Mitt Romney may have had no influence on Bain Capital's attempt to partner with Huawei in their acquisition of 3Com, but he did have direct influence over Bain & Co.'s initial forays into China and Russia during the early 90s according to a new report from the Associated Press.
WASHINGTON (AP) -- As Bain & Co. head in the early 1990s, Mitt Romney presided over the corporate strategy firm's expanding operations into China and Russia, helping their initial attempts to move into the world's free market system. [...]
In 1993, under Romney's oversight, Bain branched out in Beijing, where the firm's consultants held a series of management seminars for Chinese government trade officials, according to documents, interviews and media accounts. At the same time, Bain consultants were advising Russian officials and conducting seminars to aid the post-Soviet business privatization campaign, according to State Department files. [...]
In December 1993, the same month Marriott listed Romney as Bain's chief executive officer in an SEC filing, Bain consultants conducted two days of seminars for Chinese trade officials in Beijing, according to accounts at the time from Xinhua, China's official news service, and other Asia-based news media.
Xinhua's report from Dec. 9, 1993, said 58 Chinese trade officials were trained in "Western ways in enterprise valuation, mergers and acquisitions and in enterprise performance improvement.
Is it possible Bain's early entries into China and Russia were benign? Perhaps, but it's more than a little hypocritical to turn around today and describe Russia as our "number one geopolitical foe" and say that it's "time to get tough on China."
Romney claimed that he's never heard of laws that encourage companies to outsource jobs and that if such laws exist he might "need a new accountant" during the first presidential debate, but during the early 1990s Bain taught the Chinese everything they know about mergers, acquisitions, and "enterprise performance improvement" under Romney's tutelage.
If Mitt Romney really does view China and Russia as grave threats, why did he give Chinese and Russian trade officials the tools they needed to remake themselves in Bain's image? Why did he give them the knowledge that would later enable them to acquire American companies and intellectual property?
Bain was not the only American company participating in what the Associated Press describes as a "gold rush" in corporate enterprise and high finance, but Romney is a certified example of the corporate sharks who made it all possible. And he's just as representative of what befell the American economy over the past 30 years as anyone else.
A vote for Romney is a vote to affirm and repeat everything America has gotten wrong during the past three decades.
As an aside to the story on Huawei, Canada is now hinting that it may also block Huawei from participating in the construction of a secure communications network.