Gregory Meeks: “You're absolutely right, and here's another reason why trade agreements are important, because if you look at…”

“You're absolutely right, and here's another reason why trade agreements are important, because if you look at particularly our recent trade agreements, what they do is they level the trade balance. Because a lot of these nations, when you talk about Central America, they were already open to come to our market. They were open to come to the United States. We didn't have access to theirs. So we were able to level the trade imbalances. And, in fact, when you talk about where we have the biggest imbalance, happens to be with China, but you know what the fact of the matter is? We do not have an FTA agreement with China. We don't even have one with India. We've negotiated them. We were able to negotiate them so that we can balance it so that it's fair to both sides as opposed to it being unfair on one side. You use the FTAs as an agreement to balance the playing field, to balance the trade imbalances to a large degree as well, as well as create hope and opportunity for people both abroad and at home. Some folks say they don't like trade at all. Well, I challenge them, especially if you're poor. I come from the southeastern Queens in New York. I was raised in public housing. There's certain things that we can't afford, and I look at poor people, a number of them, some of the trade has helped them because they can now buy some goods that they may not have otherwise been able to afford. So we've got to look at both sides of this. It has created some jobs.”