Foreign businesses have replaced textiles in Upstate South Carolina. Residents are 'baffled' and worried by tariffs.

BMW employs 11,000 people at its 8 million square-
foot campus in Spartanburg, S.C. (BMW photo)

Upstate South Carolina was once known as the country's textile hub until the 1990s when "automation and cheaper labor overseas took the industry away from the state," reports Eduardo Medina of The New York Times. President Trump's new tariffs aim to revive the industry, but some people who used to work at the old mills don't know why anyone would want to bring that work back because of the low wages and often unpleasant working conditions. Much of the region has new industrial partners that have improved the overall quality of living for many residents.

Adolphus Jones worked at a mill in the small town of Union, S.C. Medina writes, "Jones, now 71 and retired, scoffed at President Trump’s vision of an American manufacturing revival through tariffs. The mill work had paid little, Jones recalled, and upward mobility was nonexistent." Jones told him, “The textile industry is dead. Why would you want to bring it back here? Truthfully, why would the younger generation want to work there?”

The Trump administration's push to bring back an industry few residents miss represents a mismatch between current economic realities and the limits of what tariffs can accomplish. "Today, companies like BMW and Michelin — from Germany and France — are the economic engines of the region," Medina explains. "Now, leaders say that waging a trade war could undermine future recruitment of international investments and risk losing the jobs that are already in the region."

BMW alone "has invested more than $14.8 billion into its South Carolina operations" and has created "most than 11,000 jobs." BMW's suppliers have created thousands of additional jobs in the region. 

So, local residents were baffled "when the White House’s top trade adviser, Peter Navarro, attacked BMW’s manufacturing process in an interview . . .," Medina reports. "He told CNBC 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.'"

Even in Union, a rural area with 8,000 residents, a recovery from textile's downfall has slowly evolved. Medina writes, "Union County has successfully recruited renewable power companies, bioscience and medical employers, and a Dollar General distribution center that employs nearly a thousand people."

Some Union residents think a more modern mill might further improve Union's economy. Leroy Spencer, a retiree in Union, told Medina, "If Trump can bring that back, it would be amazing, and I think the economy would pick up around here and get better." However, building new mills with automation and modern equipment would mean ordering machinery and supplies from overseas, which will likely face higher tariffs and thereby increase construction costs.

Jones sees the "whole tariff back and forth as baffling," Medina writes. "When he worked in a plant decades ago, he made tassels for graduation caps. Now, he says, more of Union’s next generation should be wearing those caps — not making them."

Some inflated costs may be going down, but weary Americans can't control the prices of many necessities

When U.S. families sit down to do the budget, some costs
aren't negotiable. (Adobe Stock photo)

As U.S. inflation slowly tracks downward, some painful increases remain difficult for Americans to afford. "Prices for many of the things that are hard to do without are still posting eye-watering increases. Rent and electricity bills are up 10% or more over the past two years, and car-insurance costs are up nearly 40%, according to the Labor Department’s index," report Hariett Torry and Terell Wright of The Wall Street Journal. "Shoppers might be able to trade down from prime steak to cheaper cuts of meat at the supermarket, but they can’t really do the same thing with the water bill."

While some citizens have made grocery store swaps, some have cut "luxuries" such as eating out or trimming kids' extracurricular activities. Still, Americans have costs such as housing, insurance and child care that are at historical highs but are also necessities. "In the Consumer Price Index, shelter costs — a measure of rent and the equivalent cost to homeowners, as well as lodging away from home and household insurance — have risen more than 13% in two years," Torry and Wright explain. "Child care costs have risen 6.4% over the past two years. . . . Because daycare bills can be as big as rent or a mortgage, even a relatively small increase can feel like a lot."

Getting to work to make money often means car ownership and the overhead that goes with it. "The cost of transportation services, which includes vehicle insurance and repair, has jumped more than 18% in the past two years, according to the CPI," the Journal reports. "An increasing number of cash-strapped Americans are choosing to drive without car insurance."

Single mom Jasmine Moore's experiences mirror that of many American workers. "Moore missed a payment on her auto insurance about six months ago. Now her monthly bill has doubled," Torry and Wright add. "She canceled her son’s math tutoring sessions and instead tutors him herself. Instead of Publix, she opts for discount grocery stores and food pantries." Moore told the Journal, "I have middle-class pay, but I feel like I’m lower income.”

Rural Tennessee communities want agreements to ensure that they will benefit from Ford's big electric vehicle complex

Ford and SK's mega EV complex in Tennessee is nearly six square miles.
(BlueOval City photo)

Named after Ford's iconic logo, Blue Oval City is a burgeoning electric vehicle development in Stanton, Tennessee, a rural town of 615 residents, many of whom are working to ensure the massive operation provides regional community advantages.

"The joint venture, between Ford and Korean company SK Innovation, promises 6,000 good-paying jobs for residents of the small, rural communities. . . . Development on such a large scale will, [residents] fear, change the community, suck up water and electricity, and prompt an influx of newcomers and development," reports Katie Myers of Grist. "The towns orbiting Stanton are sitting down with Ford and SK to negotiate a binding agreement that will ensure they benefit from Blue Oval City as much as the companies do."

Community advocates wanted residents to have a say in what benefits the companies provided, including youth facilities and support for road maintenance, alongside binding assurances for responsible plant waste disposal. To empower regional voices, they formed a coalition, which "drafted a list of stipulations, called a community benefits agreement, that it wants Ford/Blue Oval SK to abide by," Myers explains. "CBAs are a contract between a corporation and a coalition of local organizations that gives the community, through binding arbitration, leverage to ensure the commitments are kept."

In Los Angeles, the entertainment industry used CBAs to negotiate for a large sports arena, but a CBA's purpose and power can be broadly applied. Vonda McDaniel, the president of the Central Labor Council of Nashville and Middle Tennessee, "is helping to formulate Blue Oval agreement and plan town halls," Myers reports. "The process has been lively." McDaniel told her: "We haven't had a whole lot of wilting flowers that have shown up at our meetings. . . . The community is feeling a bit squeezed; there's heavy equipment up and down the road every day."

The "squeeze" is understandable. Blue Oval City is a 3,600-acre campus covering nearly six square miles. The complex is slated to open in 2025 and will employ at least 5,700 people. The surrounding towns of Covington, Brownsville and Stanton have an estimated population of 19,015.

Kathleen Mulltigan, who leads the National Labor Leadership Initiative at Cornell University, told Myers: "What we're really trying to do is bring real democracy into the economic realm, because a lot of the work of shaping the economy happens without workers having any voice in it."

The coalition will need Ford and SK to come to the negotiation table. The group plans to "take a complete draft of the agreement in hand early in the new year," Myers reports. "Even if the effort is not immediately successful, community members say, the relationships they've built with one another will only get stronger, leaving possibilities for further organizing open down the road."

Billions of federal dollars were marked for EV charging stations in 2021 legislation, but none have been built

(Photo by Andreas Rasmussen, Unsplash)

Billions of dollars were made available to states for building electric vehicle chargers, but none have been built, reports James Bikales of Politico. In 2021, Congress agreed to "spend $7.5 billion to build tens of thousands of electric vehicle chargers across the country, aiming to appease anxious drivers while tackling climate change. Two years later, the program has yet to install a single charger."

"States and the charger industry blame the delays mostly on the labyrinth of new contracting and performance requirements they have to navigate to receive federal funds," Bikales writes. "While federal officials have authorized more than $2 billion of the funds to be sent to states, fewer than half of states have even started to take bids from contractors to build the chargers — let alone begin construction."

Despite the lack of chargers, electric vehicle sales have increased. "Consumer demand for electric vehicles is rising in the United States, necessitating six times as many chargers on its roads by the end of the decade, according to federal estimates," Bikales reports. But many Americans refuse to purchase electric cars because of the lack of charging stations.

President Joe Biden's EV-focused climate goals will not be met without charging stations and more EV acceptance. Bikales reports, "Biden signed the bipartisan infrastructure package into law. . . with an eye toward achieving his goal of building 500,000 chargers in the United States by 2030. . . . But Aatish Patel, president of charger manufacturer XCharge North America, is worried the delays in installing chargers are imperiling efforts to drive up EV adoption." He told Bikales, "As an EV driver, a charger being installed in two years isn't really going to help me out now. We're in dire need of chargers here."

There are chargers available, just not enough. Bikales reports: "The United States has around 180,000 chargers today, according to the Energy Department. That includes 41,000 of the type of fast chargers that can alleviate the dreaded “range anxiety” of a long-distance road trip in an electric vehicle."

Ohio Republican Gov. Mike DeWine, "whose state broke ground on the nation's first charger funded by the NEVI (National Electric Vehicle Infrastructure) program in October, said in a statement that he is committed to 'truly positioning Ohioans for the electric future," Bikales reports. "Following Ohio, Pennsylvania also broke ground on its first NEVI-funded charger in November. Another six states have awarded contracts for their first round of charging sites, while 15 states plus Puerto Rico are in the process of soliciting bids from the private sector."