Unless you live in a deep-blue state or congressional district, hypocrisy is not something you want to have to revisit during a re-election campaign. For red state Democratic Senator Joe Donnelly of Indiana, he should be preparing his defense because this is going to be used against him by the time his 2018 re-election campaign kicks into high gear. The senator has tried to portray himself as a hardcore fighter of this byproduct in free trade but seems to have profited from it through investments with the family arts and crafts business (via Associated Press) [emphasis mine]:
An Indiana senator railed against Carrier Corp. for moving manufacturing jobs to Mexico last year, even as he profited from a family business that relies on Mexican labor to produce dye for ink pads, according to records reviewed by The Associated Press.
Joe Donnelly, considered one of the nation’s most vulnerable Democratic senators up for re-election next year, has long blasted free-trade policies for killing American jobs. He accused Carrier, an air conditioner and furnace maker, of exploiting $3-an-hour workers when it announced plans to wind down operations in Indiana and move to Mexico.
However, an arts and crafts business Donnelly’s family has owned for generations is capitalizing on some of the very trade policies — and low-paid foreign labor — the senator has denounced.
For more than a year, Stewart Superior Corp. and its subsidiaries have been shipping thousands of pounds of raw materials to Mexico, where the company has a factory that produces ink pads and other supplies, according to customs records from Panjiva Inc., which tracks American imports and exports. The finished products are then transported back to a company facility in California, the records show.
Stewart Superior, which also has an operation in LaPorte, Indiana, says on its website that the company’s Mexican factory “brings economical, cost competitive manufacturing and product development to our valued customers.”
Although Donnelly’s brother runs the company, the senator previously served as a corporate officer and its general counsel before he was first elected to Congress in 2006. In a financial disclosure form he filed in May, Donnelly reported owning as much as $50,000 in company stock and earning between $15,001 and $50,000 in dividends on it in 2016 alone.
Joe asked @ustreasury Sec. @stevenmnuchin1 how the WH tax reform proposal will help prevent outsourcing of U.S. jobs. pic.twitter.com/DmmRrYIaVn
— Senator Joe Donnelly (@SenDonnelly) May 19, 2017
When Carrier announced they would send their jobs overseas in 2016, Donnelly slammed the move as “unpatriotic.”
“It’s wrong and it has to end. It’s cynical. It’s wrong. It’s unpatriotic. It’s shameful and it’s un-American,” he said.
Donnelly then sponsored the End Outsourcing Act in January. This is, well, not good, senator. Mr. Donnelly will be running for a second term in a state that Donald Trump dominated in 2016, winning it 56/37 over Hillary Clinton.