[Vision2020] Politicians Taking Heat on Trade Laws in NC

[Tim Lohrmann]

Looks like GOP'ers and Demos alike are finally going
to face the music for this so-called "Free" trade
globaloney. 
At least in the Carolinas.
   TL



CHARLOTTE OBSERVER.COM 
> Posted on Mon, Aug. 25, 2003   
>  
> Politicians taking heat on trade laws
> Workers, execs criticize Bush, lawmakers over loss
> of factory jobs
> JIM MORRILL & RONNIE GLASSBERG
> Staff Writers
> 
> Days after the collapse of Pillowtex, 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.
> 
> Her taunt was part of a loud, growing backlash
> against politicians who 
> supported trade policies largely blamed for the loss
> of more than 
> 180,000 Carolinas manufacturing jobs since January
> 2001, when President 
> Bush took office.
> 
> As unemployment rises in both states, newly militant
> executives are 
> criticizing Bush and planning unprecedented
> education and voter drives, 
> promising to make sure workers know who's on their
> side and who's not.
> 
> "We're seeing a new dynamic where the executives and
> employees are both 
> beginning to see a real threat to their interests,"
> says Fred Reese, 
> president of Western N.C. Industries, an employer
> association. "You're 
> going to see people who traditionally voted
> Republican switch over."
> 
> Jobs, or the lack of them, are an issue across the
> country. Democrats 
> are hoping that 2004 becomes a repeat of 1992, when
> Bill Clinton's 
> intense focus on the sour economy helped unseat the
> first President Bush.
> 
> In 2000, the Carolinas were George W. Bush country:
> he won more than 56 
> percent of the vote in each state. But mounting job
> losses have taken 
> their toll on the president, an unabashed
> free-trader, and threaten 
> other trade supporters, particularly in the South.
> 
> Andy Warlick, CEO of Parkdale Mills in Gaston
> County, voted for Bush in 
> 2000. Next year, he says, he doubts he will.
> 
> "He made a lot of promises and he hasn't delivered
> on any of them," 
> Warlick says. "I've had some first-hand experience
> of him sending down 
> trade and commerce officials ... but they're just
> photo ops. ... It's 
> empty rhetoric."
> 
> One of the top reasons for the dismal Carolinas
> economy: foreign trade.
> 
> Since 1993, when Congress passed the Clinton-backed
> North American Free 
> Trade Agreement, or NAFTA, jobs in many industries
> have fled overseas. 
> For example, about half the textile and apparel jobs
> that existed in 
> 1994 are gone. Critics say "fast-track" trade
> authority and other trade 
> measures President Bush pushed through with Vietnam
> and other countries 
> can potentially add to the losses.
> 
> Experts say the end to quotas on Chinese imports,
> scheduled to expire at 
> the end of 2004, could cost 127,000 more textile
> jobs over the next 
> three years in the Carolinas alone.
> 
> "They're sending all our jobs overseas," says Leslie
> Barrett, one of 
> nearly 5,000 Pillowtex workers who lost their jobs
> in the state's 
> largest layoff. "There are not enough jobs here, and
> then there are all 
> these foreign people here."
> 
> Not satisfied
> 
> In December 2001 Hayes, of Concord, cast the
> tie-breaking vote for 
> fast-track. At the time he 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," 
> says Hayes. "Are we satisfied with where we are?
> Absolutely not."
> 
> In two years, U.S. Rep. Cass Ballenger's 10th
> District has lost nearly 
> 40,000 jobs, primarily in the textile and furniture
> industries. The 
> Hickory Republican voted for NAFTA and fast-track.
> 
> "Certainly, there's a political cost to any
> controversial vote no matter 
> which side you take," Ballenger says. "People are
> casting stones, but 
> we're trying to pick them up and build something.
> ... I don't spend much 
> time thinking about an election that's more than a
> year away. My focus 
> is on helping the region recover."
> 
> Hayes later voted against the final version of
> fast-track. He and 
> Ballenger aren't the only ones who cast potentially
> unpopular votes.
> 
> Rep. John Spratt, a York, S.C., Democrat, voted for
> NAFTA. Republican 
> U.S. Reps. Sue Myrick of Charlotte, Richard Burr of
> Winston-Salem and 
> Jim DeMint of Greenville, S.C., voted for
> fast-track. Both Burr and 
> DeMint are running for the Senate.
> 
> U.S. Sen. John Edwards, a Democrat from North
> Carolina, voted against 
> fast-track in 2002 after voting for an earlier
> version. In 2000 he voted 
> for permanent normal trade relations with China.
> 
> Edwards, however, has since attacked Bush's trade
> policies and called 
> for fairer trade measures. Burr recently threatened
> to introduce 
> legislation to eliminate the office of U.S. trade
> representative. Hayes, 
> like Ballenger, has worked hard to get services to
> displaced workers and 
> promote more development 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," says 
> Robert Neal, vice president of the local chapter of
> the Pillowtex 
> workers' union.
> 
> Jennifer Duffy, an analyst for the Cook Political
> Report, says 
> "Republicans all went to the `Robin Hayes school' in
> terms of learning 
> how to address those (trade) votes.
> 
> "Republicans have kind of figured out that for every
> `bad' vote they 
> cast there are others they would use to show they
> are fighting for the 
> state's industries."
> 
> `A North Carolina problem'
> 
> But Democrats already are pouncing.
> 
> "A lot of these Republican candidates -- Richard
> Burr in particular -- 
> owe the White House and (political adviser) Karl
> Rove for clearing the 
> field for him (Burr)," says Brad Woodhouse, a
> spokesman for the 
> Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee. "And he's
> (Burr) going to be 
> expected to continue to support the president."
> 
> "It's unfortunate that the Democrats want to start
> early pointing 
> fingers and starting the traditional blame game,"
> says Burr spokesman 
> Paul Shumaker. "It's not a Democrat problem. It's
> not a Republican 
> problem. It's a North Carolina problem."
> 
> Reese, of the employers association, 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.
> 
> Company President Roger Chastain, a one-time Bush
> voter, doesn't expect 
> to support the president or Jim DeMint.
> 
> "We're basically liquidating our whole middle class,
> polarizing people 
> on the two extremes, have and have-nots," he says.
> "We'll be a Third 
> World country." -- STAFF WRITER JAIME LEVY
> CONTRIBUTED.
> 
> -- JIM MORRILL: (704) 358-5059;
> JMORRILL@CHARLOTTEOBSERVER.COM.
>  
> 
> 


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