Political Quotes

“Madam President, soon the Senate will vote on the final passage of the new North American Free Trade Agreement. I am going to make just a few remarks. I know Senator Toomey is here to make remarks. Later, he is going to offer, I believe, some procedural requests. The new NAFTA is a good deal for American workers because Democrats in this body and Democrats in the other body stopped the Trump administration from going ahead with business as usual on trade enforcement. There has even been an effort by several Members on the other side in the Senate to actually block enforcement dollars. With Chairman Grassley's help, we were able to prevent that. If you write a trade agreement with weak enforcement, particularly on labor and environmental issues, my view is you sell out American workers and key industries, whether it is automobiles, whether it is technology, or whether it is manufacturing. Basically, you set up a race to the bottom on cheap wages and the treatment of labor. I particularly want to thank Senator Brown, my colleague from Ohio, who for decades has led the fight for tough trade enforcement. We spoke yesterday on the floor about our effort. We worked on this side of the aisle, but we reached out to a lot of Senators on the other side of the aisle as well. I just want to give an example of what the Brown-Wyden trade enforcement package does. In the past, it would take almost to eternity to bring trade enforcement action.…”