Hamburger's article continued:
"Another Bain investment was electronics manufacturer SMTC Corp. In June 1998, during Romney's last year at Bain, his private equity firm acquired a Colorado manufacturer that specialized in the assembly of printed circuit boards. ... Within a year of Bain taking over, SMTC told the SEC it was expanding production in Ireland and Mexico. ..."Just as Romney was ending his tenure at Bain, it reached the culmination of negotiations with Hyundai Electronics Industry of South Korea for the $550 million purchase of its U.S. subsidiary, Chippac, which manufactured, tested and packaged computer chips in Asia.
"The deal was announced a month after Romney left Bain. Reports filed with the SEC in late 1999 showed that Chippac had plants in South Korea and China and was responsible for marketing and supplying the company's Asian-made computer chips. An overwhelming majority of Chippac's customers were U.S. firms, including Intel, IBM and Lucent Technologies."
In other words, Bain not only invested in companies that outsourced American jobs, it controlled companies that taught other U.S. corporations how to do it. Romney and his Bain analysts could surely spot a profitable business trend when they saw one.
But FactCheck.org still made a big deal out of the timing, that some of the actual off-shoring occurred shortly after Romney left for the Olympics. But that detail seems irrelevant in that, first, the companies were carrying forward a strategy developed much earlier and, second, Romney remained in charge of Bain Capital at least into 2001, even if he relinquished day-to-day control.
To shield Romney from political fallout from his business decisions amounts to bending over backwards, which is what FactCheck.org and other similar outfits do when it comes to Mitt Romney. They make endless excuses for him.
The Teflon that used to protect Ronald Reagan and the Bushes now appears to have been transferred to Mitt Romney. [For more, see Consortiumnews.com's "Mitt Romney: Professional Liar."]
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