Mitt Romney's Trade Policy Claims Versus Bain Capital's Practices

One of the things that Mitt Romney claims that he would do is "get tough on China" should he win election.  The sound bite plays well with the Christofascist/Tea Party element in the GOP.  The problem is that the claim isn't even consistent with what Romney's former buddies at Bain Capital are doing as they help ship American jobs to China.  The New York  Times looks at example where automotive manufacturing jobs have been and/or are soon to be outsourced to China.  As seems to always be the case, Romney says one thing yet reality is something very different.  Here are some story excerpts:

The tale of Asimco Technologies, an auto parts manufacturer whose plants dot eastern China, would seem to underscore Mitt Romney’s campaign-trail complaint that China’s manufacturing juggernaut is costing America jobs.
 

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. 

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. 

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.  . . . . .  But his private equity dealings, both while he headed Bain and since, complicate that message. 

Among the companies in which the Bain funds have invested is a global auto parts maker that is in the process of closing a factory in Illinois and moving most of the equipment and jobs to Jiangsu Province, where the Chinese government has built it a new plant; a Chinese electronics retailer accused by Microsoft of selling computers with pirated software; and a Hong Kong-based Chinese appliance maker that was sued for copying another company’s design for a deep-fat fryer. 

Mr. Romney continues to have money in Bain funds with sizable holdings in China. He has as much as $250,000 in the Bain Capital Asia Fund and as much as $1 million each in Bain Capital Funds IX and X, all Cayman Islands entities used by Bain to make sizable investments in China . . . . 

Bain’s interest in China dates to when Mr. Romney ran the firm. During a panel discussion at the Federal Reserve Bank in Boston in February 1998, he told of touring an appliance factory in China where 5,000 employees “were working, working, working, as hard as they could, at rates of roughly 50 cents an hour.” 

Mr. Romney also has millions invested in a series of Bain funds that have a controlling stake in Sensata Technologies . . . . Two years ago, Sensata bought an operation that made automobile sensors in Freeport, Ill. At the first meeting with the plant’s 170 workers, Sensata managers announced that by the end of 2012 all the equipment and jobs would be relocated, mostly to Jiangsu Province. 

There is more to the article, but the foregoing paints a clear picture: Romney says one thing on the campaign trail, but his own investment strategy and that of his former Bain compatriots tells a very different story.  Is Romney a liar?  Draw your own conclusions.  I've drawn my own: Romney is a pathological liar and money is his only real god.