Free Trade is killing the American Textile industry. This was a given going in. A state like South Carolina has to change or die economically.
In South Carolina, Job Losses Crack Solid Support for Bush
By MICHAEL JANOFSKY - NEW YORK TIMES
GREENVILLE, S.C., Aug. 12- Lynn Mayson is an unemployed machine operator here. Roger Chastain is president of a textile company. While they travel in distinctively different circles, they have quite a bit in common.
Both are Republicans. Both were part of the Solid South vote that helped George W. Bush win the White House in 2000. And, now, both say they are angry enough about job losses in the region to vote for someone else in 2004.
"Something's got to give," said Ms. Mayson, a mother of three, as she left a state-run jobs center the other day. "I'm not going to vote for Bush unless things change. The economy has got to get better, and it's only going to do that if someone makes something happen."
Mr. Chastain, whose company, Mount Vernon Mills, has laid off 1,000 workers in recent years, is part of a coalition of textile executives who have formally complained to the White House about trade practices they contend are driving Americans out of jobs and manufacturers out of business, while giving huge advantages to China and other countries.
"Bush can forget about the Solid South," Mr. Chastain said. "There's no Solid South anymore."
The frustrations of Ms. Mayson and Mr. Chastain over the slow pace of economic recovery, shared by a growing number of Republicans in upstate South Carolina, have not reached such a critical mass that anyone is predicting that President Bush could lose the state next year. But the Republican wall of support here is indeed showing cracks, reflecting economic trends that Democrats say make Mr. Bush vulnerable. Since the president took office, more than 2.5 million jobs have been lost across the country, a downturn that administration officials contend is now turning around.
Mr. Chastain said problems had reached such a point that he would consider voting for a Democrat, perhaps Representative Richard A. Gephardt of Missouri, who is a persistent critic of the North American Free Trade Agreement, known as Nafta. Ms. Mayson said she would vote for anyone with a plan to create more jobs.
Does such talk signal a new South in the making? Probably not yet. But Bush-bashing among Republicans is almost unheard of in this part of South Carolina, one of the most conservative areas in the United States. In winning the region, Mr. Bush outpolled Al Gore by a ratio of almost two to one.
The trade issue has even become a major factor in the early stages of a United States Senate campaign here, and could affect a Congressional district race. Representative Jim DeMint, a three-term Republican who angered many of his constituents by voting for fast-track procedures for trade agreements, is stepping down to run for the seat of Senator Ernest F. Hollings, a six-term Democrat, who is retiring.
Danny Varat, an adjunct professor of history at the University of South Carolina in Spartanburg, said that if the economy was ailing a year from now and trade policies had not changed enough to help manufacturing in the state, Republicans could have a hard time winning both the Senate race and the Fourth Congressional District seat that Mr. DeMint is vacating.
As for the president, "If there's a faltering economy, he bears the responsibility, and that has political consequences," Mr. Varat said. "To the degree he could lose the state? It's too early to assess that right now."
Scott Stanzel, a spokesman for the Bush re-election campaign, dismissed the idea of any problems for Mr. Bush in South Carolina by defending him against critics of his economic stewardship. Mr. Stanzel said the recent tax cuts that Mr. Bush aggressively sought demonstrated his abiding concern for the economy and the nation's jobless.
"The president will not be satisfied until every American looking for work can find it," Mr. Stanzel said, adding that the tax cuts were "a victory for American workers, their families and America's small businesses."
Still, many industries here and elsewhere are reeling, perhaps none more so than textiles and apparel manufacturing, which today employ only about half the 1.5 million workers who had jobs in 1994, when Nafta went into effect. Industry officials say that about half of those losses have come since Mr. Bush was inaugurated, and in upstate South Carolina, once the vital core of America's textile industry, many major companies have cut back their work forces or closed. This month, South Carolina's unemployment rate reached 7 percent, the highest level in more than nine years, compared with a national rate of 6.2 percent.
Like his two-term predecessor, Bill Clinton, who twice failed to carry South Carolina, Mr. Bush has argued that free trade has been good for the country. Over all, the region has attracted companies from nearly 20 other countries in recent years.
But economic experts in the state, like R. Carter Smith, chief executive of the Spartanburg County Economic Development Corporation, say the number of new jobs has not matched those lost, keeping South Carolina among the highest-ranked states in percentage of jobs lost during the Bush years, at No. 3 behind Massachusetts and Ohio.
Textile industry leaders blame the administration for not demanding that China alter trade practices that enable Chinese companies to sell goods cheaper in the United States than American businesses do, making it harder to compete. J. Richard Dillard, a spokesman for Milliken & Company, a major manufacturer in the Carolinas, said Mr. Bush promised such protections, called "safeguards," before and after he was elected but had not followed through.
"We've heard a lot from elected officials that free trade creates jobs," Mr. Dillard said. "That's absolutely true. It has created jobs in Mexico, China, Indonesia and everyplace else in the world, but not here. We're tired of it."
They are so tired of it, he said, that for the first time industry leaders are drawing a line in the cloth, insisting that if the Bush administration does not narrow the trade gap with China by the fall, company executives will withhold support for Mr. Bush or even campaign for another candidate. That was the principal message of two news conferences the officials held in Greensboro, N.C., and Spartanburg, although only Mr. Gephardt emerged as a possibility.
Among other major Democratic contenders, Senators John Kerry of Massachusetts, Joseph I. Lieberman of Connecticut and Bob Graham of Florida are strong supporters of free trade. Howard Dean, the former governor of Vermont, and Senator John Edwards of North Carolina favor balanced approaches with stronger protections for American workers.
Asked for a show of hands in Spartanburg to indicate how many of the executives voted for Mr. Bush in 2000, all indicated they had. Asked for a show of hands of how many would be willing to abandon him in 2004, all indicated they would.
"This is an excellent opportunity for any elected official to base their campaign on jobs," said Roy Baxley, chairman of the South Carolina Cotton Board. "This is the time to step up to the plate."
Ms. Mayson said jobless people in the area could not agree more. "I know he's trying," she said of Mr. Bush. "But too many jobs are going overseas. What about the people here?"
nytimes.com |
