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."

With its $12.98 T-shirt, this company shows how retail apparel production can thrive in the U.S.

American Giant photo via The Wall Street Journal

It isn't fancy -- it's practical. It's sold at Walmart, but it's no import. It's a "Made in America" T-shirt woven with U.S. cotton sold by an American company making a tidy profit off its $12.98 tee, reports Suzanne Kapner of The Wall Street Journal. The T-shirt maker, American Giant, used the "heft" of Walmart's guaranteed sales contracts to garner enough investor support to make affordable "Made in the USA" apparel items possible.

American Giant's success wasn't spurred by tariffs on Chinese imports. Instead, it was Walmart's 2013 pledge to spend more on items that were made, grown or assembled in the U.S. that helped the company grow. Kapner explains, "In 2021, Walmart increased its goal and promised to spend billions more each year through 2030."

Bayard Winthrop, the chief executive of American Giant, said that "without Walmart acting as a backstop by committing to buy a predetermined number of shirts over time, American Giant’s suppliers wouldn’t have had the confidence to make the investments in automation and other upgrades that drove down production costs," Kapner writes. "The T-shirt project brought together what Winthrop has called 'strange bedfellows.'"

The T-shirt is made out of "yarn that is grown, spun, dyed and sewn in the U.S., contracting with suppliers mainly in the Southeast," Kapner reports. "It also owns a cutting and sewing facility in Middlesex, N.C., and is part owner in another sewing facility in Los Angeles, which opened specifically to make the Walmart T-shirts."

Even with its $12.98 price tag, American Giant's Walmart T-shirt competes against similar 100% cotton tees at half the price. American Giant differentiates itself with American emblems, which other apparel makers cannot use. Kapner explains, "Walmart bars suppliers from using the term 'American Made' or the American flag on products that aren’t made in the U.S."

So far, the $12.98 T-shirt boasts solid sales and "American Giant is making 100% cotton sweatshirts for Walmart that will sell for $38.98," Kapner reports. Despite the company's success, "it is unclear how much Americans care about buying products made in the U.S. . . . With the uptick of inflation in recent years, budget-minded shoppers have become even more price conscious."

Natural wonders: Mt. Rainer's glaciers; wacky animals decline; the little bat that could; repurposing waste wool

Mt. Rainer is an active volcano. (Photo by Tiffany Von Arnim
via the National Park Service, CC image)

At 14,410 feet, Mount Rainier is the highest volcanic peak in the contiguous United States. It boasts the largest alpine glacial system outside of Alaska and contains the world's largest volcanic glacier cave system. It is the Mount's unearthly "frozen labyrinth tucked within the majestic volcano's east crater" that scientists are now daring to explore, reports Rebecca Dzombak of National Geographic. "The glaciers atop Mount Rainer, which towers to the southeast of Seattle, Washington, contains clues about the volcano, the inner workings of glaciers, and even icy worlds far from Earth."

In 2002, America's wacky animals -- think the great American llama, ostriches and emus -- flourished in the lower 48 states, Alaska and even Hawaii. Today that is no longer the case. All our "looney" animal populations have collapsed while other farm animals continue to thrive, reports Andrew Van Dam of The Washington Post. "From 2002 to 2022, we lost 83 percent of our ostriches, 79 percent of our llamas, 74 percent of our emus and 63 percent of our elk. Over that period, cattle were down just 8 percent, poultry was up 16 percent, and hogs were up 22 percent." The farms in Alaska and Hawaii no longer exist.

Little brown bat weigh less than 10 grams.
(Photo by Michael Code, Ambrook Research)

Cute as a button and confounding to scientists, Alaska's little brown bats have escaped white-nose syndrome. Can their "niche" in nature save them? "Meet Myotis lucifugus, commonly referred to as the little brown bat," reports Trina Moyles for Hakai magazine. Or, as chiropterologist (bat researcher) Jesika Reimer fondly calls it, 'the flying brown bear.'. . . Scientists know little about where [these bats] live at this far northern margin of the species' range."

Across North America, stands of trees of all different species are struggling to survive climate change. In response, scientists from the Cutfoot Experimental Forest are introducing some southern tree species to more northern regions, reports John H. Tibbetts of Knowable Magazine for Inverse. The survival of a grove of bitternut hickory trees, common to Illinois but transplanted to north-central Minnesota, is an example. "Normally, if a southern-adapted seedling is planted in an unsuitably cold climate like this one, it can risk frost damage, and its survival is threatened. . . . Today [scientists]can see the success of almost all the southern trees they planted."

Not all wool is usable for textiles, but it can make
'sweaters for the soil.' (Photo by Sam Carter, Unsplash)

Sheep farmers have developed a new way to repurpose coarser wool or "waste wool" that would have been thrown away by using a wool pelleting machine, reports Elise Konig for Ambrook Research. "A pelleting machine transforms the fleece’s long strands into cylinders that can more easily be handled. The pellets are then sold as soil amendments, providing water retention, nutrient recycling, and soil aeration."

Are you ready to clean, prune, test your soil, pick the plants and snuggle them in some soil? March is get-ready to garden month, and there's lots to do. "If you’ve been itching to get out and get gardening, we’re on the cusp of the season. This is the time to get organized and get ready because by the time we talk again in April, we will be in it, writes Amanda Blum for Lifehacker. From tidying the garden to splitting bulbs to fertilizing shrubs, Blum has a list of all the jobs to do before planting begins.

'The Real Mayberry' uses Mount Airy's pop-culture image to tell the promise and problems of small-town living

Bill Hayes in Mount Airy, with Blue Ridge outcrop Pilot Mountain (inspiration for TV's Mount Pilate) in distance. (Daily Yonder)

Mount Airy, N.C., population about 10,000, was the inspiration for the fictional town of Mayberry in "The Andy Griffith Show," starring its most famous native. On the show, neighbors were neighborly, and the town's problems could be solved in a half hour, but the reality is different. With his new documentary "The Real Mayberry," Mount Airy native Bill Hayes takes us beyond the pat answers of a TV show and digs into the problems and promise of living in a small town.

"But like any honest look at small-town America, the engaging film has no pat answers. What it does have are the right questions: What is special about our place? What is here that we can build on? How do we create opportunity while preserving what we love? And how do we pass on our town to a new generation that has new ideas?" Tim Marema writes for The Daily Yonder. "Your hometown may not have inspired Andy Griffith, but we bet it has more than a little in common with this former mill town on the North Carolina Piedmont." Mount Airy and Surry County have struggled with the decline of three major industries: furniture, textiles and tobacco, and have in recent years embraced the Mayberry identity to attract tourists.

"Like Mount Airy itself, Hayes’ documentary uses the pop-culture notoriety of Mayberry to create a connection," Marema reports. "Once you’re inside the city limits, the viewer is prepared to have a much deeper conversation about the future of small-town America." Hayes told Marema that he made the documentary because "Our country is built on small towns in rural America and I feel like they're misunderstood and don't get the proper nurturing."

With help from Walmart, new devices and stagnant wages, U.S. sock makers ramp up production

The American sock industry, once all but dead, has been revived by "changes in technology, attitudes and costs," James R. Hagerty reports for The Wall Street Journal from rural Hildebran, N.C., just west of Hickory, where a Canadian designer-marketer who had given up manufacturing has reactivated an old plant to make socks for Walmart.

The new technology is in Italian machines that knit and seam socks in the same process, requiring about half the number of workers. The attitude change is at Walmart, "which is trying to reduce its heavy reliance on imports" and is giving more shelf space to U.S.-made products, Hagerty writes. Costs? American manufacturing has become more competitive with China because "average manufacturing wages in the U.S. have risen less than 2 percent annually over the past five years, while those in China have about doubled since 2008."

"For similar reasons, other sock makers are investing in the U.S.," Hagerty reports, but adds, "Some producers are still heading overseas. . . . Employment in U.S. hosiery and sock mills totals about 8,600, one quarter of the tally for 2001. The U.S. sock-making industry has shrunk so drastically that its trade group, the Hosiery Association, disbanded in 2013." (Read more)

Textile mills are coming back in the South, with mechanization and non-woven fabrics

Textile mills are making a comeback in the mostly rural South. About 650 mills closed nationally between 1997 to 2009, and many of the jobs were shipped overseas where it was cheaper to produce products. In recent years, the industry has returned to the U.S., providing fewer but higher paying jobs in areas that desperately need an economic boost. The jobs are fewer due to mechanization, with 200,000 jobs lost to it in the last decade, but the pay is higher because workers need to be more tech-savvy, Marsha Mercer reports for Stateline. The average salary for U.S. textile workers is $37,900; for all manufacturing workers it is $60,496. In 2012, the textile industry employed 233,000 workers and generated $54 billion in shipments.

Southern states are reaping the benefits of the return to the U.S., with companies from Brazil, Canada, China, Dubai, Great Britain, India, Israel, Japan, Korea, Mexico, Switzerland and the U.S. announcing plans to open or expand textile plants in 2013 in Georgia, Louisiana, North Carolina, South Carolina, Tennessee and Virginia, Mercer writes. A. Blanton Godfrey, dean of the College of Textiles at North Carolina State University, told Mercer, “Textiles manufacturing—yarn, fabric, woven and nonwoven—is still here and growing. We’re selling cotton yarn cheaper than the Chinese.” (Stateline chart)

"Another change in the industry is the growth of non-wovens, which are fiber-based products made of fabric that’s compressed, heated or tangled, like felt," Mercer reports. "Diapers and facial wipes, mops, medical scrubs and all kinds of filters are nonwovens. In the last decade, North Carolina has gained 1,945 jobs making nonwoven products and $719 million in nonwoven factory investment."

More than a third of the jobs gained in 2012 were in North Carolina and Georgia, and the two states have campaigned hard to bring more. In Georgia in 2013, "Five floor-covering manufacturing companies announced expansions that will add 3,550 jobs to the 22,382 existing carpet- and rug-manufacturing jobs and an $815 million in investment," Mercer writes. "In North Carolina, nine textile firms announced plans in 2013 to build or expand plants in the state, creating 993 jobs and investing $381 million." South Carolina is also getting a $218 million, 230,000-square-foot yarn factory that will create 501 jobs. (Read more)

Clothing factories are coming back in U.S., but jobs are still hard to come by due to mechanization

Textile plants, which migrated overseas in the 1990s to save money, have begun returning to the U.S., and their output in this country has been steadily climbing, Stephanie Clifford reports for The New York Times. "In 2012, textile and apparel exports were $22.7 billion, up 37 percent from just three years earlier. While the size of operations remain behind those of overseas powers like China, the fact that these industries are thriving again after almost being left for dead is indicative of a broader reassessment by American companies about manufacturing in the United States." And about 15 percent of American companies that manufacture overseas have already decided to move some production to the U.S., and 33 percent are considering the move.

Americans love buying products made in America. A Times survey conducted in January "found that 68 percent of respondents preferred products made in the United States, even if they cost more, and 63 percent believed they were of higher quality," Clifford writes. "Retailers from Walmart to Abercrombie & Fitch are starting to respond to those sentiments, creating sections for American-made items and sourcing goods domestically. But as manufacturers find that American-made products are not only appealing but affordable, they are also finding the business landscape has changed. Two decades of overseas production has decimated factories here. Between 2000 and 2011, on average, 17 manufacturers closed up shop every day across the country, according to research from the Information Technology and Innovation Foundation."

"Now, companies that want to make things here often have trouble finding qualified workers for specialized jobs and American-made components for their products," Clifford writes. "And politicians’ promises that American manufacturing means an abundance of new jobs is complicated — yes, it means jobs, but on nowhere near the scale there was before, because machines have replaced humans at almost every point in the production process." (Read more)

What goes around comes around: Globalization now helps Danville and parts of Southside Va.

Danville and much of the rest of Southside Virginia declined economically along with the linchpins of the Piedmont: tobacco, textiles and furniture, all hurt by globalization, especially the latter two. Dan River Fabrics (in photo by Misscharo) is down to 50 employees from its former 15,000. But now, "The powerful global economic forces that swept away thousands of jobs over the past two decades are now working in Danville's favor," and for other towns in the region, The Washington Post reports. "New companies are moving in to breathe life into once-tired economies across the industrial corridor in central and southwestern Virginia and in Southside, a strip of generally poor counties in the south-central part of the state."

Ylan Q. Mui reports for the Post, "The weakening dollar has made the United States more attractive to foreign investors. Companies from England, Canada and India have recently opened operations or expanded in Danville." The latest is Swedwood, the manufacturing subsidiary of the IKEA home-products chain, and one reason is rising oil prices. "Shipping Ikea's popular Expedit bookshelves to the United States, for example, costs more than it does to make them, said Joseph Roth, the company's U.S. public affairs manager," Mui writes. To get the plant, which is supposed to eventually employ 700, "The city paved its entry with new facilities, secured permits and state Tobacco Commission grants" -- money from Virginia's share of states' 10-year-old settlement with cigarette manufacturers.

At Swedwood's log-cutting (IKEA's version of a ribbon-cutting) last week, Gov. Tim Kaine said, “Sometimes people hear about globalism and think ‘what are we going to lose next? Globalism is also about winning, and so many of the announcements we’ve done here in Danville are foreign companies wanting to come to the United States. …There isn’t a reason we have to be afraid of globalism.”For the story by Sarah Arkin of the Danville Register & Bee, click here.

Danville still has a long way to go, the newspaper said in a May 1 editorial: "The best long-term solution is raising education levels and worker skills, which helps people get better-paying jobs that offer health insurance, which leads to more preventative care and the faster, more intensive treatment of disease, which typically leads to longer, healthier lives." Noting a recent report that people in the region are living shorter lives, the editorial concluded, "Declining life expectancies are another result of the long slumber that Danville has only recently started to awaken from. If we understand how we wound up with these problems, it’s easier to get started on the solutions." (Read more)

The local hero is retiring City Manager Jerry Gwaltney, who also successfully pushed Danville as a regional shopping hub for several rural counties. A shopping center that will employ 1,300 to 1,600 is under construction. A list of Gwaltney's successes ran in a Register & Bee story on his retirement. Writing in the Daily Yonder, Danville native John Borden asks, "Can Danville as a whole rebuild its economic life and energize its educational and social life after seeing its textile- and tobacco-town identity definitively become part of the historic past? Is there a unique next chapter? If not, does this mean that the city over time becomes just another distribution center of the national consumer culture, helping to deliver what the focus groups say is good to every corner of our country. Will people finally speak 'proper' English and then have nothing to say?' (Read more)

Dolly Parton's brother aims to tourist-ize old mill town of Roanoke Rapids, N.C.

Jonathan Cox of the News & Observer in Raleigh writes from Roanoke Rapids, N.C., just south of Virginia: "This border city has visions of Branson. Or at least Myrtle Beach. Long known as an interstate pit stop at North Carolina's northern entrance, Roanoke Rapids aims to become an entertainment destination. Leaders envision a showcase with a water park, live shows and restaurants to grab tourists along Interstate 95 and rev up a sputtering economy. What they have is a name, Carolina Crossroads; 123 acres carved with roads such as 'Music Way' . . . and a theater bearing the name of a man best known for being his sister's brother."

That's Randy Parton, sibling of Dolly Parton, who turned a theme park in her home Sevier County, Tenn., into Dollywood and made it the premier commercial attraction of the Great Smoky Mountains. "His theater, built with $21.5 million borrowed by the city, opens today. Officials project as many as 300,000 patrons the first year, a forecast some consider optimistic. In the community, excitement mixes with uncertainty," Cox reports, quoting one woman: "I think it's going to work out. We hope so, anyway." (N&O photo shows the siblings singing the national anthem at the 2005 groundbreaking.)

Hope is an important word these days in Roanoke Rapids, an old textile-mill town hit hard by foreign competition. Halifax County's unemployment rate was "as high as 11.9 percent in January 2002. It's now 6.5 percent," Cox writes. He reports the city of 17,000 is using aggressive tactics "similar to those adopted in the state's other ailing manufacturing towns, but it's playing out differently. In Kannapolis, near Charlotte, leaders are betting on a new biotechnology hub backed by billionaire octogenarian David Murdock and top universities. Lenoir won Google, which is building a computer facility. Roanoke Rapids got Parton."

And to some, that is not a favorable comparison, Cox reports: "Many residents are skeptical that Parton, who is virtually guaranteed $750,000 a year, plus a house and car, will be a big enough draw. His last hit was in 1983 -- "A Stranger in Her Bed," which was No. 92 on the Billboard country charts -- yet, he's the only name on the playbill through year end. The project is unfolding slowly. Plans called for the theater to open as early as March." (Read more)