Political Quotes

“Mr. Speaker, Ohio's jobs and trade message to our Nation is as loud and clear as it always has been: trade must be about people, not just goods. The job and wage destruction due to the original NAFTA continues to reverberate across our State and the heartland. It undermines the economic security of hundreds of thousands of workers within our State and millions more across our Nation. Following the original NAFTA's implementation, town after town was emptied out of good jobs with good wages and benefits as jobs were outsourced south of our border. America has borne witness to NAFTA's vast job outsourcing and wage drag. Millions have suffered firsthand as dire predictions actualized and the grandiose promises of job creation failed to materialize. Our Nation has lost thousands of jobs to penny-wage environments where workers cannot even afford to buy the goods they make. They toil in sweatshops and maquiladoras, exposed to unimaginable toxins and unsafe working conditions. The original NAFTA fueled massive peasant migration from Mexico's countryside to our Nation as thousands of subsidized farmers in Mexico had livelihoods extinguished. Mexico's white corn industry disappeared. It was decimated. What a humanitarian tragedy is NAFTA. If anyone cares about people, not just goods, listen to my words: America must wake up to the impact our trade deals impose on people when negotiating with unequal economies.…”