Mitt Romney-Helmed Olympics Outsourced Uniforms To Burma (Myanmar)

Source: Huffington Post

Congress was up in arms Thursday over the discovery that the U.S. team's uniforms for the opening ceremony of this year's Olympics games were manufactured in China -- snubbing the U.S. textile industry at a time when it has yet to recover from the struggling economy.

For the presumptive Republican presidential nominee, who has repeatedly promised on the trail to "get tough" on China, opposing the manufacturing seemed a likely stance, except that while at the helm of the 2002 Winter Olympics in Salt Lake City, Romney outsourced the production of torchbearer uniforms to Burma.

For Romney, the 2002 Olympics anecdote represents another instance of outsourcing under his stewardship, as President Barack Obama's reelection team continues to assail him for shipping jobs overseas while at private equity firm Bain Capital. It also exposes an embarrassing oversight in allowing the uniforms to be manufactured in Burma, which until just last year was controlled by a brutal military regime.

According to reports in 2002, the decision to outsource the torchbearer uniforms to Burma caused an uproar among human rights advocates and trade groups. It prompted the head of the International Confederation of Free Trade Unions (ICFTU) to write a letter to the International Olympic Committee (IOC), stating that "No responsible organization or body should make use of products originating in Burma."

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