Political Quotes

“What I tried to do with this amendment was to take three provisions of the United States-Jordan Free Trade Agreement out of the six that are incorporated in the agreement. The three that are missing, are critically important to have as part of the 27 pages of standards that we ask our negotiators to try to pursue as we enter trade negotiations with individual countries. The United States-Jordan Free Trade Agreement was adopted 100 to zero only a few short months ago in this body, and as part of that agreement we added the three standards that are excluded in this bill. The three standards ensure that other governments will not relax or ignore their own domestic labor laws to gain a competitive advantage, to strive to ensure that other governments' labor laws are consistent with core labor standards that have already been agreed to with the ILO and, thirdly, to agree that core labor principles, freedom of association, prohibitions on child labor, elimination of discrimination in the workplace, are all going to be efforts we would strive to promote.”