June 29, 2010
Blame government for textile losses
A recent article “New tools sought to fight textile fraud” is another example of how our elected leaders want Americans to pay taxpayer money to bail out their mistakes.
Our government has passed many free trade laws, including NAFTA in 1993 and CAFTA in 2005, that eliminated most textile manufacturing in the United States, sent millions of textile and textile suppliers’ jobs overseas, created a loss of tax revenue due to lost jobs, and now they expect the American citizens to pay hard-earned taxes to monitor the foreign countries where the textile products are being made and shipped back to us. This is an outrage and outright fraud against the American taxpayers.
Rep. John Spratt stated in a recent article that trade in illegal textiles and apparel has grown worse and is devastating the U.S. textile industry. Where has he been since he was first elected to Congress in 1982?
Due to passing of NAFTA and CAFTA, over 1.1 million textile jobs have been lost, and millions more jobs that worked as suppliers to the American textile companies. The Bureau of Labor Statistics expects textile and apparel manufacturing jobs will drop another 48 percent to 259,000 from 2008 to 2018.
With all due respect to Spratt and his fellow congressmen, Americans have paid enough bailout money for their mistakes.
Bruce Chambers
Simpsonville
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