A Quote by Noam Chomsky

Part of the NAFTA legislation required studies of labor practices, and there was quite a good study that came out by a labor historian on the use of NAFTA to undermine and destroy unions.

Noam Chomsky

Quote Topics

Came Destroy Good Historian Labor Legislation NAFTA Out Part Practices Quite Required Studies Study Undermine Unions Use

Quote Author

Noam Chomsky
American - Activist
Born: December 7, 1928

During the debate over NAFTA President Clinton said, 'I believe that NAFTA will create a million jobs in the first five years of its impact.' WRONG. According to the Economic Policy Institute, NAFTA has led to the loss of more than 680,000 U.S. jobs. I voted against NAFTA and other bad trade agreements and am fighting to stop the TPP.

Bernie Sanders

The rules of origin in NAFTA need some tightening. Rules of origin are what let material outside of NAFTA to come in and benefit from all the taxes and tariff reductions within NAFTA.

Wilbur Ross

The message is NAFTA (the North American Free Trade Agreement) is there. NAFTA has helped both our countries enormously. We live up to the terms of NAFTA. We ask you, our best friend and most important trading partner to do the same thing.

Anne McLellan

But for labor groups, there is no debate: Nafta hurt American jobs and household earnings.

Annie Lowrey

Labor unions have a long history of benefitting all workers, even those who are not members of unions, because everyone's wages go up. If we don't increase membership - and membership in labor unions is going down because of the attacks against organized labor - it's something every single American, whether they're officially in a union or not, should be concerned about. It's a spiral. It's a weakening of the middle class and our economy can't sustain that.

Nina Turner

When [Bill] Clinton came along, it sort of moderated a little bit, but Clinton had a different device for breaking unions called NAFTA [North America Free Trade Agreement]. Because the government was entirely lawless, employers could exploit NAFTA to threaten union organizers with transfer. It's illegal, but when you've got a lawless government, it doesn't matter if it's illegal. I think the number of union drives blocked increased by about 50 percent.

Noam Chomsky

We have to bake labor provisions into the core of an agreement. TPP would do that. Under NAFTA, countries had to simply promise to uphold the laws of their own nations.

Tom Perez

One finds fortunes built on slave labor, indentured labor, prison labor, immigrant labor, female labor, child labor, and scab labor - backed by the lethal force of gun thugs and militia. 'Old money' is often little more than dirty money laundered by several generations of possession.

Michael Parenti

The product of mental labor - science - always stands far below its value, because the labor-time necessary to reproduce it has no relation at all to the labor-time required for its original production.

Karl Marx

According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, before NAFTA went into effect, there were 285,000 auto workers in Michigan. Today, that number is only 160,000.

Donald Trump

NAFTA was much more popular among US corporations than GATT, because NAFTA is highly protectionist in ways that GATT is not.

Noam Chomsky

In a word, unions are not entitled to use retirement funds to raise costs at the companies where the funds are invested. And unionized corporations are not required to permit this. Rather, management trustees and the Labor Department are obligated to prevent it.

Eugene Scalia

Everything is in place - after 500 years - to build a true 'new world' in the Western Hemisphere... And what happens if we don't pass NAFTA? I truly don't think that 'criminal' would be too strong a word for rejecting NAFTA.

David Rockefeller

You know that if you [Hillary Clinton] did win, you would approve that [Trans-Pacific Partnership], and that will be almost as bad as NAFTA. Nothing will ever top NAFTA.

Donald Trump

I think Canadians, by and large, during the American election, every time Donald Trump talked about NAFTA, we felt that he was talking about Mexico. Now, if Donald Trump tears up NAFTA, there is still a Canada-U.S. Free Trade Agreement. And we all assume that we will revert back to that agreement, which is essentially the same as NAFTA except Mexico is no longer at the table. I think, you know, that is what we are hoping for.