The White House’s decision to visit Nike’s posh Oregon headquarters to tout the benefits of a massive new trade deal with Asia has human rights activists crying foul and predicting the move could actually cost him votes in Congress.
President Obama is furiously trying to win over recalcitrant Democrats and Republicans on the 12-country Trans-Pacific Partnership, a legacy-building trade deal essential to the administration’s elusive foreign policy pivot to Asia.
The administration says the deal is critical to expanding U.S. exports and countering China’s economic influence in the region, but opponents argue that it will send more jobs overseas — especially from areas like Baltimore and other former manufacturing hubs already hard hit by outsourcing.
Skeptics also say Obama is shooting himself in the foot with a trip to Nike’s Beaverton, Ore. campus Friday to extol the virtues of free trade.
“Nike epitomizes why disastrous unfettered free-trade policies during the past four decades have failed American workers, eroded our manufacturing base and increased income and wealth inequality in this country,” Sen. Bernie Sanders, D-Vt., wrote in a letter he sent to the president Tuesday.
“Just don’t do it,” he added, echoing the company’s pithy slogan.
“The President’s choice of Nike is extremely puzzling. In fact, his visit makes a very compelling case against the Trans-Pacific Partnership,” said Rep. Chris Smith R-N.J., chairman of the House subcommittee that oversees global human rights.
During Nike’s rise as the dominant force in American sports gear over the last 50 years, the company pioneered the model of outsourcing manufacturing and used the money saved for aggressive marketing.
The strategy made Nike hugely profitable and a global sports apparel powerhouse, but it also has generated years of bad publicity over the low wages and sweatshop conditions of supplier factories that has tarnished the brand and at times hurt sales.
In the days leading up to Obama’s visit to the company’s headquarters, reporters have peppered the White House with questions about the choice of venue.
So far, the White House has tried to dodge the issue, referring the questions to the company’s public relations office.
“My guess is that there is an office somewhere, probably in Beaverton, Oregon, with very well compensated, extremely skilled communications professionals who can say all kinds of nice things about Nike,” White House press secretary Josh Earnest said Wednesday.
“What I can say as a general matter is that the president is looking forward to visiting Nike headquarters and using it to illustrate how a responsible trade agreement that includes enforceable labor and environmental standards would strongly benefit middle-class families and the American economy,” he said just minutes earlier.
Pressed again, Earnest promised to have more information for reporters about Nike’s selection during the Friday visit.
Nike’s corporate public relations also ignored questions about its human rights record and existing outsourcing policies, choosing instead to focus on the upcoming trade deal and the company’s contribution to U.S. economic growth and jobs.
“We believe trade agreements that encourage free trade allow Nike to do what we do best: innovate, expand our businesses and drive economic growth,” the company said in a statement. “Nike supports TPP because it will open global markets and enhance Nike’s ability to compete.”
Nike also said it has more than 26,000 employees in the U.S., including more than 8,500 jobs in Oregon, that depend on free trade and its ability to reach athletes in the 190 countries around the world in which it sells products. In Oregon alone, the company says it has an annual economic impact of more than $2.5 billion.
Human rights activists on Left and the Right say Nike can do more to help enforce labor standards in countries where the rule of law is weak as it is in several Asian nations participating in the trade deal.
They are particularly concerned about Vietnam, a likely TPP partner, where Nike has a spotty record on worker rights and labor conditions.
In the 1990s, activists hit Nike for sweatshop conditions in Vietnam and other Asian countries. It has since audited and improved its standards for supplier manufacturing companies, but the Vietnamese government has a tough time enforcing its own wage laws and factories there often flout them with impunity.
The Vietnamese government also is actively fighting higher labor standards in the trade deal, giving worker rights activists more cause for concern.
Eric Gottwald, an attorney for the International Labor Rights Forum, said Nike is chasing low wages in Vietnam after supplies became too expensive in China.
In Vietnam and other countries where workers don’t have basic rights and the government has weak accountability, the labor inspectors don’t visit factories and make sure they’re safe.
“Companies will cut corners and part of the reason they are cutting corners — and Nike and other [apparel] companies don’t like to talk about it — they put pressure on their suppliers to produce things as cheaply as possible to keep their labor costs down so they can make more profit,” Gottwald told the Washington Examiner.
“Workers can’t organize and insist on safer factories and betters wages,” he said, “and that’s why people were a little surprised that [Obama] would pick Nike for this.”
Human Rights First points out that Asia is one of the top regions for human trafficking and argue the business community can do more to combat the global scourge.
“Human trafficking is the fastest-growing criminal enterprise, and retail companies like Nike can and should play a major role in eradicating modern slavery from their supply chains by implementing best practices to protect vulnerable workers and increase supply chain transparency,” Annick Febrey, the group’s human trafficking expert, told the Examiner.
“We urge President Obama to continue to work with the American business community to make disrupting the business model of human traffickers a key policy priority,” she added.
Republican human rights activists also are voicing deep concerns about Vietnam’s track record on abusing workers.
“Vietnam is a disaster — they are a poster child for poor human rights and religious freedom. All you have to do is look at the latest religious freedom report,” said former Rep. Frank Wolf, R-Va., a senior fellow at the 21st Century Wilberforce Initiative, a nonprofit human rights group.
The U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom, an office in the State Department, issued a report last week saying Vietnam should be designated as a “country of particular concern” for government harassment of Catholics, Buddhists and other religious minorities.
The federal advisory body in its annual report published Thursday said there have been improvements in Vietnam but the government continues “to restrict severely independent religious practice.”
Rep. Chris Smith, R-N.J., another vocal human rights advocate on Capitol Hill, has spent years trying to improve Vietnam’s human rights record and has introduced several bills specifically designed to leverage U.S. non-humanitarian assistance to Vietnam to encourage democracy and basic human rights.
Smith argues that the human rights situation in Vietnam has gotten worse over the past few years even as Hanoi seeks better relations with the United States.
“Nike is well known for outsourcing jobs, paying Vietnamese workers pennies an hour, and those same workers don’t have the freedom of association or speech, can’t join independent unions or bargain collectively for higher wages,” Smith said.
Just last month, he said, 90,000 Vietnamese workers staged strikes at factories that make Nike shoes.
The potential for lost jobs in the U.S. is enormous from a TPP that includes Vietnam, and there is a real possibility that a flood of cheap textiles from Vietnam will undermine the economies of Central America, potentially fueling increases in economic migration to the United States, Smith warns.
“Congress should really think long and hard before waiving its power to amend trade pacts that include severe human rights violators such as Vietnam,” he added.
