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."
The best thing is tariffs in concert with rolling back the taxes and regulations, and some way to ease up the influence of the unions. And imposing extra taxes on all overseas income.
You have a choice of tariffs OR rolling back taxes and regulations. Various politicians will promise you tax cuts and regulatory relief somewhere down the road in return for your support of tariffs today.
"Somewhere down the road" will never arrive.
And imposing extra taxes on all overseas income.
Would you mind explaining how this would do anything except NEGATIVELY affect our balance of trade?
It's a tax on exports--which, BTW, is unconstitutional.
Then all them thar injins become subcontractors.
Please play again.
They don't make $100 million salaries as it is.
Let's Do IT!!!!!!
The cheap labor is done by independant contactors...
...and it's one, two, three, what are we working for?
Don't ask me, I don't give a damn
My job's gone to Vietnam!
And it's five, six, seven, let's hear it for free trade, mates!
You'll get used to being poor
Once your job has been outsourced offshore!
True. But higher taxes on overseas revenues are taxes on EXPORTS.
As for teriffs charged on exports, other nations charge tariffs on our exports all the time, some as much as 40 percent.
D-1, if other countries put tariffs on our exports, that's their business.
However, if WE put tariffs on our exports, it violates the Constitution of the United States.
I see you have a problem with the notion of Constitutional government if it gets in the way of punishing your class enemies.
Nobody said we should have tariffs and income taxes too.
Tough s**t. It's what you're going to get.
We would have to gutt this government like a fatted cow, but then that's what we should be doing.
Tough. You'll get told, "Yeah, in return for supporting my union thug buddies with a tariff, we'll support cutting taxes and spending...someday."
"Someday" will have this habit of never coming.
Our found fathers set up a system of tariffs to finance this government's needs. Tariffs don't pay it enough to let it get in trouble. Good.
Small problem: the majority of voters disagree with you. You propose to shoot them for treason?
Income tax should be eliminated. Government should be about 20% of what it is today. SS and Medicare should be privatized. Creative ways can be devised to so it a lot quicker and less painfully than we've been led to believe.
And all you have to do is "temporarily" suspend the Constitution to keep those people you disagree with from arguing with you.
Our government should take care of the Military, trade negotiations and our borders. That is it!
No particular argument there, but it's an argument you're going to lose at the ballot box for a long time yet.
You do NOT magically turn public policy on a dime unless your title is "Supreme Dictator For Life." And then you have a problem: namely, the method of leaving office is indicated in the job title, and will tend to give other folks ideas.
Not bad.
But I had to walk 20 miles to school every day. Up hill. Both ways. Barefoot. When we had blizzards I had to wrap my feet on barbed wire for traction. One day it was so windy that I got blown back 2 steps for every step I took, if I hadn't turned around to go home I would have never made it to school...
Corporations do not pay $100 million in salaries to individuals.
Some executives may actually achieve that level of total compensation, but that would be by means of exercising stock options in a bull market.
Bottom line: nobody gets a hundred megabucks in salary. That's because of a law passed by your heroes, the Clintons, and their Democrat buddies in Congress.
Course outsource them might be an even better idea. I hear India has some really capable people. China too...
If the board or the stockholders decides that there's a better ROI by hiring a foreign CEO at less cost, no problem.
I would shoot for both. You are probably right in that politics would force some sort of a middle ground. The unfortunate result of that would be that watered-down taxes/regs, or watered-down tariffs, or some wierd cross, would fail (it has to be all or nothing). This would allow the liberals to claim that more taxes are needed...
And imposing extra taxes on all overseas income.
Would you mind explaining how this would do anything except NEGATIVELY affect our balance of trade?
It's a tax on exports
You are right; I was shooting out a poorly thought-out idea. Thanks for the comeuppance.
--which, BTW, is unconstitutional.
Income taxes are unconstitutional. Let's go to import tariffs instead (INSTEAD, not AS WELL AS). That is essentially a sales tax, much more equitable than the current progressive tax system.
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