Bill Richardson on Free Trade Democratic Governor (NM); Secretary of Commerce-Designee

Ban contaminated toys and food from China

No such thing as completely free market; so regulate

If China can fairly make shirts cheaper than Americans, we’ll need to make something we’re better at making. But if the Chinese shirt is cheaper only because their workers make sweatshop wages and the owners pour chemicals into local rivers, we can’t go along.

I’m not sure a lot of the advocates of free trade understand the difference between free & fair trade. All goods cost something to make, but it matters what gets calculated in the cost: whether it’s raw materials, or human rights, or the cost of defending oil transport routes, or damage to the environment.

In the real world, there is no such thing as completely free trade. All trade needs to have regulatory sideboards to prevent a cost-reduction competition via the exploitation of people and the environment.

Communism is teaming up with corporations to open up China

There are few areas at which communism is more efficient than capitalism, but one is ruining the environment. It took the US capitalist free-market economy hundreds of years to achieve the same levels of environmental destruction that China, at its current pace, will achieve in about 20.

China’s economic officials predict that China will build another coal-based electric-generating unit every week for the next decade. Why would China decide, on its own, to use more expensive, climate-friendly, carbon-clean technologies? Especially when it sees the US refusing to adopt carbon limits and expanding its own carbon emissions every year?

We must find a way, not only to agree with China and India on the technologies, energy investments, and emissions limits that will create some future security for our climate, but also to assure them that they will have the energy they need.

Enforce labor & environmental standards & job safety

A: We should never have another trade agreement unless it enforces labor protection, environmental standards and job safety. What we need to do is say that from now on, America will adhere to all international labor standards in any trade agreement--no child labor, no slave labor, freedom of association, collective bargaining--that is critically important--making sure that no wage disparity exists.

Fair trade includes no slave labor & no child labor

We need fair trade, not just unabashed free trade

A: What I believe we need in this country is fair trade, not just unabashed free trade. What I would do is, first of all, any future international trade agreement should have the following components as part of the law, not as a side agreement.

1. Worker protections, because this is critically important comparing work standards in America and in other countries.
2. We should have environmental protections. One of the unfortunate sides of NAFTA, which I supported, was that it was supposed to improve air quality. It hasn’t happened. So there has to be very, very strong labor protections and environmental protections.
3. Last, wage disparities. I think it’s critically important that any future trade agreement look what other countries have in terms of wages and find ways to promote equity in those wage disparities. But we are in a global world.

NAFTA critically important for US as well as Mexico

That didn’t mean the absence of dislocation: while NAFTA figured to create more jobs in the US, some jobs would be lost. A key part of the final bill presented to Congress needed to include worker-adjustment programs and other so-called side agreements addressing such issues as labor standards and the environment.

I felt the treaty was crucial to Mexico. I thought NAFTA would create positive economic change and help to stimulate a broader political debate. I thought it also had the potential to affect the immigration issue: if Mexico’s economy boomed, beter-paying jobs would provide Mexicans an incentive to stay home.

Expand regional trade with Chihuahua

Specifically, we have agreed to create a functional New Mexico-Chihuahua Economic Development Commission. The two of us will co-chair this commission that will include cabinet secretaries and business leaders from both states. We will meet monthly-and rotate between Santa Fe, and Chihuahua, and our respective border communities.

The purpose of this commission will be to increase trade. We will do this by developing, and implementing, a regional economic development plan with specific goals, timetables and assignments. The most important message I can deliver today is that we are one region.

Supports NAFTA, GATT, & WTO

A: Yes.

Q: Do you support the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT)?

A: Yes.

Q: Do you support the WTO?

A: Yes.

Q: Do you support imposing tariffs on products imported from nations that maintain restrictive trade barriers on American products?

A: No.

Q: Should a nation’s human rights record affect its “most favored nation” trading status with the United States?

A: Yes.