NY Times: “In the 1970s, when the Upstate region of South Carolina was known as the textile capital of the world, Adolphus Jones would clock in for grueling summer shifts at one of the many mills in Union, his hometown.
Trains roared around him, transporting materials around the country. Chimney stacks on the red brick mills stretched dozens of feet high, like flag poles. This was textile country, and the cities of Union, Spartanburg and Greenville were at the heart of it.
By the end of the 1990s, automation and cheaper labor overseas took the industry away from the state. Union’s economy cratered, as did the most of the region’s. But leaving Sunday church service on a recent afternoon, Mr. Jones, now 71 and retired, scoffed at President Trump’s vision of an American manufacturing revival through tariffs. The mill work had paid little, Mr. Jones recalled, and upward mobility was nonexistent.
“The textile industry is dead,” he said, buttoning his wool suit made in Italy. “Why would you want to bring it back here? Truthfully, why would the younger generation want to work there?”….
But Mr. Trump’s goals have clashed with the current economic reality in places like Spartanburg and Greenville, S.C., heavily Republican areas where foreign companies have turned the onetime textile hubs into wealthy, industrial heavyweights. Should those levies go back into effect, locals worry that they will threaten the very businesses that saved the region, home to some 1.5 million residents, all to revive a bygone industry that few people miss.
Many retirees still remember what it was like to work in the textile mills. It had a negative connotation, said Rosemary Rice, 70, with some workers derogatively called “lint heads” because they would come home covered in cotton shreds. Many developed “brown lung disease,” or byssinosis, a respiratory condition caused by ingesting dust particles from fabric materials.
“I wouldn’t want my son working there,” said Ms. Rice, who lives in Union.
Today, companies like BMW and Michelin — from Germany and France — are the economic engines of the region. Since BMW opened its plant in Spartanburg County in the early ’90s, it has invested more than $14.8 billion into its South Carolina operations. The plant has more than 11,000 jobs, its largest single production facility in the world, according to the company. And it is the country’s largest car exporter by value, with $10 billion in shipments last year.
So the local business community was stunned when the White House’s top trade adviser, Peter Navarro, attacked BMW’s manufacturing process in an interview this week. He told CNBC on Monday that “this business model where BMW and Mercedes come into Spartanburg, S.C., and have us assemble German engines and Austrian transmissions — that doesn’t work for America. It’s bad for our economics. It’s bad for our national security.””