On the recordJanuary 9, 2020
in the fall of 2016, just 4 years ago, I heard Candidate Trump repeatedly promise to get rid of the North American Free Trade Agreement--to pull out of it, to renegotiate it, or to fix it so that it worked better than it did. I didn't support Donald Trump for President. I think he has been a less than honest President with whom I disagree in terms of his character and in terms of his work product, but that is really not the point. The point was that I liked what he said about getting out of NAFTA. I know what NAFTA did to the Presiding Officer's home State of Indiana. I know what it did to Dayton, OH; to Cleveland, OH; to Canton, OH; to Youngstown, Toledo, Mansfield, Springfield, Zanesville, and to almost every community in my State. So I welcomed the President's saying that. The reason I thought these trade agreements were so bad for our country was that these trade agreements were always written by corporate interests to serve the needs of the executives and the major stockholders of the corporations. In fact, they not only were not written for workers, but they undermined workers. I have never voted for a trade agreement. I voted against NAFTA, and I voted against the Central American Free Trade Agreement. I voted against permanent normal trade relations with China--one after another after another--because I saw that these trade agreements were written for corporate interests and that they betrayed workers.…





