Republican on Trump’s “plans” to revive manufacturing in South Carolina: “It will never come back.”
The Upstate region of South Carolina was saved by foreign companies after the fall of its textile industry. Now, tariffs pose another round of uncertainty.
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.
In response to Mr. Navarro’s comments, South Carolina’s governor, Henry McMaster, told reporters this week that ever since BMW arrived in the state with well-paying jobs, other companies had followed suit and “sent the word out around the world that this is a great manufacturing state.”
“They’ve done a lot of good for South Carolina,” Mr. McMaster, a Republican, said of BMW.
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