Mitt Romney Quotes

We are on pace this year to have a trade deficit that is larger than $800 billion. We have never faced that before, but we continue to put forward trade agreements like these that leave us naked to competition that is neither free nor fair.

The Chinese are not stupid people. They're very smart people. They told me very, very distinctly that they cannot believe how stupid our representatives are in the United States. They cannot believe that they can continue to take all our jobs - you know, through the manipulation of the currency, of their currency, they make it almost impossible for our great companies to compete.

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.

American products are better than the Chinese. We do a better job. We make better products. But because the currency is so low versus the dollar versus other things, and so much lower than it should be, it's very hard to compete for our companies.

The trade is so easy for me. It's so obvious what's happening when our companies are flocking out. I am going to fix our trade, I am going to bring jobs back to America.

Debates about trade inevitably revolve around the question of jobs, even thought trade has little effect of aggregate employment levels.

Let’s export American products, not American jobs.

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

The experience of our unions and our members with past trade agreements has led us to question critically the extravagant claims often made on their behalf. While these agreements are inevitably touted as market-opening agreements that will significantly expand U.S. export opportunities and therefore create export-related U.S. jobs

China can be our partner, but that doesn't mean that they can just roll all over us and steal our jobs on an unfair basis.

We'll be aggressive on trade because we know that deals that have been made historically have resulted in the great loss of manufacturing jobs, a great amount of closed manufacturing businesses. We don't want that to continue.

The overwhelming number of Democrats... think our trade policy has gone in the wrong direction. They think that our trade policy encourages companies to leave the country. They think our trade policy has caused more and more businesses to outsource.

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.

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 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.

America has lost nearly one-third of its manufacturing jobs since 1997 following the enactment of disastrous trade deals supported by Bill and Hillary Clinton.

During the 1999 debate over Permanent Normal Trade Relations with China President Bill Clinton said, 'In opening the economy of China, the agreement will create unprecedented opportunities for American farmers, workers and companies to compete successfully in China's market. WRONG: Our trade deficit with China has increased from $83 billion in 2001 to a record breaking $342 billion in 2014.

We're losing our companies; we're losing jobs; they devalue us out of business - China and these other countries.

We have to renegotiate our trade deals, and we have to stop these countries from stealing our companies and our jobs.

I am deeply skeptical of trade deals in general.But the only way they can get a number of Democrats is by doing a strong real currency bill that goes after the worst of the trading partners, the one that's stealing our high-end jobs.

America has lost one-third of its manufacturing jobs since NAFTA, a deal signed by Bill Clinton and supported strongly by Hillary Clinton. And by the way, the single worst trade deal ever made in history anywhere.

I supported the Korean Trade Agreement in 2011. They promised - when it was signed, President [Barak] Obama said it would increase our exports to Korea by $10 billion a year.That creates jobs in America.Since - last year, 2015, there was no increase, like instead of billions of dollars there was like a $100 million increase in our exports to Korea, whereas as their imports to us went up $12 billion, and our trade deficit increased 240 percent.

[Barack] Obama administration, the [George W.]Bush administration have done nothing. And as China has manipulated its currency, we've lost trillions of dollars of wealth and millions of good-paying jobs.

The economy is very sick. We're losing our jobs to China to Japan to every country. We're making horrible trade deals. We are losing jobs in this country. Hundreds and hundreds of thousands of jobs are being lost. And part of the reason is our taxes are so high in this country. I'm also cutting, you know they don't talk about that.

When a company wants to move to Mexico or another company - or another country and they want to build a nice, beautiful factory and they want to sell their product through our border, no tax, and the people that all got fired, so we end up with unemployment and debt, and they end up with jobs and factories and all of the other things, not going to happen that way. And the way you stop it is by imposing a tax.