How better to promote a controversial Trade Deal than go to an American Corporate Icon, that knows a thing or two about "leveraging" overseas labor.
If anyone can sell this TPP plan, the President must think that Nike can ... Just Do it.
Obama's Scheduled Visit To Nike Has Trade Deal Skeptics Scratching Their Heads
by Dave Jamieson, huffingtonpost.com -- May 6, 2015
[...]
According to the White House, the president plans to visit Nike's headquarters in Oregon on Friday to continue making his case for the Trans-Pacific Partnership. TPP, as it's known, is a multinational trade pact the president says would boost trade between the U.S. and 11 other countries. Obama's pursuit of the pact has drawn fierce opposition from progressive groups as well as members of his own party, who say it will send more jobs overseas and worsen income inequality.
[...]
Nike, which is regarded as a pioneer in overseas outsourcing, has a long and checkered labor history in Vietnam. The footwear and apparel giant was pilloried for alleged sweatshop conditions in its contracted factories in Vietnam back in the 1990s, bruising its public image. By most accounts, Nike has helped make significant safety improvements in factories through its own monitoring programs since then, but wages in Vietnam are still extremely low, and the government has a poor track record of enforcing labor laws there.
[...]
Who needs local labor laws, when they got "new and improved" international tribunal "guidelines," to keep them all on the up and up?
Well, at least one person, sees this presidential Nike visit for what it is. A branding ploy to try to make the unpopular plan, a bit more palatable to the casual observer.
Leave it to Senator Sanders, to point out the little-noticed irony in this, Just Do It ploy ...
Bernie Sanders criticizes Obama's planned Nike visit to promote trade deal
by Michael A. Memoli, LATimes.com -- May 6, 2015
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In a letter sent to Obama Wednesday afternoon and obtained by the Los Angeles Times, the self-identified socialist, who is now running for president as a Democrat, says the proposed Trans-Pacific Partnership, or TPP, would only boost Nike's profits while doing nothing to increase manufacturing jobs here.
[...]
But Sanders said TPP would "do nothing to encourage Nike to create one manufacturing job in this country," and would only boost its executives' compensation.
He cited a study that Nike employs more than 300,000 workers in Vietnam, where the minimum wage is just 56 cents an hour and labor unions are banned.
[...]
56 cents an hour? -- bet you Nike would like to strengthen those "trade agreements" eh?
Here are a few more reasons why Sanders is saying, when it comes to the TPP, the U.S. Congress needs to "Just Don’t Do It" ...
Just Don’t Do It, Sanders Urges Obama on Nike Trip
sanders.senate.gov -- May 6, 2015
[...]
Nike has taken advantage of free-trade agreements – similar to proposed new pact which Obama is touting – to offshore tens of thousands of American jobs to Vietnam and other low-wage countries.
“Nike epitomizes why disastrous unfettered free-trade policies during the past four decades have failed American workers, eroded our manufacturing base and increased income and wealth inequality in this country,” Sanders wrote in a letter he sent to the president yesterday.
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“It is no secret why Nike is supporting the Trans-Pacific Partnership. This would increase the profits of Nike … but do nothing to encourage Nike to create one manufacturing job in this country. It would simply make Nike more money and increase the compensation packages of its executives,” Sanders wrote.
Since 2001, the U.S. has lost 60,000 factories. When Nike was founded in 1964, just 4 percent of footwear sold in the United States was imported. Today, that number has soared to 98 percent and Nike, like many other shoe companies, produces all of its products overseas.
[...]
Nike, once a 4% Importer,
is now a 98% Importer.
Is there really anymore water to squeeze out of that American Rock?
At 56 cents an hour -- you bet there is!