United We Stand America Conference: on Free Trade

Dick Gephardt: Fair trade on an equal playing field

For every billion dollars of trade deficit, we lost about 17,000 jobs. Last year our trade deficit was about $150 billion. That is almost 2 million jobs.

Pat Buchanan: GATT surrenders our national sovereignty

Pat Buchanan: We will rue the day we passed NAFTA

People ask, “Pat, why are you against NAFTA?” I said, “There are lots of reasons I’m against NAFTA. You do not force Americans making ten bucks an hour to compete with Mexicans who work for a dollar an hour.”

One year later, Mexico devalued the peso. American trade surplus disappeared. We now have a $15 billion trade deficit with Mexico, which means 300,000 American jobs were lost this year. Illegal immigration is soaring.

We are required to pay $50 billion to the government of Mexico. For whose benefit was that? It was not for the benefit of working Americans. It was for the benefit of investment bankers on Wall Street.

Rev. Jesse Jackson: American workers can’t compete with slave labor

The American worker can complete with the Mexican worker or the Chinese worker. The American worker cannot compete with slave labor and should not have to. Let us raise their standards and not lower our own.

Rev. Jesse Jackson: Working people cannot afford adding Chile to NAFTA

We must insist on a trade policy that serves working people, not Wall Street speculators-one that lifts wages and conditions abroad and does not lower them here. But to do that we must take our government back. We must end the reign of money politics that makes a mockery of our democracy.

Rev. Jesse Jackson: Joined with Perot as “Odd Couple” in opposing NAFTA

Leaders of both parties-Bush, Clinton, Gingrich, Gramm, Dole-pushed this NAFTA treaty through. Brother Perot and I were called the Odd Couple for opposing it. But everything we said turned out to be true. Wages plummeted in Mexico. Mexicans are poorer. Jobs have been lost here. When the crunch came, the $30 bailout did not bail out the American workers who lost their jobs, nor did it bail out Mexican workers. It bailed out the speculators and the investors. We must have a fair international trade agreements that lifts up working people.