The Future of Arkansas Manufacturing Is in Foreign Hands
Because the future of manufacturing can be globalist too.
PART OF A SPECIAL SERIES FROM OZY
STATES OF THE NATION
By
Nick Fouriezos
THE DAILY DOSEJAN 03 2018
The signs are all faded, the parking lot empty in the middle of a Monday, except for the weeds that seem to have their own permanent parking space. The old Sanyo TV factory that closed a decade ago is the most obvious manifestation of manufacturing’s decline here in Forrest City, where unemployment and poverty far outstrip the average across
Arkansas. But that very plant now promises to serve as a harbinger of a much more optimistic future.
The decline in the Arkansas Delta began in earnest in the ’90s, with homegrown manufacturing’s post-NAFTA decline, and bottomed out with the nearly 600 jobs lost when the Sanyo plant closed in 2007 after three decades. The Great Recession only compounded the region’s misery, and although unemployment in this county has fallen to 4.4 percent, it still lags behind the rest of the state by nearly a point. Nearly a third of folks in St. Francis County live in poverty today. “We really don’t have a lot of industry. If you aren’t willing to work at McDonald’s, Burger King, Wendy’s or the hospital, we’re limited,” says Ardelia Echols, a Forrest City native and city councilor.
That may now be changing. This spring, a major Chinese textile company announced a plan to convert the former television and microwave factory into a massive yarn mill, with plans to hire as many as 800 employees and consume 200,000 tons of cotton annually — enough to swallow up the state’s entire crop. The Shandong Ruyi Technology Group has held job fairs for what will be its first American outpost, with lines that “were more than they can handle,” Echols says. “Everyone is really excited.”
The $410 million investment is one of a handful of foreign cash influxes that have made Arkansas the top state for foreign direct investment by employment growth, according to the nonprofit Organization for International Investment. More than 60 percent of that has come in the manufacturing sector, after many economists had effectively nailed the coffin on the industry. Arkansas is proactively courting these investments. In addition to the Shanghai office it’s had for a decade, the state has added offices in Berlin and Tokyo since Republican Gov. Asa Hutchinson took over in 2015. In that same time period, Hutchinson has led three trade trips to China.
The fruits have been plentiful. The Tianyuan Garment Factory is investing $20 million and 400 jobs into a new plant making Adidas apparel in Little Rock, while Sun Paper has signed a memorandum of understanding to invest $1 billion in a bioproducts mill in Arkadelphia. In the past 18 months, Arkansas went from zero major investments from Chinese companies to five, ushering in 1,500 jobs and $1.5 billion in spending. Over the past five years, Arkansas has seen 41.5 percent of its total job growth attributable to foreign direct investment.
“The message we got from China is that relationships matter,” says Mike Preston, the Hutchinson-appointed executive director of the Arkansas Economic Development Commission
, and notify his idiot followers of what job growth looked like under Obama.
