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Al Sharpton on Free TradeReverend; Civil Rights Activist; Democratic Candidate for President |
SHARPTON: I want to cancel it.
EDWARDS: I think we do need to renegotiate it. The problem with NAFTA is these side agreements don’t work. You have to put these labor/environmental protections in the text of the agreement.
Q: Will that be enough?
SHARPTON: No, I don’t think so. This cost jobs for Americans. And it is unequivocal evidence that it costs Americans jobs. People were unemployed. It also went below labor and human rights standards abroad. We need to cancel NAFTA unequivocally. We need to have standards that we would not deal with nations that would put laborers in those kinds of situations. We cannot protect American corporations and call that patriotic and not protect American workers and call that protections.
A: I think that we should seek to revoke NAFTA and have trade agreements only where labor standards are fair and would not cost American workers jobs. These free trade agreements are not proven to help in the nations abroad in terms of securing rights for laborers and they certainly have cost American workers jobs.
SHARPTON: Well, I picked on President Clinton when he was in. I disagreed with NAFTA when Clinton was in, and I think that we have come to see that that disagreement was correct. I think that we cannot have trade policy that overlooks labor, overlooks workers’ rights, overlooks environmental concerns. Just because something is trade, [it doesn’t] makes it right.
SHARPTON: I’m opposed to many of the trade agreements, including NAFTA and others in the 90’s. For any trade agreement, you must have a strong environmental part of the trade agreement that is enforceable. We have too long allowed government to say we must sacrifice environment to stimulate the economy, either globally or domestically. And I don’t think that’s a fair exchange.