Although Ron Johnson likes to imply that he's been at the helm of his plastic company for the last 31 years, that's not accurate.
Pacur was started in Oshkosh in 1979 by the Curler family as a captive supplier for a Bemis Plant, which was accross the street and under the authority of Bemis CEO, Howard Curler (Johnson's billionaire father-in-law.) Johnson started out as an accountant and worked under Pacur President Pat Curler. In 1986, the Curler family sold Pacur to a company called Bowater. After the sale, Johnson would stay on at Pacur as President. In 1997, Johnson bought Pacur from Bowater and since then has owned the company.
So, for nearly eleven years, Johnson worked as an employee of Bowater and Pacur was a subsidiary of Bowater.
Although Bowater has recently merged with Abitibi, before that, they were one of the companies included on Lou Dobb's Exporting America list which they descibe as:
Here is a list of companies we've confirmed are "Exporting America." These are U.S. companies either sending American jobs overseas, or choosing to employ cheap overseas labor, instead of American workers.
All of this is important, considering that Johnson has repeatedly made the claim in advertising and in campaign stump speeches that:
Pacur is still proud to say 'we don't export jobs, we export plastic'
Accoring to Johnson's financial disclosure, he is also heavily invested in numerous companies on Lou Dobbs "Exporting America" list.
In addition, as menioned earlier, the vast majority of Pacur's business goes to Bemis Company and its subsidiaries, which is controlled by his wife's family and have opened-up numerous plants overseas-- including three in China-- in recent years.
Johnson's charactorization of himself of working to prevent jobs from being exported out of America is fundamentally untrue: Not only does he avidly support free trade, but his personal financial dealings have led to American jobs being shipped overseas.
Johnson likes to say that free trade has been a "great success," even though 165,000 jobs have been lost in Wisconsin to free trade. Maybe Johnson meant that's its been a "great success" for him.