Paul Ryan Quotes

Using the greatest business people in the world, which America has, I am going to turn our bad trade agreements into great trade agreements.

I do have a concern that if we just say no Trans-Pacific Partnership, we're done, we're ignoring the region, and then, yes, I think we're creating a void for China, but that is not what the president [Donald Trump] is saying.

We have people that are political hacks negotiating our trade deals.

I urge Congress to quickly take up and pass trade promotion authority so we can conclude a TPP agreement. Our position in the world depends on it.

The Trans-Pacific Partnership trade agreement is a continuation of other disastrous trade agreements, like NAFTA, CAFTA, and permanent normal trade relations with China.

I think that the important point is we've got to have a president who understands the benefits of free trade but also is going to enforce unfair trade agreements and is going to stand up to other countries.

We're going to make great trade deals.

I've said this when I pass the trade promotion authority law, which allows us to get trade agreements. If we write the rules of the global economy, we will succeed in the 21st century. But we have to write those rules, we have to engage, and I think the president [Donald Trump] said Trans-Pacific Partnership is not the way to do it.

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.

Trump said we got snookered. That those agreements like NAFTA were the worst agreements ever and suggested that our trade negotiators were snookered by these smart negotiators from Mexico or Africa. It is laughable. I have watched these trade negotiations. We got what we wanted.

I should also say that apart from the negotiations that are taking place within the WTO, we are ourselves involved in all manner of bilateral negotiations, or, if they are not bilateral, with the South African Customs Union and the European Union. All the member countries of the European Union have now ratified the agreement that we have with the EU and that opens up the EU market in various ways.

We're going to renegotiate trade deals.

We're working on accession to the WTO very actively. We still have several countries with which we need to conclude agreements and possibly that will happen next year.

We need to strike better trade deals, but we need to do it in a way that ensures that we are at the table on these deals.

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.

Trade negotiations require compromise.

You have to be able to negotiate our trade deals. You have to be able to negotiate, that's right, with Japan, with Saudi Arabia.

You watch people run for president, and a large part of what they say, they don't ever follow through on. But I don't think you can afford to wait on this [trade agreements].

Jobs is the one area where I think Donald Trump is striking a chord that really resonates and should resonate. Both parties need to do a better job of rejecting poorly negotiated trade agreements. And I would put the president's TPP, the Trans-Pacific Partnership agreement, in that category. We have lost thousands of manufacturing jobs just in the state of Maine alone, and that resonates with people, and understandably so.

I absolutely trust Hillary Clinton to stand strong on trade agreements.

The great rule of conduct for us, in regard to foreign nations, is, in extending our commercial relations, to have with them as little political connection as possible.

We have the most incompetently worked trade deals ever negotiated probably in the history of the world, and that starts with NAFTA. And now they want to go TPP, one of the great disasters.

While the WTO negotiations will continue, there are other trade negotiations of a bilateral nature, which among other things, should help to open up these markets for South African products.

NAFTA is a horrible agreement, one of the worst trade deals ever. It's just one of the worst. Although TPP, which I terminated before it got signed - before it got finished, someday hopefully people will be thanking. That would have been one of the great disasters of all times, in terms of trade.

The Barack Obama administration had been negotiating with the Canadians to come up with a permanent solution on lumber tariff. And they failed. And so even though this is being portrayed as the first salvo by Donald Trump's tough trade regime, in fact, it's quite possible that, if Hillary Clinton were president, we would be in the same place.