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."
Haha. A "solution"? You mean that is convincing enough in its pandering to economically retarded people?
I don't disagree with you that people vote the economy. But that has nothing to do with understanding economics. That being said, this economy will be fine enough in 2004 for George W. Bush to win easily. It already is right now.
When I think there's a chance of convincing people of my viewpoint I use a different strategy. On FR, with set-in-stone Buchanan Brigaders and people even remotely willing to go along with them, I seek the nuclear approach. I'm not interested in bringing Buchanan and his crowd under the GOP umbrella. I want them removed from us as far as possible. In the decade since old Pat got the boot, the GOP has dominated.
Yes they do. That's why I don't mind Bush pandering to them as much as he needs to to win re-election (and he has pandered to them a bunch and will probably do so further this Fall by giving them more tariffs).
My acceptance of Liberty as man's ideal is the consequence of rational consideration, not faith.
It has to to do with teh fundamental view of humanity
This is the crux. Your mathematical view of economics makes one man interchangeable with another, as I said earlier, mere cogs. I see them as individuals, and want them at liberty to pursue happiness free from the constraints on their ability to produce and trade that you seek to impose, for their own good of course...
I'll stick with the Declaration of Independence as my basis for American policy.
Come now... I don't really need to go back through the numerous posts that Poohbah, Chancellor, ArneFufkin, Dane, RDB3, and many others of us have highlighted from paleos along these lines do I?
-Free trade will cause unemployment not more jobs. -Illegal immigration is bad for the USA. -Abortion is bad. -Homosexual practices are bad. -Foreign entanglement will bring war to our shores. -Gore and Bush saw balanced budgets, tax cuts, government spending for as far as the eye could see, Buchanan didn't.
The New World order cabal wants to take over. America beware. Foreign military and economic empire will give us the same future as England.
Right... because we haven't been called "traitors", "globosocialists", "imperialists", "Turd World"-lovers, etc, etc... on these threads recently.
I'm assuming you'd consider moving to a less expensive area of the country if your hubby lost his job?
Not fair! You cannot insinuate that people are anti-Semitic or anti-immigrant for insinuating that Jews and immigrants are to blame for all their problems. That's not fair!
Hmm. Has StolarStorm outed himself as a moderator here?
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