economic development

March 16, 2018 - Gunmakers are leaving their historic roots in the North's "Gun Valley" to set up shop in low-cost Southern states — with tens of millions of dollars in tax breaks and other incentives sweetening the deal.

March 9, 2018 - Conceived by a group of high-tech moguls and investors and championed by Republican U.S. Sen. Tim Scott of South Carolina, a new program that offers capital gains tax breaks for investing in poor neighborhoods could end up displacing long-term residents.

December 15, 2017 - The project's developers are airing TV commercials claiming that the fracked-gas pipeline would be an economic boon for North Carolina. But a new economic analysis adds to a growing body of evidence that calls those claims into question.

June 16, 2017 - Rural areas draw the ire of Trump opponents on the left and right who charge that residents voted against their own interests. But in the South, which has the country's biggest rural Black population and growing numbers of rural Hispanics, many of the rural communities most threatened by Trump's policies did not vote for him.  

March 22, 2017 - Congress created the Appalachian Regional Commission and the Delta Regional Authority to promote economic development in two of the nation's most economically distressed regions, but President Trump has proposed ending the agencies' modest funding altogether.

April 1, 2016 - A by-the-numbers look at how businesses in North Carolina and elsewhere across the South are opposing discrimination and intolerance against LGBT people and other vulnerable minorities.

January 12, 2016 - As a young, popular governor and the child of immigrants, it's easy to see why the GOP tapped Gov. Haley to rebut President Obama's final State of the Union address. But back home she's under mounting criticism for an economic development approach that gives millions in incentives to companies for low-paying jobs that trap families in poverty.