Foreign Firms Enjoy Southern Hospitality : Politics: Buchanan’s message falls on deaf ears in a region that thinks internationally when it comes to business.

Except for a 6-month Army stint in New York state, my father has lived his entire life in the South. Now, after 28 years in South Carolina, he and my mother are moving--to Japan.

That these lifelong Southerners will be spending the next year in Japan is of more than personal interest. Why they are moving tells a lot about the state of the Southern economy and explains why Pat Buchanan’s message of economic nationalism has all but disappeared since the candidate crossed the Mason-Dixon Line.

The stereotypical South is insular, hostile to outsiders and hypernationalistic--just the sort of place where an America First economic plan should go over well. But the stereotype isn’t true.

The South’s culture may be parochial, but the region that gave the world Coca-Cola and Cable News Network is usually cosmopolitan when it comes to doing business. And Southern hospitality extends to foreign companies.

My father’s employer, for instance, is partly owned by an affiliate of Mitsubishi (hence the stint in Japan). The other owner is Hoechst, the German chemical giant. Although the international dimensions of this German-Japanese-American venture are somewhat atypical, the general experience isn’t.

In South Carolina, 8.1% of all businesses are at least 10% owned by foreign companies, compared with 4.5% of all businesses in California. Twenty-nine of every 1,000 jobs in South Carolina are in foreign-owned companies, 15 of every 1,000 jobs in manufacturing. By contrast, in internationally minded California, only 17 of every 1,000 jobs, and 7 of every 1,000 in manufacturing, are in foreign-owned companies.

That South Carolina’s economy depends on foreign trade and investment is bad news for Buchanan, who had set his sights on a strong showing in South Carolina. Most observers credit Gov. Carroll Campbell’s vocal support for President Bush, as well as general party loyalty, for Buchanan’s tepid reception in the state. But it’s equally possible that residents simply find Buchanan’s protectionist message unpalatable.

After switching his emphasis to Georgia, Buchanan was wise also to turned from economics to social issues and, on the economic front, from protectionism to taxes. Georgia’s economic base is almost as dependent on foreign investment as South Carolina’s--6.5% of the state’s businesses are foreign-owned, accounting for 25 jobs per 1,000, and 10 per 1,000 in manufacturing. Georgia’s leading home-grown companies are highly international, and Atlanta is an international transportation hub.

In fact, trade and foreign investment have long been critical to the Southern economy. During the region’s long period as an agricultural power, up until roughly World War II, its economy was based on extensive trade with Europe and it was a bastion of support for free trade. Some have even blamed the Civil War on struggles between the pro-tariff North and the free-trading South.

Only after the textile industry moved to the South from New England, becoming first an important source of manufacturing jobs and then an industry threatened by foreign competition, did Southern representatives begin to take a protectionist line. But even as the textile industry was fading, foreign manufacturers were looking to the South for plant sites, and smokestack-chasing Southern officials were lobbying abroad for new jobs.

Nissan’s auto-manufacturing plant in Smyrna, Tenn., captured the headlines, but the South is filled with lesser-known examples of foreign investment: Fuji Photo Film in Greenwood, S.C.; Electrolux in Dalton, Ga.; Michelin tires throughout the South Carolina Piedmont; Honda Lawn Mowers in Swepsonville, N.C., to name only a few. These employers are no more “foreign” to their local economies than were the Yankee-owned textile mills.

Southerners are flag-waving nationalists with a strong military tradition. They are regionalists who like to emphasize their uniqueness. But they are also vital contributors to, and beneficiaries of, the world economy. Buchanan and his fellow “trade hawks” forget that to their peril.