CHARLESTON, SC: Exiting the interstate 30 miles northwest of Charleston you cross a pine forest before reaching the sprawling Volvo manufacturing plant.  The Swedish car company owned by China’s Geely chose to put it first North American here in Ridgeville, a mere speck on the map in rural South Carolina. 

In 2015 Volvo invested half a billion dollars to build the plant and then doubled its investment two years later. Republican presidential candidate Nikki Haley, then South Carolina’s governor, is credited with helping to bring Volvo to South Carolina.  The facility employs over 3,000 workers and is the fourth largest industrial employer in the state.  

(Barry D. Wood photo)

Until the 1980s South Carolina depended on textiles and apparel. But that once dominant industry was steadily eroded by imports as jobs and investment moved to lower wage producers in Mexico, the Caribbean and east and south Asia.  A new strategy to lure higher paying industrial jobs to South Carolina paid its first dividend in the 1990s when Germany’s BMW broke ground on a manufacturing facility near Spartanburg in the northwestern part of the state. Making multiple investments, including a yet to be opened EV battery plant, BMW employs 11,000 workers and is South Carolina’s largest industrial employer.  Spartanburg is BMW’s largest facility worldwide and using the port of Charleston is America’s leading car exporter.(Barry D. Wood photo)

Other European companies followed BMW.  They include Michelin tires, Bosch electronics and Electrolux appliances.  Aerospace giant Boeing has also invested heavily. Its Charleston plant employs 7,000 workers and is the sole builder of the 787 Dreamliner.  

The southeastern US has become a major auto manufacturing region, attracting multiple European and Asian investments. Hyundai is spending $7 billion on an electric vehicle plant near Savannah, Georgia, a two-and-one-half hour drive from Charleston. Mercedes is building cars in Alabama, Volkswagen in Tennessee. The ports of Savannah and Charleston are the most modern and efficient in the US.

Foreign manufacturers are choosing the southeast United States because the region is largely non-union and organizing efforts by the United Auto Workers union have thus far been unsuccessful. There is also plentiful skilled labor.

South Carolina’s economic boom has triggered an influx of people. Its population growth is among the fastest in the nation along with Texas, Florida and Arizona. South Carolina created 83,000 jobs in 2023 and its unemployment rate is a low 3%.Economists applaud the southeast’s successful transition from textiles and apparel to manufacturing.  The three major textile producing states—South Carolina, Georgia and North Carolina—collectively lost one million textile jobs over the past century. But during that same period they have created many more, higher paying manufacturing jobs.