AMERICAN APPAREL, a “big business” with four plants in Alabama that employ 1,100 in that state, is protesting the loss of its government contract to make U.S. military apparel to a “small business” based in Alaska due to federal initiatives to help “little guys.” The national company has filed a formal protest of uncertain outcome to try to save what amounts to 80 percent of its Alabama business.

Government manipulation of the economy are hard to understand, but hometown effects are plainer.

American Apparel lists 310 employees at its Centre central cutting operation in neighboring Cherokee County. That work the Alaska company would instead have done in Puerto Rico which, for those who don’t know, is not “outsourcing.” Puerto Rico is not yet a state but it is a part of the United States.

Centre/Cherokee residents are not only good neighbors but they are Greater Rome customers, particularly for services. Their problems are, in a sense, our problems and for them this pending loss would be like Rome’s loss last year of Northwest Georgia Regional Hospital — also a decision made by government policy and not necessarily with a guarantee of a better product.

American Apparel is listed as the largest manufacturer in Centre and the second largest in Cherokee County. Not only that but, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, from 2005-10 Cherokee County lost 390 jobs. Now, in one single action, almost that many more — 310 — could go.

To somebody, somewhere in the boardrooms of government, this must make sense. Maybe they should try to explain it.