Thomas Perez in Meet the Press interviews during 2016

On Foreign Policy: The rest of the world is looking to America for leadership

PEREZ: We're continuing to confront the threat of foreign terrorism, ISIL and others, we continue to see nations that are having dramatic challenges. And a lot of the same questions are being asked around the world. And I think around the world, the rest of the world is looking to America for leadership. Looking for us to summon those values of inclusion and opportunity and optimism. I look around the world and when I travel internationally in my job, everybody's looking to America for guidance. Everybody says to me, "We admire you as the face of the earth in terms of the values that we should be upholding." I think America is a remarkable leader. And with Secretary Clinton moving forward, the challenges of terrorism, the challenges of global inequality; we've got to make sure that our economy at home and our economy around the world works for everybody and not just for a few.

On Free Trade: TPP learned from past to protect the American worker

PEREZ: Sure. This is what the president tasked me with doing, and I was proud to do it. Which is we want to go to school on the mistakes and the lessons of past trade agreements. We want to build a trade regime that the North Star is the American worker, protecting the American worker. And so we want to make sure that when we negotiate with Mexico and Vietnam and others that we have the strongest protections for workers that we've ever had. And that's what we've set out to do, and that's what I believe we have done. The President and Secretary Clinton have a disagreement on whether TPP has gone that far. You know, this is not the first time in the history of the Democratic Party that there have been differences of opinion.