Mitt Romney is known for attacking President Obama on China’s Trade policies. He often tells his audiences that the President is not strong on China and if he were president, he would “crack down” on China’s unfair policies.
But what is Mitt Romney doing while the company he started – Bain Capital – is currently firing Americans and sending their jobs to China? Absolutely nothing.
Right now, as in today, Bain Capital is outsourcing jobs from Sensata Tech in Freeport Illinois. And to rub salt in the wounds of the American employees of Sensata, Romney’s Bain Capital brought workers from China to Sensata, and told the Sensata’s employees to train their Chinese replacements.
And get this – Romney’s Bain even replaced the American flag at the plant with a Chinese flag!
Thinking that Romney would stop this outsourcing of their jobs and keep the factory open, the employees at Sensata made a personal appeal to Mitt Romney, but so far, the Republican nominee for president has done nothing and refuses to meet with the employees. Instead, his campaign is blaming President Obama.
Curt Cashour, a spokesman for the Romney campaign had this to say;
“Governor Romney has not worked at Bain Capital for over a decade, but for four years President Obama has been presiding over an economy that is creating too few jobs and sending more jobs overseas. Despite the President being invested in Sensata through his personal pension fund, and the government owning a major Sensata customer in GM, President Obama has not used his powers to help this situation in any way.”
Outsourcing these jobs mean cheaper labor in China, thus, more money for Bain and their investors, including Mitt Romney. The New York Times had a report explaining why an intervention from Mitt Romney is highly unlikely.
Mr. Romney also has millions invested in a series of Bain funds that have a controlling stake in Sensata Technologies, a manufacturer of sensors and controls for vehicles, aircraft and electric motors that employs 4,000 workers in China. Since Bain took over the operation in 2006, its investment has quadrupled in value. Bain continues to own $2.6 billion worth of Sensata’s shares.
Two years ago, Sensata bought an operation that made automobile sensors in Freeport, Ill. At the first meeting with the plant’s 170 workers, Sensata managers announced that by the end of 2012 all the equipment and jobs would be relocated, mostly to Jiangsu Province. Workers have staged demonstrations, pleading for Mr. Romney to intervene on their behalf.
Chinese engineers, flown to Freeport for training on the equipment, described their salaries as a pittance compared with Freeport wages. Tom Gaulrapp, who has operated machines at the factory for 33 years, said he fears he will go bankrupt after he loses his job on Nov. 5.
“This goes to show the unbelievable hypocrisy of this man,” he said of Mr. Romney. “He talks about how we need to get tough on China and stop China from taking our jobs, and then he is making money off shipping our jobs there.”
So of course he is not going to stop this outsourcing from happening. But if you listen to Romney on the campaign trail, he still claims that he “will be tough on China.”
Yea, right!
