{"id":9092,"date":"2012-10-10T09:16:35","date_gmt":"2012-10-10T16:16:35","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/?p=9092"},"modified":"2012-10-10T09:16:35","modified_gmt":"2012-10-10T16:16:35","slug":"romney-on-china","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/2012\/10\/10\/romney-on-china\/","title":{"rendered":"Romney on China"},"content":{"rendered":"

Willard Romney has been making a very big deal of China lately, falsely claiming that Obama has been soft on China, and hoping America will believe that he will be tough.  He sure sounds different now than he did in his 47% talk, when he described a Chinese factory, surrounded with barbed wire, where workers bunk three deep, in glowing terms.  Furthermore, it turns out that, when it comes to China, Lord Willard has a Bain in the ass.<\/font><\/p>\n

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\"10RomneyChina\"The tale of Asimco Technologies, an auto parts manufacturer whose plants dot eastern China, would seem to underscore Mitt Romney\u2019s campaign-trail complaint that China\u2019s manufacturing juggernaut is costing America jobs.<\/p>\n

Asimco, an auto parts maker with plants in Beijing and elsewhere in China, bought two Michigan factories with 500 workers but shut them down in 2007<\/strong>. It is now owned by Bain Capital<\/strong>. <\/p>\n

Nine years ago, the company bought two camshaft factories that employed about 500 people in Michigan. By 2007 both were shut down. Now Asimco manufactures the same components in China on government-donated land in a coastal region that China has designated an export base, where companies are eligible for the sort of subsidies Mr. Romney says create an unfair trade imbalance. <\/p>\n

But there is a twist to the Asimco story that would not fit neatly into a Romney stump speech: Since 2010, it has been owned by Bain Capital, the private equity firm founded by Mr. Romney, who has as much as $2.25 million invested in three Bain funds with large stakes in Asimco and at least seven other Chinese businesses, according to his 2012 candidate financial disclosure and other documents. <\/p>\n

That and other China-related holdings by Bain funds in which Mr. Romney has invested are a reminder of how he inhabits two worlds that at times have come into conflict during his campaign for the White House<\/strong>. <\/p>\n

As a candidate, Mr. Romney uses China as a punching bag. He accuses Beijing of unfairly subsidizing Chinese exports, artificially holding down the value of its currency to keep exports cheap, stealing American technology and hacking into corporate and government computers. <\/p>\n

\u201cHow is it China\u2019s been so successful in taking away our jobs?\u201d he asked recently. \u201cWell, let me tell you how: by cheating.\u201d <\/p>\n

But his private equity dealings, both while he headed Bain and since, complicate that message\u2026 [emphasis added<\/em>]<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Inserted from <NY Times<\/a>><\/p>\n

Lord Willard may claim that China is cheating, but he has no compunctions over turning a tidy profit from that cheating himself.  It is absurd for him to expect us to believe that he will shoot himself and his Vulture Capitalist buddies at Bain in the wallet.  We should know better!<\/font><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Willard Romney has been making a very big deal of China lately, falsely claiming that Obama has been soft on China, and hoping America will believe that he will be tough.  He sure sounds different now than he did in his 47% talk, when he described a Chinese factory, surrounded with barbed wire, where workers […]<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-9092","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-politics","category-5-id","post-seq-1","post-parity-odd","meta-position-corners","fix"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9092","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=9092"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9092\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=9092"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=9092"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=9092"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}