Last year, U.S.-based athletic shoe maker New Balance was quiet about the Trans Pacific Partnership trade deal. The trade deal has many moving parts and threatens U.S. sovereignty in many ways, according to the bits and pieces of the treaty that have been leaked. But one of the more open aspects of the agreements is the lowering or elimination of tariffs on goods coming from member nations such as Vietnam into the U.S. Ordinarily that would be a problem for a domestic shoe operation like New Balance since shoes from Vietnam would inevitably be much cheaper. But New Balance was curiously silent over the last year regarding the trade deal, and now we know the reason why.
New Balance officials say one big reason is that they were told the Department of Defense would give them serious consideration for a contract to outfit recruits with athletic shoes.
But no order has been placed, and New Balance officials say the Pentagon is intentionally delaying any purchase.
New Balance is reviving its fight against the trade deal, which would, in part, gradually phase out tariffs on shoes made in Vietnam. A loss of those tariffs, the company says, would make imports cheaper and jeopardize its factory jobs in New England.
The company’s leaders appear to disagree that the now-broken deal was underhanded. “There was no quid pro quo deal,” Rob DeMartini, CEO of New Balance told WMTW. “We wanted to compete for a big piece of business that we are very confident we can win in.”
But Matt LeBretton, VP of public affairs for the company, tells the Globe that:
We swallowed the poison pill that is TPP so we could have a chance to bid on these contracts,…We were assured this would be a top-down approach at the Department of Defense if we agreed to either support or remain neutral on TPP. [But] the chances of the Department of Defense buying shoes that are made in the USA are slim to none while Obama is president.
Count on Obama to figure the best way to damage American business and push domestic enterprise out of the game. The Keystone Pipeline could have provided hundreds or thousands of jobs and secured U.S. access to Canadian petroleum, and Obama cancelled that project. He has now bankrupted some of the largest coal companies in the U.S., and is looking to regulate fracking out of business.
It is hard to find any programs Obama supports that help American business except where his cronies are making money such as in the solar panel business, although those companies have mostly gone bankrupt.
So much for Obama having a good business head.
At the end of the day, Obama’s corruption and ineptitude is spread throughout the economy, and we will only be able to get American business back on track when he is gone and excised from the system.
Source: weeklystandard.com
The trash is about to be dumped from the WH. Haven’t you got a riot to attend?
I’ll be buying New Balance shoes now….exclusively….