Free-er trade and lower taxes (tariffs) and voila....businesses can thrive and hire more employees. Less Government interference and lower taxes means more jobs, it all seems so simple.Link
Now, a relatively simple move, years in the making, might just save an entire industry and about one thousand jobs.Normally furniture plants like Bauhaus, and Lane buzz with activity making furniture for homes around the world.
But the industry had begun declining in Northeast Mississippi and Lee county supervisors noticed it. "The furniture industry was becoming one that was becoming highly competitive, and losing jobs to other countries so we began looking for ways that we could make it more popular for the furniture business to stay in Lee County and NE Mississippi. Said Bobby Smith, President of the Lee County Board of Supervisors.
So, 5 years ago, supervisors and industry leaders began the process of getting a foreign trade zone manufacturing designation.
It would allow three local furniture companies to buy raw materials to be assembled here, without paying a form of tax called a tariff of 7 to 17 percent.
