Political Quotes

“Mr. President, last week, the Senate Finance Committee voted on the U.S.-Mexico-Canada Agreement. It is called USMCA. I did something I have never done. I voted for it. I have never voted for a trade agreement in my time in the House of Representatives and my time in the Senate. In fact, I helped to lead the opposition to the original NAFTA among freshmen Members of Congress because I recognized that every single one of these trade agreements basically had the template of corporate interests at the center of them. In other words, these trade agreements--whether it was NAFTA, or the North American Free Trade Agreement, whether a half generation later it was the Central America Free Trade Agreement, whether it was the free trade agreement with South Korea, or whether it was the Permanent Normal Trade Relations with China--all of them were written by corporate interests serving the profitability of the executives and the major stockholders of these companies. They all tended to precipitate this under these trade agreements in this Congress, under Presidents of both parties, I might add. I disagreed with the first President Bush, then President Clinton, then the second President Bush, and then President Obama. All of them would submit trade agreements that were written for corporate interests, I believe, at the expense of workers.…”