New Balance Shoe Company: The Administration Pressured Us to Stifle Our Opposition to TPP By Dangling a Defense Department Contract Over Our Heads

Pro-government progressives always make a distinction between the government's power to boss people around in economic matters versus it's power to boss people around in other ways.

But anyone with economic power over you controls you -- from you freedom of speech right through every other right.

The more power the government has to jerk the country around and dictate its economic policy, the fewer rights people have.

New Balanace is just the atest example of that.

New Balance is one of the few shoe-makers making their goods in the US. They oppose another round of tariff-lowering, believing that would either drive them out of business or force them to open up plants in Vietnam or some other low-wage country. So they opposed TPP -- until last year, when they became quiet about it.

Why? At the Weekly Standard, as reported by the Boston Globe, the answer is because Obama's gangster socialist government wanted them to keep quiet:

New Balance officials say one big reason is that they were told the Department of Defense would give them serious consideration for a contract to outfit recruits with athletic shoes.

But no order has been placed, and New Balance officials say the Pentagon is intentionally delaying any purchase.

Such a scandal-free administration.

posted by Ace at 11:42 AM

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