Jean-Claude Juncker Quotes

The developing countries are scared out of their wits now, because they don’t understand what they’re being forced to sign. The agreements are going way outside the trade issues and involve a helluva lot of things like your access to oil, your access to intellectual property and capital controls…. When I looked through the investment agreements, it was worse than reading my insurance policy for the fine print. I couldn’t make anything out of it, and I’m a reasonably informed person, a pretty smart economist as they go.

The effect of Bill Clinton's NAFTA and Hillary Clinton's Colombian Free Trade Agreement has been devastating to Michigan and most of the rest of the country, and accounts for the appeal of Donald Trump.

In Illinois, we've seen job losses from agreements like CAFTA and NAFTA. Those agreements didn't help American workers - and they haven't brought improvements to the lives of workers in other countries, either.

Brexit is not ideal. I'm famously not a Brexit negotiator, but relations between Ireland and the U.K. have been getting stronger, and a big part of that has been trade and feeling like sister countries within the E.U. I don't think it will affect the 'vibe' of relations, but it will have a significant effect on trade and business.

I think that the European Union negotiators have gotten a shock. They were shocked when they realised the Brexit trade negotiations were not just going to be a continuation of those that happened under Theresa May.

If Britain doesn't stay in the Single Market or Customs Union, we are very much in favor of a free trade agreement between the U.K. and Europe. We don't want Britain to be punished for its decision to leave, and it is not in our interests for Britain to be punished because we may be the ones who lose out as much if not more than them.

Trade has suddenly become massively unpopular. I think that's massively unjust. I think free trade has been wonderful for America on balance.

The companies move labor to the lowest-cost markets. And so I don't - I used to support these agreements. In the Congress, I lost the AFL-CIO endorsement a few years because I supported them. But when middle class incomes are declining, these agreements don't work well for America.

There's a whole range of areas that we'll be looking at, so I'm not at this very early stage going to specify any particular areas. As you will know, there will be a limit to how far we can go in terms of a formal free trade agreement until we've actually left the European Union. I think there is much that we [with Donald Trump] can do in the interim in terms of looking at how we can remove some of the barriers to trade in a number of areas.

The biggest opportunities from Brexit will come from more trade with the rest of the world.

Brexit will not be easy.

Leaving the E.U. enables the U.K. to be more engaged with the global economy, not just the European economy.

Liberalized trade - in broadly multilateral, regional, or bilateral agreements - is a key ingredient in the recipe for prosperity... An absolute prerequisite for long-term economic growth is full participation in the global economy and trading system.

It's very personal to me that we get these trade deals right.

Indeed, our British friends have decided to leave us - which is very sad for all of us - but life goes on, and the European Union as well goes on.

Any talk of no deal is completely unacceptable. No deal means we can't reach any agreement about the border in Ireland and that is not a place we want to be.

We must work to repeal trade agreements that impede access to affordable generic drugs. We must work to cause the IMF and the World Bank to reduce and eventually eliminate the debt that takes poor nations' resources away from crises like AIDS. We must focus America's leadership on addressing and ending this epidemic.

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

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.

I concluded that the trade agreements weren't working as promised, and was depreciating the wages and the manufacturing base, and the jobs of Americans, and that both needed to change, and Donald Trump was out there. So I went to his rally.

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.

There can be no doubt that, with the United Kingdom, we will lose a very market-oriented voice.

Over the years, we have lost millions of decent paying jobs. These trade agreements have forced wages down in America so the average worker in America today is working longer hours for lower wages.

What was really interesting in his speech, which, by the way, had (inaudible) footnotes - the written version of it - which might be a personal record for Donald Trump - the source of a lot of his numbers on the free trade section of the speech came from an organization called the Economic Policy Institute, which was a think tank or is a think tank that was founded by labor unions to promote the labor unions' point of view on free trade agreements.

Primary responsibility for Brexit lies with British conservatives, who took an entire continent hostage.