Dec 21, 2003 5 min read

GREENVILLE, S.C. (AP) – South Carolina has lost nearly 65,000 textile and apparel jobs in 11 years, so it’s no wonder Dick Gephardt boasts that he is the only Democratic presidential candidate to oppose both the North American Free Trade Agreement and relaxed trade rules for China. Or that Democratic rival John Edwards stresses that he is the son of a South Carolina mill worker from Seneca. Or that Wesley Clark visited a textile plant in rural Enoree to show support for workers in the state, which holds a pivotal primary Feb. 3.

“Textiles went by the wayside when they started sending the business overseas,” says Tina Hester, who works in a memento-filled church office in the old Union Bleachery mill village where she grew up and her father labored for 40 years. “They couldn’t compete.”

A few miles away, a 9-year-old BMW plant represents the flip side of global trade. About 4,700 employees turn out luxury automobiles, more than half of which are exported for sale. Partly as a result of their wages, Main Street sparkles downtown, and Starbucks recently opened its first stand-alone storefront in the area.

Still, a Greenville Magazine poll last month found two-thirds of potential voters in the state’s open primary favor trade restrictions to protect jobs. And with 60 textile plants closing across South Carolina since 1999, the political opportunity is clear for Democrats.

“I’d just like to see us use our economic might as much as we use our military might,” says Roger W. Chastain, president and chief operating officer of Mount Vernon Mills. A lifelong Republican, he says now, “I probably lean toward Gephardt.”

South Carolina aside, manufacturing employment nationally has declined for 40 consecutive months, a loss of 2.8 million jobs. With the Bush administration struggling to fend off criticism, trade may reverberate into the fall election in Ohio, Pennsylvania, Michigan and elsewhere.

Additionally, Wednesday’s announcement of a new Central American Free Trade Agreement will spark a fierce battle in Congress.

But those events are months away. Already, the issue is critical in South Carolina, and the Democrats are maneuvering for position.

Seven states hold primaries or caucuses Feb. 3, coming quickly after early contests in Iowa and New Hampshire. South Carolina is drawing attention as the first southern state to vote. It is also home to a large number of blacks, and some officials estimate half the primary voters will be black.

Edwards, a first-term senator from next-door North Carolina, needs a win to sustain his candidacy. Retired Gen. Clark and Sen. John Kerry of Massachusetts, a decorated Vietnam veteran, seek affinity with the state’s many military veterans. Al Sharpton may hold appeal for black voters.

Gephardt, the Missouri congressman who must win first in Iowa, looks to South Carolina to help him emerge as the principal alternative to front-runner Howard Dean.

“South Carolinians know what NAFTA is,” says Danielle Vinson, a political science professor at Furman University, referring to the 1993 pact that eliminated trade barriers with Mexico and Canada. To be successful, she says, a candidate must use the textile industry’s decline “as a jumping off point to talk about jobs” in a state where unemployment is 7.1 percent.

Gephardt, the former House Democratic leader, hopes to lay claim to the issue, arguing that he has fought for two decades for fair trade, not just free trade.

“We’re in a global economy. You’ve got to deal with it. You can’t just protect the United States,” he says. He tells audiences that he bucked a fellow Democrat, former President Clinton, to oppose NAFTA, freer trade with China and other measures because they did not require other countries to have meaningful labor and environmental protections.

Among other measures, he favors an international minimum wage, with standards set by the World Trade Organization.

When Gephardt pocketed the endorsement of Rep. Jim Clyburn, the state’s dominant black politician, the campaign rushed out a television commercial touching on trade. “Together, we stood up for middle-class families against NAFTA,” Clyburn says.

Edwards, too, wants custody of the issue.

“Growing up, it seemed like almost everyone in town worked at the mill. When it moved, it was devastating,” he says in a commercial with an old mill as a backdrop. Now, he says, plants are “packing up and moving where labor’s cheap, and the environment doesn’t count. It doesn’t have to be that way,” he adds, pledging tax breaks for companies that build plants in this country.

But Gephardt accuses his rivals of “11th-hour conversions … when it mattered they weren’t there.” As governor of Vermont, Dean supported NAFTA and wrote Clinton a letter in favor of the China legislation. Kerry and Sen. Joe Lieberman of Connecticut supported both measures.

Gephardt has called Edwards a “Johnny-come-lately” to the cause, noting his vote for the China trade deal that accelerated the decline of the textile and apparel industries.

In response, a spokesman for Edwards says Gephardt voted for legislation in 1991 that made it easier for presidents to pass trade deals, and led to NAFTA’s approval. “The congressman can’t be out there picking and choosing his votes, or highlighting certain votes and think that people are going to ignore others,” said spokesman Roger Salazar.

But in an interview, Gephardt mentions Pillowtex, a North Carolina-based textile maker that declared bankruptcy last summer with the loss of more than 7,600 jobs. “It had a terrible impact on a big employer” in Edwards’ state as well as South Carolina, he says.

It is a warning shot.