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."
No, it is NOT certain. If they proceed to squander their riches on internal graft, covering their bad paper, and propping up unprofitable industries (as they are presently doing) instead of actually investing in profitable enterprises that might upset their notion of how the universe works...you're not going to see economic growth in that country.
When the largest economy in the United States is paying your company WAY over market rates for electricity, you're going to see your company grow, right?
Wrong. I just described Enron and the State of California. Notice that Enron is no more.
That's a funny way of describing one of the world most powerful economies.
They're losing money. That's not a sign of economic power.
Japan is a very wealthy nation with a financial problem.
However, they are suffering from Cleopatra Syndrome.
We have our financial problems too.
Indeed.
We at least admit to having those problems.
Japan has yet to do so--which means that they aren't going to solve their problem any time soon.
To imply that Japan with their multi-trillion dollars of invested industrial capital in a bevy of technology and manufacturing industries is finished as an economic power is sheer naivete on your part.
To bet that they'll suddenly do the difficult thing after doing the easy thing lo these many years is...well, the phrase "astonishing naivete" comes to mind.
What are you going to say in a few years when they put their financial problems behind them?
They've had over a decade to get their financial house in order, and they've refused to do so.
They will have to write off a few trillion dollars in bad debt that will never get repaid.
Imagine the US economy after about $100 trillion or so worth of debt is suddenly written off--assuming we had about $100 trillion of debt that we were pretty sure would never get repaid.
We would have severe economic pain in the short term. It might be enough to prevent such a write-off from happening.
Their banks refuse to do that. Every year the amount of debt that would have to be written off increases, making the necessary medicine even more painful.
They've refused to do what they need to do when it was easy. What makes you think that they'll suddenly decide to do it when it's much harder?
And then the unions were deliberately exempted from those laws. I just wished you to be aware of that.
Economics isn't mathematics. Human behaviour, of which it is the study, isn't as predictable as chemistry or algebra. Sorry, that's just how it is. Logic, not the slide rule, is how understanding is acheived. Humans aren't interchangeable like oxygen atoms, they all perceive and respond to stimuli differently. You still refuse to tell me how you quantitatively measure what I didn't get a chance to do, or better yet, would do left unmolested by your rapacious bureaucracy.
The revolution was fought over no taxation without representation not for no government and no taxation.
It was fought against consolidation of political power, which resurfaced with the Civil War, and has literally exploded in the 20th century.
You alsmost sound like the French polemicist Bastiat who argued tariffs were tyranny and the USA was wrong to have them. IMHO he was at best a naive idiot.
No, he just had you pegged as one. Ever read the Candlestick Maker's Petition? More importantly, do you understand it? Your on the side of those wanting to deny 280 million Americans less expensive heat and light, under the guise of helping us and 'creating jobs'.
What do you think you're getting when you use the government to make trading more expensive for me?
No, Harpy, I was demonstrating to him that his question was pointless and undefined. He never could come up with a definition of 'strong' manufacturing sector, aside from saying it wasn't collecting and selling firewood.
Now, I realize it is far easier to call names than it is to engage in discussion with facts and numbers but I would recommend teh later bgecuase emotional arguments will only result in Democrats winning elections.
That sounds good to me, and it would save us from the type of people who were in charge of kmart, enron, global crossing, etc.
That is the most thoughtless statement I have read so far. Do you think taxes and regulation don't impose costs on products?
If I have one million dollars to spend on stuff, and I spend it all on foreign made junk, how are your living standards improved? If everyone spends all of their money on foreign made goods, how is your living standard improved? Now compare that to what if I and many other people bought things from you, now is your standard of living going to be effected? Or are you retired or on welfare and live off the pillage of other people?
Well gaslinger as one who has argued against sane trade policy from a metaphysical standpoint you are hardly one to assault another's question. Eci=onometrics does provide an answer to the question nad if you are going to argue the point as irrelevant you should at least state the irrelevant portion of the econometric answer. No I do not have time to look it up for you. but your posting of a supposed mathematical way of answering the question which was not the standard economic definition of the answer opens you upto this fair criticism. Furtehr your use of mathemetics which you had also dosmissed in a post to me makes me question the consoistency of your positions. If you do not believe that mathematics can be used in economics why did you post a false mathematical supposition for determining a healthy strong "industrial"[sic] sector of the economy.
If you are just a shill for the crrent wealth trandfer scheme of the present trade structure then I would suggest that your defense of that would call into question what agenda you really have. You have called others communists for daring to suggest tariffs as a solution to America's structural problems. You have rejected quantitative analysis. Yet you seem to have no problems engaing in name calling. You have not even addressed the wealth transfer agenda of our current trade policy.
Might one draw conclusions from that? Clearly one would be able to at least infer that yuou either did not have knowledge of what the goals of our current trade envirornment is by the use of teh perjorative communist in other places or if you knew then a clearly more sinister motivation comes to mind. No flame just logical analysis.
We really do not have a major disagreement but economic policy should be based on sound logic. The emotional factor will send people to seek any "solution" I am in favor of solutions that at least have a chance of working. The emotional factor will saddle us with a Democrat tyrant and the purists who have their ideology which is not rooted in American Constitutional principles but rather in European Libertarianism would have us forego sound rational decision making in favor of theri religously held dogma.
I have come up with a 13 point plan which would be a start towards addressing the issues.
No, I call them communist for wanting the government to take care of them.
You're funnier when you're flustered.
That is the most thoughtless statement I have read so far. Do you think taxes and regulation don't impose costs on products?
Reading comprehension problem? I think they do, which is why I said using the government to artificially raise the price of goods isn't going to help us.
To demonstrate the pointlessness of his question. He said it needs to be strong, I asked what that meant, he could't provide a definition.
I'll admit that I used to be a lot more reasonable when I had a job.
Well, doc, one thing I could do is be the guy who gets it to you. It doesn't magically appear just because you want it.
Now compare that to what if I and many other people bought things from you, now is your standard of living going to be effected?
That depends on what I can buy with the money. If it's just a bunch of overpriced American junk (say for example a 1981 Dodge K car instead of a Datsun that will go 300,000 miles), then not really. If you're forced to pay more by the government (via their coercive limitation of competition) your living standard is also reduced. I don't want the government used as a tool to improve my living standard at your expense, or anyone elses. I'll get your money the old fashioned way thanks, by offering more value for it.
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