Political Quotes

“Well, I think the gentlewoman is absolutely right, and I think we do not want to be apocalyptic about that, and certainly the world will go on, and the United States will continue to trade, but we will trade on much more difficult terms and not as well as we would do if we have trade agreements, and those can only come about if we have fast track authority to allow the President to negotiate those trade agreements. We have been talking a bit this evening about NAFTA, and I just want to take a minute to talk about it, because if you listen to some of the opponents of fast track authority, you would think that the North American Free Trade Agreement, or NAFTA as it is called, that links the United States, Mexico and Canada in a free trade agreement is the only agreement we have ever negotiated under using the fast track authority. But the fact is we have had four other critical agreements, and those are the 1979 Tokyo Round of GATT talks, General Agreement on Trade and Tariffs; the 1985 U.S.-Israel Free Trade Agreement; the 1988 U.S.- Canada Free Trade Agreement; and the 1994 Uruguay Round of GATT talks. Now in that last round, of course, GATT became the World Trade Organization, so we talk now about WTO. But those four rounds, all of which made significant breakthroughs for the United States in the areas of not just of tariff barriers, but of allowing us access to different markets, were absolutely critical for us.…”