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."
You're not a conservative so naturally we would disagree on this.
Because people living under a bridge are concerned with how they got under the bridge to begin with..
Right or wrong, I think Dubya is going to get blamed for this next November.
I don't think it's about pride. We all know that a heap of compost cares more about the little man than you do.
What is it they say about assuming?
Tell me how did we arrive at this point, I mean where jobs are going out of the country?
Remember the "It's the ECONOMY, Stupid" signs?
If enough people are un/under employed he WILL lose.
If enough people are un/under employed he would lose to HILLARY!™...
Seen any lately?
I haven't. Such candidates seem to be persona nongrada in both parties.
Sweet. Our nightly "little man" caring for.
Want to bet me on it?
They're a competitor.
They don't want to take over Taiwan.
Want into one hand.
Excrete fecal material into the other.
Pray tell me which one fills first.
Their rapid military build up is just for defensive purposes.
"Rapid" military build-up?
Are you one of those folks who said that Reagan's military buildup was an example of US warmongering? THAT little exercise was much faster AND much more broadly based than what the Chinese are doing. The actual number of Chinese under arms has actually declined.
Their tenacious pirating of our technology is only because they want to be just like us.
Their tenacious pirating of our technology points out their Achilles' heel: they can't do any large-scale R&D of their own.
Why didn't the Founding Fathers just put into place an aristocracy and a whole different Constitution that wasn't about "the people"? Why did they allow tariffs?
Busted!
You dont' care for the little man....
You don't care for the little man....
neener neener neener
Silly man... don't you know "We're all doomed!"?
I predict that what Bush will do is wait for a Republican of some kind to get into California and bail-out California right before the election ---- if $15 billion can be thrown at African AIDS, certainly there is $35 billion or so around to throw at California. With those electoral votes, he doesn't have to worry about a few other minor states like Florida.
Somebody tells him of a place called China, where labor, environment, workers rights are not a sweat. They can pay the workers less in a week, than each worker he employs at an average salary of $15 an hour makes in a week. So this CEO, shutters the plant, lays off the 4,000 workers, and moves operations to China. He has a great year. He sells his product for cheaper, but reaps 4 times the profit. He takes home $3,200,000.
Yes, it is capitalism. The CEO is doing better, much better. 4,000 people are looking for jobs, and there is nothing there. The Wal-Mart 15 miles a way needs some people, but not 4,000. People go on welfare, or move, or scramble for anything they can get.
Economically, the CEO made the right decision. What the neo-con free traders seem not to grasp, was that the highest profit possible is not the only goal in governing our communities. We believe in profit. The workers at his plant had given him 20 years of blood sweat and tears to make sure the boss made a profit, and to profit themselves.
I am sure the free traders will say that all these workers are whiners, are driving around in SUV's, and have lakefront summer homes, but that isn't reality.
The CEO is free to do what he wants, but he does have a moral obligation to the town that he came from, grew up in. Free Traders believe morality should be off the table. China still points missiles at us. Who cares? Vietnam chains workers to machines. Who cares? 10 years back when you were trying to expand, you got a huge order in, and you had to ask your workers to give up their holidays, special family time, in order for you to make this big deal, that helped you grow. Who cares? I will close this long rant with a quote from our third president Thomas Jefferson. A citizen, a farmer, and a patriot.
Merchants have no country. The mere spot they stand on does not constitute so strong an attachment as that from which they draw their gains.
Bay Buchanan was Treasurer of Reagan's National Campaign Committees in 80 and 84.
Did the campaign committees run detailed audits after those elections?
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