BMW has invested $7 billion in Spartanburg, S.C., and now employs 8,000 people there.
South Carolina finds itself under the national microscope right
around this time every four years. And, as it happens, this is a good
time to take a closer look.
Media wags across the country habitually paint South Carolina as a
pocket of extreme conservative views, where angry voters are perpetually
hostile to outsiders and new ideas. And that’s the frame they often use
to handicap the state’s early presidential contest.
But beyond the ups and downs of poll numbers and delegate counts,
there’s a more interesting trend line to watch this year: South Carolina
is changing, and it’s doing so under the influence of the global auto
industry.
Automakers, suppliers and other transportation companies are driving
an economic transformation in the state that is slowly remaking its
social fabric as well, with waves of European and Japanese companies and
managers introducing new perspectives and ideas.
In short, this is not your older brother’s South Carolina.
Back in 1992, some locals reacted with dread to the announcement that
BMW would build a car plant in Spartanburg. They feared it would upset
the local economic base with higher wages and an influx of outsiders.
And they were right.
Since then, the German automaker has invested $7 billion in
Spartanburg and now employs 8,000 people. More than two-thirds of the
vehicles built there were exported last year, generating nearly $10
billion in export income through the port of Charleston. Those car
exports make South Carolina the nation’s No. 1 exporter, and make China
the state’s largest trading partner.
Late last year, Chinese-owned Volvo Car Corp. sank the pilings to
build its own $500 million auto plant in South Carolina near Charleston.
Volvo will start with 2,000 workers, but its intention is to build the
plant into the same sort of global export base that BMW has. Daimler
also said last year that it will spend $500 million in South Carolina to
open a Mercedes-Benz Sprinter van plant near Charleston.
Such business plans are fostering growing local support for
free-trade pacts and deeper international ties. In pre-BMW South
Carolina, the then-dominant textile industry wanted no part of chummy
foreign relations.
The BMW-Volvo-Mercedes threesome is also expected to draw a new wave
of European auto suppliers into the state, keeping life busy for Bobby
Hitt, the former BMW public relations manager who is now the state’s
secretary of commerce.
Hitt noted this week that foreign-owned companies now employ 115,000
workers in the state. Robert Bosch employs 1,200 people at a high-tech
sensor plant in Anderson, and this month announced an expansion of its
hydraulics plant in Fountain Inn, where it employs 700.
South Carolina now leads the nation in the production of tires,
thanks in large part to recent investments by Germany’s Continental Tire
and France’s Michelin. Michelin also has its North American
headquarters in Greenville, a city where the influence of Michelin and
BMW is unmistakable. Downtown Greenville now has some of the hallmarks
of a European city, with bistros and cafes along a pedestrian-friendly
cityscape.
Changing attitudes won’t be so easy. A media report just before the
GOP primary cited a Public Policy Polling survey that found 70 percent
of Donald Trump’s South Carolina supporters believe the Confederate flag
should still be flying above the statehouse.
The polarizing symbol was ordered removed from the statehouse grounds
last summer under a bill signed by South Carolina’s conservative
governor, Nikki Haley, following a massacre at a black church by a
gunman who held white-supremacist views.
Like the automotive companies she continues to welcome, Haley herself
is a symbolic newcomer. Though born in the state, she is a
first-generation American, the daughter of immigrants from India.
Her quick removal of the Confederate Stars and Bars last year shows
that -- regardless of personal political views -- newcomers invariably
bring change.
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