Gloucester Times (Mass.), April 22:
While they are at it, government officials could do a better job protecting local industries from the Obama administration.
New Balance and the Obama administration are engaged in a war of words over USA-made athletic shoes and the Trans-Pacific Partnership trade agreement. New Balance says it dropped its public opposition to the proposed trade agreement after it said the Obama administration’s top trade official promised that if the company kept its mouth shut about the agreement’s threat to American workers’ jobs, he would help it get a Defense Department contract to produce up to 225,000 pairs of athletic shoes a year for military recruits. After the Obama administration reneged, New Balance renewed its opposition to the trade agreement, which it said would flood the market with cheap foreign-made athletic shoes, hurting the company and threatening local jobs.
In response, the trade office claims New Balance’s shoes are substandard.
We wish the company had not agreed to a pact of silence. We are wholeheartedly on the side of New Balance in this one. The company not only makes a great athletic shoe, it also has been a good corporate citizen in Massachusetts. It employs hundreds of workers in its Lawrence factory and outlet store. As Abel Vargas, Lawrence’s director of economic and business development, said, “Those are manufacturing jobs that allow workers to develop a skill set, increase their pay and make them able to buy homes and put their kids through college.”
What’s not to like? Would that the Obama administration had been as good for the local economy.
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