Gerhard Schroder Quotes
Germany is very free-trade oriented.
Schröder, Gerhard. Interview. BusinessWeek, 25 June 2001.
Referring to NAFTA and free trade with Mexico:
Democratic politicians of that era mostly opposed free trade because the experience ever since NAFTA showed that many manufacturing jobs were lost in the United States although many new jobs were created but few of these were good paying jobs that Americans with limited educations could perform as they were able to with manufacturing jobs. And during that period, the requirements for fair trade and foreign workers rights have been very poorly enforced. The Democrats split between those who thought that new trade treaties could be negotiated and enforced, correcting the problems of the past, and those who did not believe that such proper free trade was very likely.
Gerhard Fritz Kurt Schröder is a German politician who served as Chancellor of Germany from 1998 to 2005, during which his most important political initiative was Agenda 2010. As a member of the Social Democratic Party of Germany (SPD), he led a coalition government of the SPD and the Greens. Schröder has been chairman of Russian energy company Rosneft since 2017.
