Free trade's victims turning against Bush, GOP

The Herald Sun ^ | August 25, 2003 | associated press

[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."

[riri]

I bet you also wish there were a cap on the incomes of the masses and that most lived just about at subsistence. You'll say you don't but I know you do.

[ARCADIA]

Tariffs allow crappy domestic work to flourish, and encourage outsiders to not engage in crappy work.

Tariffs are also a solid source of public funding that can be used to offset the national and local income tax. Thus providing a real gain to everyone who lives, works, or invests in this country. It also reduces and improves our trade balance which would probably strengthen the US dollar. If you want to return to a historically low income tax then a tarriff is a must have; it is esentially the national sales tax that conservative and Republicans have been crying for over the last three years.

Tariffs would never lead to crappy work. We would still have a free and competitive market place of some 270 million people, plus whatever other nations are willing to work with us on a protective footing. If anything, the market would become more competitive when products once again sell on the basis of innovation and quality, rather then just the lowest possible price.

It time for free traders and globalist to take a full measure of their speaking points. The arguement for an unlimited global free market is grossly myopic.

[Tokhtamish]

The terms of the exchange most definitely is very often coerced.

Free trade does not occur between individuals. It occurs between vast concentrations of political and corporate power who are able to arbitrage and pocket the differential between the labor costs of that section of humanity that worries about being overweight and that section of humanity that isn't too sure where it's next meal is coming from. "Free trade" isn't at all about freedom. It is about callous, utterly unaccountable power deciding the terms of the exchange.

[Texas_Dawg]

I bet you also wish there were a cap on the incomes of the masses and that most lived just about at subsistence. You'll say you don't but I know you do.

Hey, pal... if you go back and research the first few hundred posts in this thread, you will see that salary caps have already been suggested here... by YOUR friends.

[Texas_Dawg]

If anything, the market would become more competitive when products once again sell on the basis of innovation and quality, rather then just the lowest possible price.

Man, that shows such dismissal of basic economic laws it's frightening. You live in a freaking Candyland.

[Poohbah]

Tariffs are also a solid source of public funding that can be used to offset the national and local income tax.

Key word emphasized.

Note that it never WILL be used to offset the income tax.

Tariffs would never lead to crappy work.

For that bit of foolishness, you should be forced to drive a Chevy Vega for the rest of your life.

[Texas_Dawg]

Tariffs are also a solid source of public funding that can be used to offset the national and local income tax.

Why not just get rid of the national and local income tax? Why are you so afraid to take any money from the government without replacing it with someone else's?

[Patriotways]

How do you have free Trade with Communists and socialists States???

[ARCADIA]

Why not just get rid of the national and local income tax? Why are you so afraid to take any money from the government without replacing it with someone else's?

Sure bet. Lets just default on our debt and end the global economic system all together.

Grow up and buy a clue.

[GOP_1900AD]

This is simply not true any more. The PRC now have a combination of Soviet technology, and their own. Of course, for reasons I will not go into on this thread, the entire anti Western Trans-eurasian Axis, inclusive of both the PRC and Russia along with others, have essentially standardized on the Soviet style military platforms in order to ensure interoperatbility and portability. Now why might this be?

[WOSG]

"Hey Dennis Kucinich has announced he is agianst NAFTA and repeal it if elected president.

I actually respect him more than you. "

He's as wrong on NAFTA as he is on Iraq war and hating lower taxes and drilling in the artic, BUT even 'a blind squirrel finds a nut once in a while'.

Being right on 1 out of 100 issues is bad batting average even for a pol.

[Tokhtamish]

In a well run company people are supposed to be replaceable cogs.

In your preferred GOSPLAN utopia, maybe. In the real world, they aren't.

Apparently you live in some sort of Ayn Rand fantasy world where every businessman is some John Galt iron jawed ubermensch. That is not the logic of corporate capitalism. In a well run corporation work and workers are designed to be as interchangeable as possible. If you had ever actually worked in a large organization you would understand the basic principles of modern management.

If they're capable of producing work identical in quality to Americans, they've done a damn good job at concealing that capability.

Or more likely you're terribly good at seeing things. Do you have any conception of what the demographic profile of our computer science/electrical engineering student body is ? How heavily Asian it is ? And given that the users and the coders are not in communication with each other at all, things get lost in between. But given the cost differential the bean counters have taken this into account and deemed this acceptable.

[GOP_1900AD]

Most of the parts that go into computers are made by contract manufacturers in the PRC and other locations (but increasingly, solely in the PRC) and are only US in label, but not in terms of country of origin. This is my area of expertise. Do you care to rumble?

[ARCADIA]

Why don't we just cut spending you moron?

You can eliminate the entire government tomorrow but the debt will still need to be serviced, or your international dollars will become worthless paper.

[WOSG]

You talk like a Socialist.
You describe something in overwrought highly emotional and non-rational language that disguises rather than explains the real proces at work.

Both you and the Socialists are wrong.

Whether between individuals or organizations, voluntary trading is just that: Voluntary. You could say the same overwrought nonsense about the Stock Market "occurs between vast concentrations of political and corporate power who are able to arbitrage and pocket the differential ..." BUT IT IS STILL VOLUNTARY. The moral GOOD of that is that *only through such exchange can societal wealth be created*.

Now, you may be UNHAPPY that Mrs Consumer goes to Walmart and buys a plastic toy from Walmart Co that buys a wholesale plastic toy from the HongKongtoyDistributor that buys a plastic toy from a low-wage Shangai plastics maker paying 7 yuan a day to laborers, but every exchange is voluntary. And the series of exchanges makes all better off than if Mrs Consumer had no toys to give little Jimmy.

Couch that in whatever morality you choose, but rest assured that each player in the chain would rather do it than not do it.

It is about callous, utterly unaccountable power deciding the terms of the exchange. " Karl Marx couldnt have said it better. Actually, he didnt say it better; he said it about that way. In the interim our standard of living has gone up about 20X, thanks to the improvements in our lives brought to us by "callous" free-enterprise oganizations and corporations.

[Poohbah]

Or more likely you're terribly good at seeing things.

Yes, I'm very good at seeing what's in front of me, instead of depending on my preconceptions.

And given that the users and the coders are not in communication with each other at all, things get lost in between.

Which is why the outsourcing issue is self-correcting after a few iterations.

But given the cost differential the bean counters have taken this into account and deemed this acceptable.

Until the program doesn't work and goes over budget, whereupon the beancounters hand it off to Americans and hope they can save the day.

[WOSG]

I'd like him to support a one line law, tariffs against a country match exactly with tariffs against the USA from said country. Very fair all round. They slap a 70% tariff on us, we slap a 70% tariff on them. Guess what happens? More free trade rather than less.

I think that is a brilliant idea. I also think we should be country-specific in targetting tarriffs overall. We should be using tarriffs to open up export opportunities, not to 'protect' low wage jobs that are better done elsewhere anyway.

[Gunslingr3]

You hate this country so much that you would rather see foreign governments benefit

Hate? Why? I'd just buy a '81 Datsun over an '81 Dodge K car because the Datsun better serves me. Friggin' thing would almost run without oil, while the K car seeps like the Exxon Valdez. I don't exchange the money I make to 'help' my government, I do it to help me. You see, the government exists to serve me, not the other way around.

then you turn around and demand clean air, water,

Are you against clean air and water? I don't really see your point with respect to this.

constant electricity

Yes, which is why I don't want the government monopolizing it and forming cartels.

safeguards and protections against fraud

I'm for a court system, but do you think it is funded with tariffs? I'm not for organs like the SEC. The free market exposed Enron, etc. The SEC creates a moral hazard where people think bureaucrats somewhere are looking out for them. A dangerous proposition if ever there was one!

postal system

That's alright, if I want to send a package I'll pay for it. Remove the government monopoly on moving mail.

passable roads

And I'm willing to pay for them. Right now it's about 30% of the price of gas, but that's not the only way it could be done.

medical care, retirement system

From government? No thanks.

courts

See above.

police, military

Depends what you want to use them for.

utilities

You're repeating yourself, see above.

Since you clearly hate this country

No, I just hate you. ;P

and only care to exploit it and the people for your own selfish purposes,

That's me - fat, capitalist pig, exploiting the workers!

why haven't you left and moved to India, China or Russia?

Patience, friend. If the free state fizzles I'll likely head south instead.

Your money goes there,

Very little of it, but you haven't demonstrated much knowledge about me yet, so why start now, eh?

and clearly you think that the people there are superior to Americans, why don't you get closer to the source of all of this greatness?

I'm sure they have plenty of government sycophants like yourself, and probably a fair number of liberty minded individuals too. Regardless, if the free state doesn't work out, I'll go south. Prefer the Carib climes to Russian, etc.

Because you are a thief and leech

Because I want to trade value for value? Because I'd rather have a car that works than a Dodge? You're the one prattling about government provided retirement, medical care, utilities, etc.

This is why you hate tariffs on foreign goods, you don't want to see any of your money spent on this country you selfishly loot and pillage.

No, I hate tariffs because they put my money in the hands of bureaucrats, who squander it 'for my own good'. Maybe you think you don't pay enough taxes, you can always send them another check - they'll find a use for it, trust me. What did I loot again?

[ARCADIA]

Note that it never WILL be used to offset the income tax.

It sure looks that way now. The Republicans have no interest in the subject, so when it is finally forced upon us, it will probably be owned and controlled by the Democrats. Your prophecy can be self fulfilling. So tell me about all of Bush's spending cuts.