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."
People who supported Bush in 2002 but who have lost jobs, or are disappointed in his lack of support for gun rights, or are furious at his protective stance towards the Saudis, or are disappointed with the Bush DOJ for arresting sick people, or don't want American tax payer money going to Palestinian Authority...just to name a few.
The irony is specially rich when they want to open the doors to exploitation of said trait (er, trade) by gummints that are the furthest thing from being libertarian.
You miss my sarcasm. Unlike you I don't overestimate Japan's financial problems or underestimate their ability to cut into important industries that are integral to our nation's success as a leader in technology and manufacturing. They have been doing it for decades and even in their weakened condition still represent a serious competitive threat to this nation. I also don't think China is stupid for following Japan's mercantile trading blueprint on how to play America for suckers on trade. I think they know exactly what they are doing and their economic growth speaks for itself.
And in case you haven't noticed we have been accumulating quite a National Debt ourselves and under Bush are busy piling on hundreds of billions more in debt from his most excellent new socialistic endeavors. Tell me, where are we going to come up with the money to afford prescription drugs for seniors with an estimated cost well excess of 50 billion a year when our SS and Medicare are going bankrupt?
Perhaps you'd rather whistle in the dark about that while talking up the problems of other countries, the very same ones that are running up massive trade deficits with us.
...which is why America should have initiated gasoline rationing on September 12, 2001, and Bush should have issued an executive order opening up all federal land to oil and gas drilling. Cut the arabs off at the knees.
But of course this is a "parlor" war on terrorism, not a serious one, so we continue to buy weapons for our enemeies every time we fill up the tank.
Sorry for the thread creep...
Actually, I did. Liddy Dole, too. Why do you ask?
Lordy no-suh. We wuz' just down heah pickin' cotton and mindin' to our bidness when along come some yankees wit dere big factories. What wuz us ole' country folk to do?
Your doom and gloom is absolutely astounding as well.
Given the technological base China is creating, that will not be true 10-20 years from now. Even now we are militarily overextended.
1. Prices in Europe are (best case) 2X prices in US. Salaries in Europe are comparable to US salaries. In some cases, in fact, they are far lower - my boss in a Western European Bank had to get a special permission from senior manager to be able to higher me at a competitive US salary.
Then you also know that they get something like two months vacation and generally work 9-5. It is true that their prices are higher but they have a much easier quality of life than we do. So it's a cultural choice.
2. Our IT industry has no significant competition either in Europe or Japan. (India is providing some competition in the narrow field of IT consulting.)
Our IT industry ? Again, our technological base is being transferred to Asia. IT consulting is hardly a narrow field when senior American analysts and engineers cannot find work. It is a wholesale decimation of our technological intelligentsia. Who these days would go into computer science or electrical engineering as a field ? Extrapolate that 10-20 years into the future and what does that tell you about our ability to remain the preeminent technological superpower ?
The "giant sucking sound" has resulted in huge number of high quality new jobs
Free trade briefly resulted in benefits for college educated workers at the direct expense of the jobs of non college educated American workers. Now, obviously, college educated workers are seeing that their "high quality new jobs" can be exported to Asia to be done at a fraction of their salaries. They are in precisely the same boat manufacturing workers are.
You are in the small minority.
What nonsense you talk. His story is extremely common these days. I know plenty of people who were very skilled and experienced and senior who have been months without work.
And please explain to me how you pay a mortgage on McDonalds's pay.
The world owes me nothing. I work for a living and have never accepted a hand-out from government in my life.
I don't expect government to give me a job by I don't want government taking away all of my opportunities by destroying my nation's economic strength through its anti-American policies.
I'll give you my address and cordially invite you to come to my home and call me a communist to my face. I won't need the government to help me respond to trash like you, I assure you.
Get a smaller house?
Sell the stupid computer you are using to get online about what jobs you've been too good for over the past year of unemployment (as that guy was doing) and cancel your internet bills?
They must all hate "the little man".
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