The Richmond County Daily Journal - March 9, 2010
U.S. Rep. Larry Kissell has joined 27 other Congressmen by signing on to a bipartisan piece of legislation that would withdraw the United States from the North American Free Trade Agreement.

The bill is called House Resolution 4759.

Kissell cited his own experience as a dislocated worker who transitioned from a 27-year career in a textile mill to teaching civics in Montgomery County after his plant became a victim of NAFTA.

“I have watched many of my friends and neighbors lose their jobs and their benefits to these unfair trade deals,” Kissell said. “I went to Congress to make a difference for working people, and I believe that repealing NAFTA is a start to reenergizing American manufacturing. We have to invest in American manufacturing to put our people back to work.”

President Bill Clinton signed NAFTA in 1993 with former Presidents Gerald Ford, Jimmy Carter and George H.W. Bush looking on and said “NAFTA means jobs, American jobs and good-paying American jobs.”

Kissell said NAFTA and other trade deals “have decimated American manufacturing,” resulting in a 29 percent decline nationwide in jobs in that sector since 1993, reducing 17 million jobs in 1993 to approximately 12 million in 2009.

Kissell also cited a $1.7 billion trade surplus with Mexico in 1993, which turned into a $75 billion deficit by 2007. To the north, Kissell said the U.S. trade deficit with Canada was $11 billion in 1993, and grew to $78 billion by 2008.

“While NAFTA and other trade deals were not designated to have such a negative impact on American manufacturing, the results are clear,” Kissell continued. “The American economy is suffering. It has discouraged investments in U.S. manufacturing facilities and continues to accelerate the erosion of the our industrial base.”

According to the North Carolina Employment Security Commission’s Labor Market Information Office, the state lost 44 percent, or about 358,000, of its manufacturing jobs from 1993 to 2009. Richmond County lost 58 percent of its manufacturing jobs during the same time period.

North Carolina’s textile industry shed 64 percent of its jobs.

Here in Richmond County and throughout the 8th District, which stretches from Fayetteville to Concord, the textiles industry which thrived throughout the 20th Century has, in Kissell’s words, “been decimated.”

Mike Railton, office manager for the Employment Security Commission in Rockingham, has worked with the ESC since 2000 in Charlotte, Wadesboro and Rockingham.

He explained a special federal designation has been set up for workers who have lost their jobs to foreign competition under the Trade Act Program, which qualifies them for longer periods of unemployment insurance benefits and assistance retraining to enter another career field.

“It’s been my experience with the commission that a large number of those who qualified for TAA come from the textile industry,” Railton said Monday. “The textile industry has also been affected by cutbacks in the auto industry. When they stopped manufacturing as many cars workers who made carpet, seat covers and other textile items for the auto industry were left with nothing to do.”

Here in Richmond County, he said two major textiles employers whose laid-off workers qualified for these benefits over the past several years were Sara Lee Hosiery and UCO Fabrics.

Richmond County Manager Rick Sago noted there is a two-fold effect of cheaper labor and less regulation in foreign countries that gives them an unfair advantage over the U.S. in competing for manufacturing investment.

“Richmond County, like most of the country, has experienced a drop in manufacturing employment since 1993,” Sago said. “Any change in trade agreements that will allow our companies to compete on an even playing field globally certainly has the potential to help. It is very difficult for our manufacturing employers to compete with the very low cost of labor and lesser regulation that is found in other less developed countries.”

In a column Saturday, Kissell quoted U.S. Rep. Gene Taylor, a Mississippi Democrat, who introduced the bill in saying, “Proponents have had more than enough time to make this work - it didn’t.”

He also discussed another bill he is sponsoring in an effort to reduce the U.S. trade deficit and energize the American manufacturing sector.

That bill is HR 3012.

“Specifically, the Trade Reform, Accountability, Development and Employment Act would renegotiate the three major free trade agreements and establish mandatory core standards to be included in future agreements to preserve and create American jobs,” Kissell wrote.

The bill to repeal NAFTA has gained support from both sides of the aisle since being introduced on the House floor March 4. It was referred to the House Ways and Means Committee on the same day, and no further legislative action has been taken.

Others from the North Carolina delegation in the House of Representatives who have signed on to co-sponsor HR 4759 include 6th District Democrat Mike McIntyre and 3rd District Republican Walter Jones

High profile Congressmen from other states who have signed on include Democrats U.S. Rep. Dennis Kucinich of Ohio and U.S. Rep. Bart Stupak of Michigan and Republican Congressman from Texas Ron Paul.

On multiple occasions during his 2008 presidential campaign, then Democratic-candidate Barrack Obama pledged to revisit trade deals like NAFTA, and renegotiate them to achieve better terms for America’s suffering manufacturing industry.