JACKSON - Democratic Gov. Ronnie Musgrove says he and his Republican challenger, Haley Barbour, have different strategies for helping Mississippi furniture manufacturers that have been hurt by the nation's trade policy with China.
Musgrove, speaking Tuesday at event sponsored by the Mississippi Economic Council, said jobs in northeast Mississippi and elsewhere in the country were being challenged because of free trade with China.
The U.S. trade deficit with China hit a record $103 billion in 2002 and could top $130 billion this year.
American manufacturers say they have lost 2.7 million jobs over the past three years, due largely to Chinese competition.
A bipartisan group of U.S. lawmakers has proposed revoking China's normal trade status and imposing a 27.5 percent tariff on Chinese goods - as compared with an average of about 2 percent for all imports into the United States.
Musgrove said he had sent a letter supporting that legislation to U.S. Sens. Thad Cochran and Trent Lott, both R-Miss.
"A very distinct difference in this is in our viewpoint in how do you deal with this," Musgrove said Tuesday. "Jobs are going to shift and change through the course of the natural economy, but you don't want a policy that's going to urge, send or cause jobs to flee out of Mississippi and America, without having the chance to deal with it."
Barbour says he's already taken action. Barbour said he invited U.S. Commerce Secretary Don Evans to Mississippi in August to discuss industry concerns, and Evans later formed a special task force to "investigate illegal and unfair Chinese trade practices, including the furniture industry."
"To create jobs takes action," Barbour said. "It also takes the recollection, the recognition that most jobs in our state was created by small businesses."
Throughout the campaign, Musgrove has said Barbour, as Republican National Committee chairman in the mid-1990s, supported passage of the North American Free Trade Agreement. The governor says NAFTA has cost Mississippi 41,000 over the past decade.
Barbour has said that Musgrove misrepresents his Washington record.
On Tuesday, a week before the Nov. 4 general election, Musgrove suggested it was hypocritical of Barbour to voice concerns about international free trade when he's supported the policies in the past.
"You've got a person who has come down in northeast Mississippi and talked about what we need to do under the free trade, all along being a person who absolutely, adamantly supports free trade and everything that falls out with it," Musgrove said.
Mississippi's furniture industry, like all of the state's manufacturing, has experienced plant closures and jobs cuts the past two years. But furniture manufacturing remains the most flourishing industry in north Mississippi. Dozens of companies make products ranging from bed frames to metal office furniture to upholstered chairs.
Guy Lipscomb, co-owner of Southern Motion, a 300-employee plant in Pontotoc that makes reclining motion furniture, said his business is feeling the effects of the trade policy with China.
"The retailers that we do the bulk of our business with are continually looking overseas for more cheaply made products," Lipscomb said.
Lipscomb said politicians need to start working together to solve the problem because jobs across the nation are at stake.
"This is an American issue," Lipscomb said Tuesday. "This is not a Democratic or Republican or independent issue."
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