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North Carolina Commerce Secretary: HB2 Backlash, Boycotts, Have Had No Impact On Economy

“It hasn’t moved the needle one iota,” says Republican John Skvarla.

This year the business world has rallied around the LGBT community, boycotting and levying sanctions against North Carolina for passing HB.

To hear Commerce Secretary John Skvarla tell it though, though, there's been no hit to the state economy.

“It hasn’t moved the needle one iota,” Skvarla, appointed by Governor McCrorym in 2014, told the Charlotte Observer this week.

He seems oddly confident, despite Pepsi, General Electric, Deutsche Bank, Dow, Hewlett Packard, Whole Foods, Levi's and PayPal pulling projects in North Carolina after the transphobic law was signed.

“PayPal wasn’t even a grain of sand on the beach,” he said dismissively. “It was 400 call center jobs over five years. Much too much is being made of PayPal.”

But when that deal was announced back in March, Skvarla made it sound like a big deal.

“North Carolina’s technology-savvy workforce will provide the perfect fuel for PayPal’s continued growth,” he said a statement. “This company’s global reputation for innovation and customer service makes it a strong fit for our state’s business-friendly community.”

Since then, Braeburn Pharmaceuticals put a hold on a $20 million research facility that was supposed to go up in Durham.

Google Venture has announced it would not back any North Carolina-based companies until HB2 is repealed.

The NCAA moved all its 2017 championship games out of North Carolina, and the NBA relocated the All-Star Game.

And the mayors of D.C., New York, San Francisco and other cities banned official travel to the state, as did the governors of New York, Vermont, Connecticut and Washington.

But Skvarla says North Carolina is in the "best position" financially it's ever been. He insists there are still "hundreds of active projects" in the pipeline.

Charlotte developer Johnny Harris Charlotte, for one, doesn't share that optimism: He says for every company that relocates to North Carolina, another ten probably don't, scared away by HB2.

“I’ve been saying to anyone that would listen to me from the very first day that it’s a train wreck."

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