NEW YORK — Republican Rep. Jim DeMint from South Carolina mirrors President Bush when it comes to touting the need to expand international trade breaks, also a key item in the GOP party platform approved Monday by convention delegates.
DeMint, who’s running for the Senate to fill the seat held for almost 40 years by retiring Democrat Fritz Hollings, spoke on Monday’s opening day of the convention. Republicans are eager for DeMint to win in order to increase their Senate majority, which now only amounts to one vote.
“This convention is about building a better future…about replacing a culture of dependence with an opportunity society,” DeMint told delegates, echoing themes in the GOP platform, which include party perennials of tax cuts and increased international trade as underpinnings for economic growth.
A former marketing executive and three-term congressman, DeMint has been on the hot seat with textile makers in the South, especially in South Carolina, where mill job losses during Bush’s first term have been particularly steep. They question Bush’s aggressive free-trade agenda and claim it promotes inexpensive imports at the expense of U.S. fabric and yarn, an argument made by manufacturers in other sectors. Overall, U.S. manufacturing jobs have declined by about 2.5 million since Bush took office in 2001. The overall manufacturing downturn also is a central presidential campaign issue.
Moreover, there are GOP mill executives weighing whether to back DeMint’s opponent, state school superintendent Inez Tenenbaum, whom they consider more supportive of the American textile industry.
In an interview after his brief convention address, DeMint downplayed the uproar back home in South Carolina over the state of the flagging domestic textile industry.
“It’s an old political ideal,” DeMint said. “It’s a scare tactic.”
He listed various South Carolina manufacturers, including Michelin, General Electric and 3M, that depend on exporting and importing for their livelihood and which support his candidacy. DeMint also dismissed talk of textile support going to Tenenbaum, and said he has the state’s dyeing and finishing shops on his side.
In 2001, DeMint forced a measure requiring apparel produced in the Caribbean basin and receiving U.S. trade breaks to be finished in the U.S., an alleged restraint on trade the Bush administration resisted. However, they relented to the deal, since DeMint agreed to vote for a bill that’s much more important to expanding trade: renewing the President’s trade promotion authority. His vote helped to ensure its passage.
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Textile support for his candidacy “is coming around,” said DeMint, noting that trade, despite its volatility as a topic, isn’t the only issue in his campaign, listing improving school test scores as one item.
Like Bush and the party’s platform, DeMint argues that enforcing trade agreements is the key to fairness in international commerce.
“Free trade must be fair trade that advances America’s economic goals and protects American jobs,” the platform reads.