sunday productions from the NFL against the productions of real manufacturers? Or are we looking at a GDP as nebulous as the dot coms of yesterday?
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