Wilbur Ross Quotes

I am all in favor of growing the American economy and engaging in trade with the world, but not at the expense of American workers. The North American Free Trade Agreement is a perfect example of this. Ask the textile workers of North Carolina how NAFTA worked out for them - if you can find any.

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.

Not only must we fight to end disastrous unfettered free trade agreements with China, Mexico, and other low wage countries, we must fight to fundamentally rewrite our trade agreements so that American products, not jobs, are our number one export.

Unfortunately, the United States has entered into several free trade agreements that do not sufficiently protect and support our manufacturing industries and the millions of American workers they employ.

The bottom line is there are lots of problems that were not created by government. The biggest one is loss of middle class incomes, loss of good-paying jobs which was created by technology and globalization. Above all, when you can move a job to China or India, it reduces wages.

The Bush Administration and the Congress have to stop ignoring this crisis in international trade. The longer we ignore it, the more American jobs will move overseas. It's just that simple.

Trade helps bring us products cheaply, but there is no guarantee whatsoever to assume that it will allow us to replace the jobs that have been lost, and there is no mechanism under productivity that says that, either.

Free trade is killing the labor movement.

Many large corporations in the last 20 years have decided that their business plan is to shut down manufacturing in Dayton and Toledo and move it to Wuhan and Shenzhen. And then they will sell products back into the United States. It’s a betrayal of this country and a betrayal of the middle class.

Globalization: We get cheaper running shoes—You lose your job!

People feel these job-killing trade agreements have really squeezed the middle class and caused lots of people to lose their middle-class status.

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.

Stop exporting American jobs. Stop exporting American factories, and stop exporting American sovereignty and independence to global institutions like the World Trade Organization.

The globalists gutted the American working class and created a middle class in Asia.

Like so many free trade deals before and since, Nafta was sold as a massive opportunity for working people and their prospects. Forecasts spoke of hundreds of thousands of new jobs in all three countries. The reality could not have been more different.

Back in the 1980s parts of our country were devastated by de-industrialisation. This wave of globalisation and the first fruits of technological innovation destroyed industrial jobs or exported them to low-wage economies. The loss of work had a devastating impact.

The globalization that has rescued so many in poor countries has harmed some people in rich countries, as factories and jobs migrated to where labor is cheaper.

The fact is whether one looks at this [outsourcing] in terms of men and women, working men and women in this country who are simply being screwed, or whether one looks at this in terms of corporations who are benefiting, the fact is it is certainly not helping the American economy.

We are now paying the cost of people who move jobs overseas as taxpayers, and people are appalled when they hear that.

I'm not for the sort of trade deals that hollow out our standards while they hollow out our middle class and middle class wages.

But, we have had the debate in our country now for a number of years as to whether or not free trade agreements are good for economic growth and economic opportunity in creating jobs and lifting people out of poverty.

We talk about Hollywood being pro-labor, yet about 70% of our industry has been farmed out to Canada, meaning we are losing jobs like crazy. Where's organized labor asking how we can allow such a thing to happen?

One of the great dilemmas for America will be that American companies will do very well while American workers might not.

Beneficial in theory, so-called free trade agreements far too often have been detrimental to the United States economy and the manufacturing sector that forms its central pillar.

I fear that CAFTA will accelerate the demise of these domestic textile jobs.