Mitt Romney-Helmed Olympics Outsourced Uniforms To Burma (Myanmar)

[kpete]

Source: Huffington Post

Congress was up in arms Thursday over the discovery that the U.S. team's uniforms for the opening ceremony of this year's Olympics games were manufactured in China -- snubbing the U.S. textile industry at a time when it has yet to recover from the struggling economy.

For the presumptive Republican presidential nominee, who has repeatedly promised on the trail to "get tough" on China, opposing the manufacturing seemed a likely stance, except that while at the helm of the 2002 Winter Olympics in Salt Lake City, Romney outsourced the production of torchbearer uniforms to Burma.

For Romney, the 2002 Olympics anecdote represents another instance of outsourcing under his stewardship, as President Barack Obama's reelection team continues to assail him for shipping jobs overseas while at private equity firm Bain Capital. It also exposes an embarrassing oversight in allowing the uniforms to be manufactured in Burma, which until just last year was controlled by a brutal military regime.

According to reports in 2002, the decision to outsource the torchbearer uniforms to Burma caused an uproar among human rights advocates and trade groups. It prompted the head of the International Confederation of Free Trade Unions (ICFTU) to write a letter to the International Olympic Committee (IOC), stating that "No responsible organization or body should make use of products originating in Burma."

Read more: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/07/16/mitt-romney-olympics-outsourced-uniforms-burma_n_1677791.html

[dimbear]

1. Our Republican friends: thank you for not thinking these things through.

It makes our work so much easier.

[emulatorloo]

2. Pretty damn low even for Romney

[jpbollma]

4. Well after a Romney President

We would all be working at Walmart or not at all! Everything else will be outsourced.

[MidwestTransplant]

3. That explains why he declined to take a position on this years uniforms being outsourced to China.

[Overseas]

5. K&R. And keep the news of his grand stewardship coming.

Did Bain companies benefit? Keep the news flowing.

[aint_no_life_nowhere]

6. Lawrence O'Donnell will be talking about this after the commercial break.

His show is pretty good tonight.

[Tumbulu]

7. Thanks for posting this

what a disaster he is.

[SleeplessinSoCal]

8. Conservatives still blame unions and Americans demands for a living wage.

[Spider Jerusalem]

9. Two things here:

First, I'd be very surprised to learn this was a decision taken by Romney himself; second, you can partly blame it on Clinton's trade policies of most favoured nation trading status with China and NAFTA; the American textile industry lost seven hundred thousand jobs between 1994 and 2002. Sure, outsourcing is a great stick to beat Romney with and it'll play well, but saying "the US textile industry has yet to recover from the struggling economy" is just absurd. The economy in the '90's was supposed to be good; ask anyone who was working in a textile plant that closed and moved overseas how good it was.

[Tx4obama]

10. Romney was at the helm of the 2002 Winter Olympics - the buck stopped with him. n/t

[BlueToTheBone]

11. Wasn't Mynamar under sanctions at the time?

This guy is so slimy that one wonders why he doesn't leave a trail when he walks.

[Quantess]

13. Yeah, I thought so, too.

[BlueToTheBone]

14. I hear Tweety broke the story

and I hope it has REAL legs. He is so nasty, it all needs to come out in the wash.

[rgbecker]

12. Please don't ask where the US Army gets it gear.

These kind of questions just lead to bad feelings.