Political Quotes

“I think that the gentlewoman has suggested something that I think is indicative of the problem that we face in trying to make this appeal on trade and make the sale. I am sometimes puzzled as to why it is so difficult for us to make this case. I think one of the reasons is that whenever there is a plant that closes or moves some of its operations to an offshore setting, which by the way is not necessarily bad because they may be sourcing many of the materials from this country itself, but when they move that down there, if a plant closes in Missouri and they move the assembly plant to Mexico, that is a big headline and 200 jobs get lost because a plant moved to Mexico, or as we have seen this last week where Fruit of the Loom announced it is going to move some of its, where they manufacture underwear, they are going to move some of that to Mexico and to some of the Caribbean countries and jobs are going to be lost. Yes, I agree that is tough. That is tough for the people who are losing those jobs. But what never makes the headlines is the fact that on that same day, all over the country, hundreds of companies hired new people, one, or two, or 20 or 50 because they got some contract to sell some product into Mexico or to China or to Germany or elsewhere. There is never a story about that, because we do not see it. It is not visible. You do not open a factory just to sell to another country. But when you close a factory and move it to another country, it is a different story.”