Political Quotes

“I come to the Chamber today to rise with my colleagues to talk about the USMCA, or the United States-Mexico- Canada Trade Agreement. But before I talk about the vote that I hope is in this Chamber on fairly short order, I would like to go back to December of 1993. In December of 1993, President Clinton signed NAFTA. A month later, it was ratified, and, to be honest with you, it started a period of time in North Carolina where we suffered. We had a challenge to actually determine how we were going to react to a very different North Carolina, where there are textiles and a number of other industries that suffered initially under the NAFTA implementation. But today, North Carolina is one of the greatest benefactors of NAFTA. As a matter of fact, we are one of the top States in the country for job creation and commerce, and Canada and Mexico are our two most important export markets. The problem is, NAFTA was implemented in 1994. I think that was back when the Backstreet Boys were topping the charts and MC Hammer was popular. It was a long, long time ago. It is time to modernize it. It was before the internet was even invented. We have so many opportunities to modernize our trade relationship with our two most important trade partners, and the USMCA is the opportunity to do that.…”