Adam Smith: “there are two stats that have always stuck out for me in trade that I first heard from President Bill Clinton. The first…”

“there are two stats that have always stuck out for me in trade that I first heard from President Bill Clinton. The first is that 96 percent of the people live someplace other than the United States of America, which means that if we wish to grow and expand our markets, we are going to need access to those markets. You cannot do that without fast track trade negotiating authority. Without the ability to negotiate, to reduce tariff barriers to other countries that we have, you cannot move forward. Right now the U.S. is in the unfortunate position of facing much higher tariffs than we have here at home. We need to negotiate to change those. The second stat is that the U.S., despite being only 4 percent of the world's population, is still responsible for over 20 percent of the world's consumption. So if you are in the developing world that we have heard much about tonight, if you have any hope of growing economically, you need access to our markets as well. Despite those two facts, we have heard a lot about how, Yes, we support trade, but this isn't the way to do it because of all the challenges we face. But what I think we have to think about is under those terms, what would a trade agreement look like that the opponents support? What can we possibly do in a trade agreement to raise the labor standards throughout the developing world, throughout the world that does not have our standards, to our level? The answer, of course, is that we cannot.”