Hagan Unveils Plan To Make Trade Work for North Carolina: Key Points: Accountable to the American People; Compete in a Competitive Environment

July 25, 2008

GREENSBORO, NC- State Senator and U.S. Senate Candidate Kay Hagan (D-Guilford) today unrolled her plan to make trade agreements, currently detrimental to American workers and their way of life, work for North Carolina and its economy. Her plan also addressed the need for a new framework in which Congress and the President should be approaching any future trade agreement. Since 2000, North Carolina has lost 219,400 manufacturing jobs – a 28.9% decrease.

“When done right, trade opens up nations to new products, new opportunities and new ideas,” Kay said. “For too many years, however, trade deals have been written to pull down wages and working conditions in the U.S. and other developed countries, instead of pulling up wages in the developing world. As corporate and CEO pay have soared, the incomes of ordinary North Carolinians have stagnated. The negatives of trade are life-changing and fall calamitously on the communities of North Carolina and others that had depended for so long on quality manufacturing jobs.”

Kay pointed out that while Elizabeth Dole votes with President Bush 92% of the time, she does so to the detriment of North Carolina workers, with votes to expand the NAFTA model, in favor of CAFTA twice, as well as trade agreements with Peru, Chile and Australia. Dole has also voted in favor of tax breaks for companies that send jobs overseas and against prohibiting American tax dollars from being used to shop jobs outside the country. A reliable Bush Rubberstamp Republican, Dole also voted against funding for workforce training under the Workforce Investment Act three times and against extending unemployment benefits five times.

Serving in the North Carolina State Senate for a decade and chairman of the budget for five years, Kay’s record stands in stark contrast to Dole’s – helping North Carolina become the state in the nation with the top business climate for the third year in a row and supporting investments in job training, creation and economic stimulation for the state. Particularly in rural North Carolina, Kay provided funding for the Rural Economic Development Center and its North Carolina Infrastructure Program. Kay has also supported economic incentives to entice businesses to locate and expand in North Carolina and she has been a strong supporter of North Carolina’s 58 community colleges, which provide critical workforce development in local communities. Kay also worked to provide for the continued success and prosperity of the High Point Furniture Market which provides thousands of jobs here.

Kay’s trade plan is built on two principal platforms:

1. Our trade policy needs to be not just fair, but accountable, to the American people, and must be designed to raise Americans’ living standards, not just American companies’ share prices.

2. To make trade work for America and North Carolina, our businesses and our institutions must create a competitive environment to ensure no one will be more innovative than America.

Under accountable trade, Kay believes any trade agreement must have enforceable labor and environmental standards and supports giving enforcement authority to the Department of Justice and creating the post of Deputy Attorney General for Trade Enforcement. In addition, Kay will ensure that the corporate loopholes currently written into our tax policy which provide incentives to corporations who moves jobs overseas are closed and businesses are rewarded for keeping jobs in America.

Under competitive trade, Kay knows that to take advantage of the benefits of trade for the American economy, we need to have the most innovative economy in the world. To that end, Kay would make the Research and Development (R&D) tax credit permanent and reverse recent cuts to funding for the National Science Foundation and the National Institutes of Health. Kay would also support entrprenuerial spirit with tax credits that support the manufacturing of innovative new products in America. Kay’s plan also calls for expanding technology in rural areas, making sure our public schools are prepared to train a first-class workforce and ensuring that North Carolina is a leader in producing renewable energy sources – good, clean jobs here in North Carolina that cannot be shipped overseas.

“Time and again, it’s clear that Elizabeth Dole’s experience in Washington is just another way of doing business that puts special interests ahead of North Carolinians,” Kay said. “Her kind of experience has done nothing to help stem the tide of job losses in this state, and clearly she fails to see the error of her ways – just last year she voted for another trade agreement that could actually weaken labor law enforcement. North Carolinians deserve someone in the U.S. Senate who is working for them, not the corporate special interests.”

“Rural North Carolina needs representation in Washington, someone who really studies trade deals and the effect they will have on jobs in our communities,” said Rockingham Mayor Gene McLaurin, who toured downtown Rockingham with Kay today. “We’ve lost almost 1,000 textile jobs in Richmond County in the last 10 years and it’s important we have a U.S. Senator who puts interests of working people first.”

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