Special shoes aim to make President Obama pro US-made athletic footwear
02/04/2012
Congressman Mike Michaud explained that the idea behind the shoes was to urge the president “to require the defence department to comply with current law and outfit service-members with domestically produced footwear”. Mr Michaud collected the shoes, which have ‘President’ printed on the heel of the left shoe and ‘Obama’ on the right, after a tour of New Balance’s Norridgewock facility, which has recently increased its workforce.
He said in advance of the president’s arrival: “Politicians love to talk about what they’re doing to create jobs, but this is one concrete change that could be made right now to create jobs here in Maine. I look forward to seeing the president to urge him to make the defence department comply with current law and provide US-made footwear to our service-members. Taking this action would be consistent with the president’s stated goals of boosting the US manufacturing sector.”
The current law Mr Michaud referred to is the Berry Amendment, which obliges department of defence to buy certain categories of products from US companies. The Maine politician is trying to have a new act passed to make it clear that the Berry Amendment has always applied and continues to apply to shoes.
At odds with the retail-focused industry body the Footwear Distributors and Retailers of America, Mr Michaud also argues that a proposed multilateral free trade agreement, the Trans-Pacific Partnership, should not undermine the US footwear industry.
“New Balance holds the distinction as the only athletic shoe company that currently manufactures footwear in the US,” the congressman said. “The company has over 800 employees at [three] Maine facilities in Skowhegan, Norridgewock, and Norway.”
The US department of defence is reputed to be the largest employer in the world. Of its total 3.2 million personnel, active and reserve service-members number around 2.5 million.
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