David Corn has a new article "EXCLUSIVE: Romney Invested Millions in Chinese Firm That Profited on US Outsourcing" (sub-head: The GOP candidate decries China poaching US jobs. But at Bain he held a large stake in a Chinese company that did just that) up at Mother Jones. The whole article is worth reading so I am only going to quote one sentence. But one sentence that has the potential to destroy the Romney campaign, especially with blue-collar independent voters.
With Sankaty, Romney was using a mysterious Bermuda-based entity to invest in a Chinese firm that thrived on US outsourcing.
I believe this was published within the last hour (around 11:30 pm EDT). Hopefully it will get picked up by various outlets and influential bloggers tomorrow. It absolutely destroys any Romney claim to being a protector of American jobs. It's the perfect encapsulation of the message we've been trying to get across about Romney and Bain Capital: it didn't matter if an investment created or destroyed jobs as long as it generated profits. The fact that the Bain investment was based out of Bermuda is just bonus goodness.
The weak tea response from the Romney campaign is yet another "I'm rubber and you're glue" elementary school taunt:
"[I]t's my understanding that while Brookside is a part of Bain Capital, it is not a private equity vehicle. Brookside makes passive investments in public stock. They don't control or manage the companies they invest in. Brookside had a small ownership stake (9.11%) in Global-Techâ¦while Romney was there. If owning shares in a foreign company is somehow wrong, President Obama is guilty as well."
OK, technically I guess I quoted twice from the article. Still, please
go read the whole thing.
Anyway, what the Romney campaign may not have realized when forming their response is that the only way that investment would be profitable would be for Global-Tech (the Chinese firm) to steal away more American manufacturing jobs. Therefore, each time it was announced an American manufacturing company was closing a factory and outsourcing the work to Global-Tech, a little cheer would've gone up from Global-Tech investors. Investors like one W. Mitt Romney.
Oops. How do you explain away this one, Mitt?