Paul Ryan Quotes

Historically, large-scale global trade has served two functions: 1) the exchange of goods between willing sellers and buyers described in Econ 101 textbooks; 2) as a tool of state aggrandizement, in which the private parties are stand-ins for governmental interests.

What Donald Trump has been concerned about, what he's talked about, is when we get deals that don't level the playing field, when we get deals that aren't the kinds of best deals we can get, we want good deals, and those are free trade deals to lower the barriers between trade between two countries.

We want to have trade agreements that give us a level playing field, get other countries to respect the rule of law, intellectual property rights, lower their taxes to our barriers, that's good for us, and that is something that I do believe that President [Donald] Trump agrees with.

Remember, it was Bill Clinton who signed NAFTA, one of the worst economic deals ever made by our country or, frankly, any other country. Never, ever again.

Canada and the United States are also working at the World Trade Organization and in our own hemisphere with negotiations for a Trade Area of the Americas to try to help countries create a positive climate for investment and trade.

What you do is you say, fine, you want to go to Mexico or some other country, good luck. We wish you a lot of luck. But if you think you're going to make your air conditioners or your cars or your cookies or whatever you make and bring them into our country without a tax, you're wrong.

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

The American people want to make sure that the rules of the game are fair. And what that means is that if you look at surveys around Americans' attitudes on trade, the majority of the American people still support trade. But they're concerned about whether or not trade is fair, and whether we get the same access to other countries' markets that they have with us. Is there just a race to the bottom when it comes to wages, and so forth.

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.

We've been the foolish country for so long with this free trade, but it's not free trade because it's - you know, just doesn't work. I mean, it's not working. You look at the deficits we have.

What you do to China is you say if you don't behave we're going to have to start taxing your goods coming into our country.

Donald Trump talks a good game on trade, but he's never lived it. He's lined his pockets by outsourcing jobs to low-wage countries, and now he's talking about trade as if he actually means it?

What Clinton wants is to enforce trade policy, she wants to triple the number of trade enforcement officers, which will really matter in trying to level the playing field with South Korea and China and other countries that don't play it straight.

With our trade deals we are always second. You can pick any country and they're eating our lunch and making us look bad and so we're going to change that.

I support free trade. Donald Trump supports free trade.Trade means jobs. Jobs in the United States, jobs in my home state of Indiana are supported by international exports.

I should also say that apart from the negotiations that are taking place within the WTO, we are ourselves involved in all manner of bilateral negotiations, or, if they are not bilateral, with the South African Customs Union and the European Union. All the member countries of the European Union have now ratified the agreement that we have with the EU and that opens up the EU market in various ways.

We're working on accession to the WTO very actively. We still have several countries with which we need to conclude agreements and possibly that will happen next year.

You mentioned the Free Trade Agreement and yes I can't tell you how pleased we are that Morocco is one of the countries that our country is going to begin negotiating a Free Trade Agreement with.

The government's desire to expand global trade may be understandable, but we mustn't give away too much. We must tell our elected representatives to at least delay the Canada-China FIPA until it has been examined more thoroughly, and to reconsider the inclusion of investor-state arbitration mechanisms in all trade deals.

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.

President Obama was right to make enforcement of those trade rules a priority and his creation, today, of a Trade Enforcement Unit is a massive step in the right direction.

I have long been a vocal advocate of reciprocal free trade though that position did not endear me to my own political party. And I continue to strongly believe in free and fair international trade.

You can’t have free trade of others don’t play by the same set of rules that our guys play by…. Free trade works if we open our markets and they open theirs.

These agreements should be free trade. They aren’t free trade.

Trade agreements are what you make of them.