High Point, NC, Dec. 5--Billionaire financier Wilbur Ross addressed a meeting of North Carolina manufacturers Thursday, according to the High Point Enterprise.
The message: Globalization and free trade are irreversible, and American interests will be inevitably overwhelmed by the European Union and the World Trade Organization unless an alliance can be formed to create an Americas Trade Block.
"We account for one-third of all trade that goes on and yet we have no bigger voice in the WTO than some country like Rwanda," Ross told a group of about 300 business representatives from throughout the state who took part in the North Carolina Manufacturing Executives' Summit.
The event, held at the Grandover Resort in Greensboro, came one day after Ross hosted a meeting of more than a dozen major U.S. retailers and apparel and textile manufacturers in Washington, D.C.
A statement released Wednesday by Ross' office said an ad hoc group of retailers, apparel and textile companies had met and adopted several agreements in principle to support provisions of any Central American Free Trade Agreement. The support comes with a demand for strict enforcement of rules against illegal transshipments, including severe penalties for countries failing to implement effective enforcement of these provisions.
Ross, who recently acquired Burlington Industries and Cone Mills, said he prefers to think that the WTO acronym stands for "Wealth Transfer Operations out of the U.S." And unless serious and coordinated political pressure is brought to bear on Washington, he said nothing will change.
Citing a $529 billion annual trade deficit, Ross said, "We need the government to help in trade negotiations. The question is, are there alliances out there we can make within our region so we can (collectively) fight off the monsters that threaten us?
"The world is not flat. It is very round and, if we're not careful, it will roll right over us."
Ross said textile and garment industries are partly to blame for administration policies that don't serve their interests.
"They have historically sent Washington such mixed signals and been so fragmented...It's time to get realistic and make arrangements we can live with," Ross said.
Such arrangements would include rapid and stringent enforcement of strong protections built into any new agreements. Ross said the main problem with the North American Free Trade Agreement has been a lack of effective sanctions against trade partners that don't follow the rules. In that regard, he said the U.S. has so far played the fool.
"It is not inherent in free trade agreements that one party acts moronically," Ross said.
It will also be incumbent on the industry to continue investment in new technology, and find a path toward horizontal as well as vertical integration to reduce the level of duplication in manufacturing processes.
Citing a business model that takes the product from fiber to consumer," Ross said, "We will have to cut the layers that exist from raw product to the end user. There won't be room any more for six levels of profit. It's part of what we have in mind with the acquisition of Cone and Burlington."
