Strickland is trying to make a campaign issue out of his opposition of NAFTA.
Of course, that ignores the fact that he refused to support any withdrawal from the agreement just last year. Not to mention all the campaigning he made on behalf of Hillary Clinton where he defended the trade deals President Clinton signed.
But for the sake of yesterday morning’s news showing the number of unemployed Americans seeking financial assistance reaching its highest level of 2010, and this morning’s news showing the 16th straight month of double-digit unemployment in Ohio, I guess we can just ignore Ted’s flip flop and pretend his latest stance is true – he really does oppose free trade with North America.
With that in mind, I’d like to know why this is such a bad thing.
Six months into 2010, the value of Ohio exports reached $20.2 billion, a 29 percent increase over the first half of last year, according to the U.S. Census Bureau’s Foreign Trade Division. This year, Ohio’s export surge has outpaced the nation’s 23 percent increase.
[…]
Exports are a pillar of Ohio’s economy. One in every 13 jobs in Ohio’s private sector was linked to the manufacture of exported goods in 2008, according to the U.S. Department of Commerce. One of Ohio’s leading export sectors — autos and auto parts — was up 74 percent through June, after diving last year.
Other sectors seeing big jumps are electric machinery, iron and steel, and plastics, Scherer said.
As usual, the countries buying the most Ohio products are Canada, Mexico and China.
Strickland is proud of his vote against NAFTA. Sorta.
But if he had his way, there is no question Ohio would not have enjoyed this one glimmer of hope in its effort to recover.
But the funny thing is, despite all his yelling and screaming about “outsourcing”, Ted Strickland sure doesn’t mind wooing a company that does exactly that.
To show off a 196,000-square-foot office park in the Cincinnati suburb of Milford to executives from Tata Consultancy Services, India’s biggest tech company and a thriving part of the Tata Group conglomerate.
To sweeten the deal, Strickland threw in $19 million in tax credits and invited the TCS crew to a state dinner at the governor’s mansion. “The economy is difficult,” Strickland says in the Jan. 11 issue of Bloomberg BusinessWeek. “I will go wherever I can to find jobs.”
[…]
With the economy growing again but unemployment stuck at double-digit levels, states and municipalities across the U.S. are scrambling to woo anyone with hiring plans — even if that means going hat in hand to the same bunch that have been responsible for hundreds of thousands of jobs going overseas.
[…]
TCS already had to delay opening the Ohio center for almost six months during the recession in the U.S. And Wipro says its Atlanta operation isn’t yet profitable. Both say American facilities are unlikely to create huge numbers of new jobs in the U.S. soon. For several years, at least, the vast majority of work will continue to be done in India and other low-cost countries, according to Surya Kant, North America president for TCS.
Despite sending “hundreds of thousands of jobs overseas”, at best Tata hopes to create 1000 jobs. And that only costs Ohio taxpayers $19 million and a posh dinner with plenty of booze at the Governor’s mansion.
Governor Strickland is a big, giant hypocrite.
