Richard Neal Quotes
Let me say at the outset that I do not reflexively oppose international trade.
United States. Congress. Congressional Record. Government Printing Office, 20 July 2006, p. H5524.
The nation, under the pressure of a depression, had adopted a free trade philosophy. We would go back to protectionism in the 1930s and back to free trade in the 1960s. Ironically, it was generally the Republican party that has driven these shifts. There has always been a free trade wing of the party and an isolationist wing.
Turgot was one of the most advanced economic thinkers in Europe and realized, even before most of the Americans, that by freeing itself England, that the Americans would be forced to become free traders and that in turn would make America a major Economic power despite the fact that American economic policy over the years vacillated between protectionism and free trade.
Democratic politicians of that era mostly opposed free trade because the experience ever since NAFTA showed that many manufacturing jobs were lost in the United States although many new jobs were created but few of these were good paying jobs that Americans with limited educations could perform as they were able to with manufacturing jobs. And during that period, the requirements for fair trade and foreign workers rights have been very poorly enforced. The Democrats split between those who thought that new trade treaties could be negotiated and enforced, correcting the problems of the past, and those who did not believe that such proper free trade was very likely.
Referring to NAFTA, CAFTA and other international trade agreements
Richard Edmund Neal is an American politician serving as the U.S. Representative for Massachusetts's 1st congressional district since 1989. The district, numbered as the 2nd district from 1989 to 2013, includes Springfield, West Springfield, Pittsfield, Holyoke, Agawam, Chicopee and Westfield, and is much more rural than the rest of the state. A member of the Democratic Party, Neal has been the dean of Massachusetts's delegation to the United States House of Representatives since 2013, and he is also the dean of the New England House delegations.
