William McKinley Quotes

I am not anti-trade. I am pro-trade. But I am pro-sensible trade.

I have never worshipped at the altar of free trade, but I've always been an advocate of free trade.

Let me say at the outset that I do not reflexively oppose international trade.

Governments agree to accept the rulings of the World Trade Organization because, on balance, they benefit from a rules-based international trading order, even in a particular ruling impinges on their right to protect national industries.

I am utterly opposed to anything which will alter the Free Trade character of this country.

Free trade, one of the greatest blessings which a government can confer on a people, is in almost every country unpopular.

May our exports be so great, and our imports so small, that the balance of trade may be in our favor.

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.

Those who whine incessantly and maintain the romantic notion of a self-contained market speak against the interests of American workers and a growing standard of living. They are trafficking in fear and promoting ignorance while advancing their own political ambitions. No great nation has ever increased its worth over time by closing its markets. In fact, history is replete with examples of closed markets leading to destructive economic consequences.

It must become a nation of free traders, which would throw open its ports to the world, and prove to European nations that the colonial system of restriction and monopoly was founded on delusion

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

President Obama has been admirably pro-trade in public remarks, but there has been no progress in moving any new free trade agreements to expand exports abroad and create jobs at home.

I'm an optimist about NAFTA merely being updated.

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

Offshoring is only the latest manifestation of the gains from trade that economists have talked about at least since Adam Smith… More things are tradable than were tradable in the past, and that’s a good thing.

The developing countries are scared out of their wits now, because they don’t understand what they’re being forced to sign. The agreements are going way outside the trade issues and involve a helluva lot of things like your access to oil, your access to intellectual property and capital controls…. When I looked through the investment agreements, it was worse than reading my insurance policy for the fine print. I couldn’t make anything out of it, and I’m a reasonably informed person, a pretty smart economist as they go.

The closest we can come to free trade is illuminating the barriers to free trade.

By definition, by reducing our trade deficit we will be hurting consumers. Consumers are always better off with a trade deficit.

You cannot close down free trade. What you've got to do is open up markets.

We are the greatest trading country in the world because we have the greatest exportation of the growth and product of our land and of the manufacture and labor of our people; and the greatest importation and consumption of the growth, product, and manufactures of other countries from abroad, of any nation in the world.

After so many historical illustrations of the evil effects of abandoning the policy of protection for that of a revenue tariff, we are again confronted by the suggestion that the principle of protection shall be eliminated from our tariff legislation. Have we not had enough of such experiments?

It’s much better than shutting down trade to help people adjust to the effects of trade.

We ought to go for a uniform ad valorem duty without any discrimination.

In all free trade agreements there are winners and losers.

I think TPP, as we knew it, is gone.