All the candidates on the stage got a chance to weigh in on trade in last night's Democratic debate. Here's what they said:
PFANNENSTIEL: Thank you, Mr. Steyer. Let's stay with the theme of America's role in the world and talk about trade. Tomorrow, President Trump is expected to sign phase one of a trade agreement with China. And the Senate will likely soon approve a new trade deal with Mexico and Canada, Iowa's largest trading partners.
Sen. Sanders, you have said that new deal, the USMCA, quote, "makes some modest improvements," yet you are going to vote against it. Aren't modest improvements better than no improvements...
SANDERS: No, we can do much ...
PFANNENSTIEL: ... for the farmers and manufacturers who have been devastated here in Iowa?
SANDERS: The answer is we could do much better than a Trump-led trade deal. This deal — and I think the proponents of it acknowledge — will result in the continuation of the loss of hundreds of thousands of good-paying jobs as a result of outsourcing.
The heart and soul of our disastrous trade agreements — and I'm the guy who voted against NAFTA and against permanent normal trade relations with China — is that we have forced American workers to compete against people in Mexico, in China, elsewhere, who earn starvation wages, $1 or $2 an hour.
Second of all, every major environmental organization has said no to this new trade agreement because it does not even have the phrase "climate change" in it. And given the fact that climate change is right now the greatest threat facing this planet, I will not vote for a trade agreement that does not incorporate very, very strong principles to significantly lower fossil fuel emissions in the world.
PFANNENSTIEL: But, Sen. Sanders, to be clear, the AFL-CIO supports this deal. Are you unwilling to compromise?
SANDERS: The AFL-CIO does. The Machinists Union does not. And every environmental organization in this country, including the Sunrise Organization, who are supporting my candidacy, opposes it.
So I happen to believe — and I hope we will talk about climate change in a moment — if we do not get our act together in terms of climate change, the planet that we're going to be leaving our kids and our children — and our grandchildren will be increasingly unlivable and uninhabitable.
PFANNENSTIEL: We're going to get to climate change, but I'd like to stay on trade. Sen. Warren ...
SANDERS: Well, they are the same in this issue.
PFANNENSTIEL: Sen. Warren, you support the USMCA. Why is Sen. Sanders wrong?
WARREN: I do. I wasn't here. I haven't been in Congress long enough to have voted against NAFTA, but I led the fight against the trade deal with Asia and the trade deal with Europe, because I didn't think it was in the interests of the American people, the American workers, or environmental interests.
But we have farmers here in Iowa who are hurting. And they are hurting because of Donald Trump's initiated trade wars. We have workers who are hurting because the agreements that have already been cut really don't have enforcement on workers' rights.
This new trade deal is a modest improvement. Sen. Sanders himself has said so. It will give some relief to our farmers. It will give some relief to our workers. I believe we accept that relief, we try to help the people who need help, and we get up the next day and fight for a better trade deal.
We need a coherent trade policy. We need a policy that actually helps our workers, our farmers. We need them at the table, not just to trade policy written for big, international companies. I'm ready to have that fight, but let's help the people who need help right now.
PFANNENSTIEL: Thank you. Sen. Sanders, can you please respond to Sen. Warren?
SANDERS: Well, I think that it is not so easy to put together new trade legislation. If this is passed, I think it will set us back a number of years.
Sen. Warren is right in saying we need to bring the stakeholders to the table, that — it is the family farmers here in Iowa and in Vermont and around the country. That is the environmental community. That is the workers. Bottom line here is, I am sick and tired of trade agreements negotiated by the CEOs of large corporations behind doors.
PFANNENSTIEL: Sen. Klobuchar, I'd like to bring you in here.
KLOBUCHAR: Brianne, I want to hit reality here. I serve on the Agriculture Committee, and I will never forget going to Crawfordsville here in Iowa — and thank you for bringing up Iowa, Brianne, since that is where we are — and I went to this plant and there was one worker left in that plant. That plant had been shut down because of Donald Trump's trade policies and because of what he had done to those workers with giving secret waivers to oil companies and ruining the renewable fuel standard. That worker brought out a coat rack of uniforms and he said, these are my friends, they don't work anymore. And their names were embroidered on those uniforms, Derek, Mark, Salvador. And that guy started to cry.
These are real people hurt by Donald Trump's trade war. So what we should do, and I support the USMCA, I am glad that these improvements were made that are supported by people like Richard Trumka and Sherrod Brown on labor and environment and on pharma, the sweetheart deal...
PFANNENSTIEL: Thank you.
KLOBUCHAR: ... because I think we need a big trading block...
PFANNENSTIEL: Thank you, Sen. Klobuchar.
KLOBUCHAR: ... with North America to take on China. And the way you are stronger...
PFANNENSTIEL: Sen. Klobuchar, your time is up.
KLOBUCHAR: ... China is with our allies.
PFANNENSTIEL: Mayor Buttigieg, do you support the USMCA, yes or no?
BUTTIGIEG: Yes, it has been improved, it is not perfect. But when you sit down with the people who are most impacted, they share just how much harm has been done to them by things like the trade war and just how much we can benefit, American consumers and workers and farmers, by making sure we have the right kind of labor and enforceability, as Democrats ensured we got in this USMCA.
But let's acknowledge why there is such fear and frustration. You know, my part of the country, in the industrial Midwest, I remember when they came around in the '90s, selling trade deals, telling us, don't worry about your slice of the pie, the pie will get so much bigger that everyone will be better off. And that promise was broken.
The part about the pie getting bigger happened. It's just that the part about it getting to most people where I live did not. That is why there is such frustration, the sense that these decisions in boardrooms...
PFANNENSTIEL: Thank you.
BUTTIGIEG: ... and in committee rooms in Washington are being made not based on what's best for us...
PFANNENSTIEL: Thank you, Mayor Buttigieg.
BUTTIGIEG: ... but based on their own gain.
PFANNENSTIEL: Vice President Biden, Sen. Sanders has said that Donald Trump will, quote, “eat your lunch” for voting yes on what he calls terrible trade agreements. When it comes to trade, why are you the best candidate to take on President Trump?
BIDEN: There will be no trade agreements signed in my administration without environmentalists and labor at the table. And there will be no trade agreement until we invest more in American workers. We should be putting our money and our effort and our time in preparing American workers to compete in the 21st Century on the high-tech side, dealing with all artificial intelligence. We should be focusing on equipping American workers to do that.
And by the way, the idea — I don't know that there's any trade agreement that the senator would ever think made any sense, but the problem is that 95 percent of the customers are out there. So we better figure out how we begin to write the rules of the road, not China.
PFANNENSTIEL: Sen. Sanders?
SANDERS: Joe and I have a fundamental disagreement here, in case you haven't noticed. And that is NAFTA, PNTR with China, other trade agreements were written for one reason alone. And that is to increase the profits of large multi-national corporations. And the end result of those two, just PNTR with China, Joe, and NAFTA, cost us some 4 million jobs, as part of the race to the bottom.
I am sick and tired and will not tolerate, and we will use the power of the federal contracting system. If a corporation in America wants to shut down in Iowa or Vermont or any place else, and then they think they're going to get on line for our generous federal contract, they've got another thing going.
We need some corporate responsibility here and we need to protect good-paying jobs in America, not see them go to China, Mexico, Vietnam, and all these other countries.
PFANNENSTIEL: Mr. Vice president, what's your response?
BIDEN: We need corporate responsibility and I agree with that completely. But we also need to have enforcement mechanisms in the agreements we make. Enforceable agreements. That's one of the things that has been improved with the trade agreement with Mexico. And that's what we should be doing in any agreement we have.
But let's get back to the basics here. If we don't set the rules of the road by going out to our partners, instead of poking our eye — excuse me, poking our finger in the eye of all of our friends and allies, we make up 25 percent of the world's economy. We've got to bring the other 25 percent of our allies along with us to set the rules of the road so China cannot continue to abuse their power by stealing our intellectual property and doing all the other things, using their corporate state system to our significant disadvantage.
PFANNENSTIEL: Sen. Warren?
WARREN: You know, our problem is not just that we need corporate responsibility. It has been the structure of how these trade deals have been negotiated. The United States has had this strategy for decades. And that strategy has been to have government trade negotiators, a small number, and then surround them with giant multi-national corporation lobbyists and corporate executives, who whisper in the ears of our negotiators and then get deals cut that are great for the giant multi-national corporations, not good for America, not good for American workers, not good for the environment.
We need a different approach to trade and it starts by calling out the corruption of these giant corporations that have cut our trade deals. Everybody wants to get to the American market. And we need to put some standards in place. You want to be able to sell your goods here, then you've got to meet some environmental standards. You've got to meet labor standards.
PFANNENSTIEL: Thank you, Sen. Warren.
WARREN: We need a...
(CROSSTALK)
WARREN: ... approach.
PFANNENSTIEL: I would like to bring in Mr. Steyer here.
Mr. Steyer, even though farmers and manufacturers here in Iowa and around the country could see some relief from the China deal, they've been crushed by the current administration's trade war. What will you do as president to help them get back on their feet?
STEYER: Look, on the first day, I would undo Mr. Trump's tariffs. On the first day, I would get rid of his waivers that Sen. Klobuchar was referring to, to oil refiners, so that not having to use corn-based ethanol.
In fact, these trade deals have been exactly what Sen. Sanders and Warren have been saying, which is that they've been designed to grow the American GDP for the corporations of America, not for the working people of America, and not to protect the climate.
So let me say this. I'm the only person on this stage who says climate is my number one priority. I would not sign this deal, because if climate is your number one priority, you can't sign a deal, even if it's marginally better for working people until climate is also taken into consideration.
Look, I've got four kids between the ages of 26 and 31. I cannot allow this country to go down the path of climate destruction. Everybody in their generation knows it. Frankly, Mayor Buttigieg, you're their generation. I think you would be standing up more — look, that's why I'm standing up for it.
We cannot put climate on the backseat all the time and say we're going to sign this one more deal, we're going to do one more thing without putting climate first. That's why it's my number one priority. We can do it in a way that makes us richer, but we have to do it.
As I said yesterday, Sanders is very blunt about these issues, but at the same time he is quite vague. He seems to oppose competition between American workers and workers in countries with low wages. Does that mean he would block all competing imports from those countries? There's a (small) part of me that wants to see him become president just to understand what his policies would look like!
