David Bonior Goes After Hillary on Trade

by: philgoblue

Wed Jul 25, 2007 at 17:35:26 PM EDT

With all due respect ... they had a very important choice to make back in '93: whether to do the North American Free Trade agreement or health care. They implemented the North American Free Trade Agreement that put literally millions of workers out of work in this country and destroyed, basically, our good trading relationships we had around the world. And then in the interim, they lost any capital they had to get health care passed. ... The fact of the matter is it's been an absolute disaster on health care.

a very effective business effort in the U.S. on behalf of NAFTA.... It is certainly clear that we have not by any means finished the job that has begun.

Parts II and III of the interview.

Rough Transcript: When he made the decision to do NAFTA as opposed to healthcare -- it was one of the worst decision of his presidency and one of the worst legislative decisions made in the history of this country. NAFTA meant more lost jobs, a neo-liberal trade policy that only benefited those at the very top. The people who lost were workers, not only in the United States, but also in Mexico and Canada. There were no protections for workers. It's been with us now since 1994, we've had 17 years and we've seen a widening income gap, we've seen the loss of manufacturing jobs -- millions of jobs in this country, and the devastation of the environment because there were no environmental or labor protections It's been a race to the bottom. It's been devastating. That's one of the reasons that I'm voting for John Edwards for President. He understands that, he'll fight to change the direction of our trade policy, he'll fight for jobs in this country, not exporting our jobs abroad. He'll make sure that any future trade agreements will have have strong labor and environmental provisions. And he cares passionately about this. We want somebody who believes in our workers in this country and protecting their job and engaging in trade in a smart way instead of an exploitative way that basically just helps those at the top. John Edwards has the best record and positions on the trade issue.

Edwards can go to the other countries and say he wants to renegotiate the trade agreement. There are people throughout Latin America who are for a trade system more in the European Union. Everyone wants to trade with us, so we can set the parameters high. We have leverage, it takes someone with guts to use it. We can harmonize upwards rather than taking everyone down.... So that working people are the beneficiaries of trade policies as opposed to those on top -- the corporate internationalists who have been plundering workers over the last couple decades. It's smart trade. We're not anti-trade. We're just better off when trade benefits regular people and gives them good wages that they in turn spend within their communities and strengthen those communities.... We used to do that. We used to insist on the rights of workers and had fair trade.

Unions helped make the middle class in this country, back in 1935.... It made jobs in the steel and auto industry, which weren't good jobs then -- like the service jobs of today --, they got a union, they grew their wages, they got safety measures, and a sense of dignity. It changed the entire economic structure of the United States. And there's no reason why that can't happen with today's service jobs. The tax base increases and folks have money to spend. John Edwards has done a lot to try to organize service industry workers into unions. For example the Hotel Workers Rising movement with Danny Glover. He was at the University of Miami helping workers. He understand that one way to break poverty in this country is to allow people to join unions and the best way to do that is through card-check legislation.

Tips to David Mizner and Wade Norris.