Dan Lipinski Quotes

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.

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.

Now, given the experience that we have had thus far, with our subsequent trade agreements with NAFTA and others, you would think that with our experience of job loss that we have had there that when you find yourself in a hole that you might stop digging.

The pact creating a North American free-trade zone was President Bill Clinton's signature accomplishment; but NAFTA is also the bugaboo of union leaders, grassroots activists and Midwesterners who blame free trade for the factory closings they see in their hometowns.

Unfettered free trade has been a disaster not only for Americans but for the working people of Mexico and Canada as well.

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.

The mistake we made in the 1990s was overestimating the potential of NAFTA's positive impact.

President Trump was determined to replace NAFTA from the day he took office. It reflected the old way of trade deals in which our partners shirked labor protections while American companies shipped operations and jobs to cheaper foreign locations. Our factories shuttered, our manufacturing shrank, and we grew more dependent on foreign suppliers.

The jobs aren't going away. They're bringing in people to replace Americans in those jobs. And this Trans-Pacific Trade Partnership, it makes it worse.

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.

That level of trade deficit throttles real growth in our country and continues the unfortunate path of selling out America. We are not winning the global trade war, we are losing it badly.

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.

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.

I don't think we should sell out the American worker. That's why I am opposed to NAFTA.

We could not get NAFTA passed today with the current Congress…. We’ve got to combine trade liberalization with a broad-based sharing of the fruits of our productivity.

Most Republicans and the business community extol the virtues of trade, depicting it as an engine of economic progress, while most Democrats and unions attack the exportation of American jobs, claiming that trade agreements are destroying our economy.

I know something about trade agreements. I was proud to help President Clinton pass the North American Free Trade Agreement in 1993 and create what is still the world's largest free-trade area, linking 426 million people and more than $12 trillion of goods and services.

I think a lot of scapegoating has been done on NAFTA. The reality is, a lot of the jobs have been lost mostly to technology. And that is something that happens well beyond the reach of NAFTA or any other trade agreement.

I opposed NAFTA in 1993 and '94.

Only Barack Obama consistently opposed NAFTA.

My dad was in furniture for 35 years. He got run out of furniture when everything went to China, went overseas. Manufacturing in the country broke down. Everything left.

It's extraordinary to me - you cannot name a presidential candidate in history who has singlehandedly, through bad trade deals, destroyed more American jobs and more American factories than Hillary Clinton. She did NAFTA, she did China's entry into the World Trade Organization, she did the South Korean 2012 deal - every single one of those.

Hoosiers have seen good paying jobs leave our state for decades because of NAFTA and other bad trade deals from Washington. President Trump is using tariffs as a negotiating tool to fix these problems that have been baked into the international economy for decades.