Apr 12 2008
Bill Clinton Talks of Manufacturing In Roanoke Rapids
ROANOKE RAPIDS, N.C. — Former President Bill Clinton, campaigning in a former mill town struggling with job losses, said Friday the United States can bring back the manufacturing industry — as long as the nation can enforce trade laws.“We can bring manufacturing back to America now,” Clinton said on an outdoor stage, with the now-closed mill that was featured in the 1979 Sally Field movie “Norma Rae” looming behind him. “But we have to have a commitment.”
Clinton did not mention the North American Free Trade Agreement during the campaign event for his wife, Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Rodham Clinton. The NAFTA trade pact was adopted while Bill Clinton was in office, but Hillary Clinton has repeatedly said she wants to change it.
Many have blamed NAFTA for accelerating the decline of North Carolina’s once-vibrant manufacturing sector.
NAFTA was implemented on January 1, 1994 under the Clinton Administration and a Democratic Congress. In November of 2003 the Economic Policy Institute wrote a publication that claimed since that date almost 900,000 jobs had been lost in the U.S. to other nations. The Bureau of Labor Statistics show that right here in North Carolina 270,000 manufacturing jobs have been lost between February 1998 and February 2008.
