Dennis Kucinich: “the average hourly earnings of U.S. manufacturing workers was $16.01 in March of 2004. The average hourly wages for…”

“the average hourly earnings of U.S. manufacturing workers was $16.01 in March of 2004. The average hourly wages for Honduran workers producing goods for the U.S., 90 cents. CAFTA is about institutionalizing cheap labor. Multinational corporations want trade agreements where they can make a profit by closing factories in the U.S. and moving jobs to places where workers have no rights and work for very low wages. Cheap labor. Now, I have traveled across America. And I have seen the effects of agreements like NAFTA and CAFTA: padlocked gates of abandoned factories, grass growing in parking lots of places where workers used to make steel, used to make washing machines, used to make textiles, used to make machine parts. Free trade has meant freedom for the American worker to stand in the unemployment line while their jobs were traded away. So-called free trade has brought broken dreams, broken homes, broken hearts to the American manufacturing worker. Trade without equity is tyranny. Trade without economic justice is theft. Trade without integrity, without workers' rights, without human rights, without environmental principles is not worthy of a free people.”