Bill Clinton: “The answer to that is, it should. Having lived on a farm and having been a Governor of a farm State for many years, I've…”

“The answer to that is, it should. Having lived on a farm and having been a Governor of a farm State for many years, I've learned never to say that something will increase farm prices. But the answer is that it should for this reason: There's no question that American exports will increase in the aggregate if NAFTA passes, and that Mexico is our fastest growing farm export market. Normally, when there's an increased demand for products abroad, that has an impact in increasing prices at home. That is, unless there is something that happens here at home that dramatically reduces domestic consumption, increasing demand abroad will increase the prices, because the aggregate supply and demand relationship will change. So it should happen. Secondly, farmers should have their prices rise because they'll recover some of the monies that now go to tariffs in their trade. And we know that that will have some positive impact. So for those reasons, I certainly would be real surprised if there was not an increase in the price and an increase in farm profits. You know, most Americans don't know this, but when the cost of production goes up 5 times as fast as the price of the product, the only way the farmers or any farmers are still in business in America is that we have the most productive farmers in the world. But there is a limit to how much you can do, and one of the things I like about NAFTA is, by giving the tariff relief and by increasing the total volume of agricultural sales, we should be able to have a positive impact on the price.”