If you watch the new Pres Obama Campaign ad, (and I will post it in moments for you to watch if you have not seen it) you will see that Gov Mitt Romney (and Bain Capital) is getting hammered for the bankruptcy of GST steel. About 750 people lost jobs when the mill closed. Bain had purchased GST in 1993, there was a big labor strike in 1997 and GST went under in 2001.
In considering the ad, and whether Bain (and Romney) were greedy and selfish, I decided to go back and research the steel industry. Consider this: during the period of 2000-mid 2001, 17 steel firms went bankrupt (and GST was one of them.) Giant Bethlehem steel went under in 2001 and was the second largest steel producer.
The reason assigned at the time for the decline and bankruptcy of all the steel mills was cheap foreign labor and foreign countries dumping cheap steal in the US market (people bought foreign and not domestic because it was cheaper.) Steel manufacturers and unions at the time blamed US Government for a poor response to the international market issues.
So is it now fair to assign greed or incompetence to Bain Capital (and Romney) as the Obama campaign ad does? Or is it slippery and not fair? (By the way, the ad is harsh — one worker who lost his job calls Gov Romney a vampire.)
By the way, the Obama campaign is running this ad in 5 battleground states.
PS Of course I would like to see the exact figures of who got what money and whether the company could have been saved. But it is not inconsequential to me that so many steel mills failed in this exact time period. It sounds like it would have taken a magic wand to save them.
