David Bonior Quotes

Nafta has been responsible for a race to the bottom in standards across North America, with working conditions declining along with wages.

Since NAFTA was put in place, Mexico has lost 1.9 million jobs and most Mexicans' real wages have fallen.

Unfair trade deals like the North American Free Trade Agreement eviscerated good-paying manufacturing jobs, putting more than 3 million U.S. workers out of work.

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.

Our great history has been that people came to Michigan because you didn't have to have a college degree to get a good-paying job. Consequently, we have got a larger number of our population that right now are facing outsourcing, et cetera, without higher or advanced degrees.

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.

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

There is a trend worth worrying about, which is the disappearance of manufacturing jobs from the workforce. Shortly after World War II, about one-quarter of employed Americans held manufacturing jobs. Now less than one-tenth do. From the perspective of individual businesses, this change is natural and desirable—rising productivity by definition means fewer people making more things. But it is troublesome for society as a whole, since factory jobs have historically buoyed the middle class and given rise to future industries and jobs, virtuous-cycle style.

Offshoring manufacturing jobs left Americans with fewer high-value-added, well-paid jobs, and the U.S. middle class downsized. Ladders of upward mobility were taken down. Income and wealth distributions worsened.

There are people walking around the streets of Kansas City who are unemployed, while one of our largest employers is not only sending jobs aboard, but then turning around and making a statement about preserving jobs.

I fundamentally believe that politics is counterintuitive. The left think they're helping working people by providing more rights, but all that actually happens is you create poverty and despair, because jobs go to your competitors who have fewer rights for workers.

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.

People are worried about what’s going to happen to their jobs. There’s a lot of off-shoring and out-sourcing taking place. There’s a lot more mobility of labor and of people. Unless we explain what’s happening, people will resort to protectionism and xenophobia.

Free trade is killing the labor movement.

As we lose manufacturing jobs across the country, the burden falls disproportionately on Black Americans.

Jobs are being outsourced at such an alarming rate My neighbor has no job at all with no prospects to date. So perhaps I should be thankful for the little that I make If I dare to ask for a living wage My job would be at stake.

When you liberalize trade, benefits go to capital and away from labor.

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

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.

Technology has been advancing so fast that the number of jobs globally in manufacturing is declining. There is no way that Trump can bring significant numbers of manufacturing jobs back to the U.S.

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.

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 factory work that lifted millions out of poverty in places like China and Vietnam probably did cost some workers in North Carolina and Wallonia their jobs.

Paul Ryan is the mercenary champion of Hillary Clinton's - this is Hillary Clinton's. This came out of the State Department. This Trans Pacific Partnership is going to export our jobs. It's going to import foreign workers to replace Americans and our jobs.