A Quote by Kenneth Clarke
Trade deals are not the vehicle for raising or lowering standards of protection for consumers, the environment, workers or anyone else. Regulations are made by governments and parliaments.
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We have international standards regulating everything from t-shirts to toys to tomatoes. There are international regulations for furniture. That means there are common standards for the global trade in armchairs but not the global trade in arms.
The terrible trade deals that Bernie [Sanders] was so vehemently against - and he was right on that - will be taken care of, far better than anyone ever thought possible. That's what I do. We are going to have fantastic trade deals.
The biggest one [trade deal], a multinational one known as CAFTA, I voted against. And because I hold the same standards as I look at all of these trade deals.
I think that when it comes to issues of trade, I think it is important for us to be in favor of trade, but I also think it is important to make sure that we are putting in place the labor standards, the environmental standards, that are going to provide some of a fighting chance for American workers.
I am totally in favor of trade. But I want trade deals for our country that create more jobs and higher wages for American workers.
Look, you are interested in trying to make sure that governments keep a clean environment, have regard for the lifestyles of indigenous peoples, and work for fair trade rules. Well, it's exactly the same for human rights - from non-discrimination to the basic rights to food, safe water, education and health care. We are talking rights not needs. There are standards that governments have signed up to - but nobody is holding them to account.
What Donald Trump has been concerned about, what he`s talked about, is when we get deals that don`t level the playing field, when we get deals that aren`t the kinds of best deals we can get, we want good deals, and those are free trade deals to lower the barriers between trade between two countries.
We will reform legal immigration to serve the best interests of America and its workers, the forgotten people - workers. We`re going to take care of our workers. We`re going to renegotiate trade deals. We`re going to bring our jobs back home.
E.U. law provides agency workers with the right to equal treatment, and all workers with maximum working hours. It forces governments to take environmental legislation seriously, and to protect air and water standards.
Unfair trade deals like the North American Free Trade Agreement eviscerated good-paying manufacturing jobs, putting more than 3 million U.S. workers out of work.
Free trade is an important component of our economy, but it also has to be fair. Too often, the needs of American workers are ignored while the interests of huge corporations are the focus of these trade deals.
Unfortunately, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has been especially aggressive in pursuing regulations that specifically target coal power plants. These regulations have already put hundreds of Pennsylvanians out of work and will continue to cause economic distress while yielding negligible benefits for our environment.
If you look at the future of the Democratic Party, things like raising the minimum wage - Democrats need to get behind raising the minimum wage and be clear on where we stand on trade deals.
If we're going to do trade agreements, as we should, we need trade agreements with rules that will lift up all boats, rather than continuing to pull down U.S. food safety standards, U.S. worker wages, environment, all that these job losses and all that this has done to pull down our standards.
This is a very challenging time in the life of our nation. Weakened America's place in the world after the leadership of Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama on the world stage has been followed by an economy that is truly struggling, stifled by an avalanche of more taxes, more regulations, Obamacare, the war on coal and the kind of trade deals that put American workers in the back seat.
Raising the minimum wage and lowering the barriers to union organization would carry a trade-off - higher unemployment. A better idea is to have the government subsidize low-wage employment. The earned-income tax credit for low-income workers - which has been the object of proposed cuts by both President Clinton and congressional Republicans - has been a positive step in this direction.
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