Political Quotes

“Mr. President, I thank my colleague and good friend, Chairman Hatch, for his courtesies. We have worked very closely together on this nomination. This was a challenging task, and I thank Chairman Hatch for his cooperation. Mr. Lighthizer needed a waiver because he had represented foreign interests. It was extremely important that we work with Senator Manchin and other colleagues to address the enormous needs of the miners, and we had a whole host of Members with a variety of extremely important trade issues--matters like steel, aluminum, and digital goods in our part of the world; we also care about softwood lumber tremendously. Chairman Hatch and I worked with all the members of the Finance Committee. It was a unanimous vote, and I thank him for his cooperation. We have talked a little bit about trade and what a modern trade policy is going to look like. The Lighthizer discussion is the beginning of the debate on trade in this Congress, and I have tried to be clear about my agenda. My agenda is to create more red, white, and blue jobs in America--high-skilled, high-waged jobs. Very often, the trade jobs pay better than do the nontrade jobs because there is more value added in them; there is a higher level of productivity. So my view is, as we set out on this journey to get more high-skilled, high- waged jobs, look to Asia where there are going to be 1 billion middle- class people there in a few years.…”