Mitt Romney-Helmed Olympics Outsourced Uniforms To Burma (Myanmar)
Source: Huffington Post
Congress was up in arms Thursday over the discovery that the U.S. team's uniforms for the opening ceremony of this year's Olympics games were manufactured in China -- snubbing the U.S. textile industry at a time when it has yet to recover from the struggling economy.
For the presumptive Republican presidential nominee, who has repeatedly promised on the trail to "get tough" on China, opposing the manufacturing seemed a likely stance, except that while at the helm of the 2002 Winter Olympics in Salt Lake City, Romney outsourced the production of torchbearer uniforms to Burma.
For Romney, the 2002 Olympics anecdote represents another instance of outsourcing under his stewardship, as President Barack Obama's reelection team continues to assail him for shipping jobs overseas while at private equity firm Bain Capital. It also exposes an embarrassing oversight in allowing the uniforms to be manufactured in Burma, which until just last year was controlled by a brutal military regime.
According to reports in 2002, the decision to outsource the torchbearer uniforms to Burma caused an uproar among human rights advocates and trade groups. It prompted the head of the International Confederation of Free Trade Unions (ICFTU) to write a letter to the International Olympic Committee (IOC), stating that "No responsible organization or body should make use of products originating in Burma."
Read more: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/07/16/mitt-romney-olympics-outsourced-uniforms-burma_n_1677791.html
dimbear
(6,271 posts)It makes our work so much easier.
emulatorloo
(44,116 posts)jpbollma
(552 posts)We would all be working at Walmart or not at all! Everything else will be outsourced.
MidwestTransplant
(8,015 posts)Overseas
(12,121 posts)Did Bain companies benefit? Keep the news flowing.
aint_no_life_nowhere
(21,925 posts)His show is pretty good tonight.
Tumbulu
(6,274 posts)what a disaster he is.
SleeplessinSoCal
(9,110 posts)Spider Jerusalem
(21,786 posts)First, I'd be very surprised to learn this was a decision taken by Romney himself; second, you can partly blame it on Clinton's trade policies of most favoured nation trading status with China and NAFTA; the American textile industry lost seven hundred thousand jobs between 1994 and 2002. Sure, outsourcing is a great stick to beat Romney with and it'll play well, but saying "the US textile industry has yet to recover from the struggling economy" is just absurd. The economy in the '90's was supposed to be good; ask anyone who was working in a textile plant that closed and moved overseas how good it was.
Tx4obama
(36,974 posts)BlueToTheBone
(3,747 posts)This guy is so slimy that one wonders why he doesn't leave a trail when he walks.
Quantess
(27,630 posts)BlueToTheBone
(3,747 posts)and I hope it has REAL legs. He is so nasty, it all needs to come out in the wash.
rgbecker
(4,826 posts)These kind of questions just lead to bad feelings.