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."
I would love to see you try to pitch this "Return to the Economy of 1960" platform to people.
So you would rather have voted for Perot and end up with Clinton?
I'm sorry, with everything this country has been through, that is just beyond my understanding.
I am not saying that I would never vote for a third party canidate .. that is if they ever came up with a canidate that I thought could run the WHOLE country ..
But .. There is not a chance in hell I would ever take a chance of having a another Dem in the WH.
No it makes you a highly confused individual that cannot distinguish the difference between technological progress, which is a good and necessary thing with unfair trade practices and corporate greed, which is a bad thing. IOWs: How do you implicitly equate many thousands of American Workers being laid off so they can be replaced by cheap foreign labor with the advancement of science?
That's a common flaw in logic. You can look and see you still have a job, and that most of your friends are doing okay or at least finding some part time job at Walmart or they managed to get in at McDonalds and think everything is fine. It's not what happens to a handful of people --- who might be lucky or smarter or whatever ---- it's what happens to the majority or even a sizeable number of people.
Granted these statistics come from the mid-90's, but also America suffered heavy recessions in the 70's, and the standard of living went up.
Oh, that's right, things got better under free trader, Ronald Reagan.
All I have to say is thank God, Ronald Reagan didn't have Pat Buchanan as an economic advisor.
T-Dawg, you're missing the bigger point. We are transitioning from a society where most men could get jobs that paid reasonably well to one where they have to settle for convenience store jobs and all those other jobs you suggested. Oh, and their wives have to work now too.
Ya know what? Most people vote with their wallets. Most elections are swung by less that 5% of the vote. More than 5% of the voters will go into the booth knowing that Dubya was in charge when the lost their job, lost their house and had to file bankrupcy.
Never mind it's not his fault (well, *most* of it isn't his fault, anyway)...
All they will know is they have lost *everything* they worked for and SOMEONE has to PAY.
We're all doomed.
I've personally never made more than 20k a year from a job ever! (I currently make a lot less!) I did not inherit any money or win the lottery, but I can retire and live a life of leisure and travel and long before I am 60, if I wish!
I learned along time ago the difference between poor people and rich people. It isn't how much money you make, it is what you do with the money once you get it!
The American Dream is not a job and a home with a two-car garage. "That" is some Socialist Union thugs bait to suck in the masses to pay union dues.
The American Dream is to take the opportunities given to you and run with it, innovate, dream and dare to achieve and make a life for you and your family!
Yes! It means they can pay higher property taxes! People love that!!!
Do you honestly believe that an engineer or computer programmer should be washing balls at the golf course or working as a dishwasher in a restaurant? I know of some tool-and-die makers who are now cleaning carpets for a living ----- they've worked all their lives with never a layoff---- but the shops are shutting down at a very high rate. I can't see it as a very good thing.
You must just hate the Little Man, you Bushbot! You don't know what it's like being from the streets, homey! You ain't never worked a farm, hoss! And so on...
Guess again (I realize you're being facetious). Quoth Reagan, "If one partner shoots a hole in the bottom of the boat, does it make sense for the other partner to shoot another hole in the boat?" Their machinations do impact us all negatively, I just want to avoid compounding the problem.
Now I challenged you before to rpovide some quantitative evidence that a tariff does not provide a net benefit to teh USA
And I tried to explain to you that net benefits cannot be weighed. How do you tell how much wealth I could generate with the money were it not taken in tariffs? How do you tell what businesses I would have funded? How do you count what I couldn't afford, after paying your tariff? It's easy to point at the steel plant and say, "We saved those 4,000 jobs!" It's impossible to see how many jobs are lost in all other industries that consider steel a resource and a cost in the production cycle because the steel they require is more expensive. It's impossible to measure that which doesn't get purchased because the resources to purchase it are taxed away to feed bureaucrats. Anyone puporting to 'show' you otherwise is capitalizing on your naivete and belief that others are possessed of an omniscience you lack.
My faith is in the natural tendency of man to settle his wants by trading effort with other men, and I realize he's better able to do that without bureaucrats riding on his back and being paid to produce nothing. I have seen firsthand the ruin that government management of trade has wrought.
I agree.
I understand your point Nully .. but do you really think a Dem will make things better?
If I recall much of the bust of jobs happened due to the Clinton Administration and their policies
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