Clinton: We Can’t Be a Great Nation Without Manufacturing

[Omaha Steve]

http://blog.aflcio.org/2007/07/06/clinton-we-cant-be-a-great-nation-without-manufacturing/

Clinton: We Can’t Be a Great Nation Without Manufacturing

by James Parks, Jul 6, 2007

The United States must invest in renewable energy and allow workers to freely join unions if it wants to revitalize the nation’s manufacturing, Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Rodham Clinton today told a national United Steelworkers conference today.

Three other Democratic candidates—Sen. Joseph Biden (Del.), former Sen. John Edwards (N.C.) and Rep. Dennis Kucinich (Ohio)—spoke yesterday at the conference in Cleveland. (Click here to read what they said.)

Sen. Clinton (D-N.Y.) told the more than 800 conference participants:

We are going to revitalize our manufacturing base. I don’t think we can be a great nation without a manufacturing base. If we don’t keep making things, we’re not going to sustain our economic standard of living or our quality of life.

Clinton also criticized the Bush administration for serving the interests of the wealthy instead of looking out for the nation’s middle class.


Hillary Rodham Clinton

Also at the conference, AFL-CIO Secretary-Treasurer Richard Trumka presented the economics education program An Economy That Works for All, saying, “We all need to take part in this war of ideas.”

We can set the stage to build a movement to change our country’s economic policy—a movement that works for all of us. Our unions are ready to meet the challenge, but we need allies, progressive groups, economists…so we can win a workers’ agenda for economic justice to change the direction of the country.

[ikojo]

1. So, did she say there should be a tarriff on

imported goods? Did she say she'd repeal NAFTA and get the US out of the WTO?

What IS the AFL-CIO asking of Mrs Clinton for all of the union dollars they are giving yet another pro big business candidate?

Words are cheap, Hillary! Introduce legislation to repeal NAFTA NOW!

[katsy]

3. Winner!

:thumbsup:

[BearSquirrel2]

8. I don't think that would go over well ...

Here statement IS correct. We cannot survive as an independent nation without manufacturing. But doing the things necessary to reverse the process would probably tick off the DLC and campaign contributors who happen to be making a LOT of money by selling out American workers.

What's next, is Hillary going to talk about the need for a diversity of voices in the media and sidestep the issue of media consolidation. Methinks Rupert Murdoch would be none to pleased about that.

[Selatius]

2. Our manufacturing base has been all but destroyed by free trade and the resulting out sourcing.

The removal of tariffs to protect domestic textile and manufacturing has meant that employers have been freed to move the factories overseas. All we are left with back home are empty, rusting hulks that used to be factories.

There can be no revival of manufacturing in America with free trade, so long as there is always cheaper, non-unionized labor overseas.

[aquart]

4. It was destroyed BEFORE NAFTA.

NAFTA may have been the coup de gras, but Reagan enabled our tool and die industry to go overseas, and we can't build anything if we can't make our tools, factories, spare parts. Reagan shipped out our steel industry to other nations. STEEL.

Repealing NAFTA won't bring anything back. We have to go way beyond that.

[Selatius]

5. I'm aware of that, hence I used out sourcing and free trade instead of NAFTA

The problem starting creeping in back in the 1970s and a little earlier, IMHO. The movement to dismantle the system of tariffs in place since the 1800s had already started.

[partylessinOhio]

6. Well, drive down south and see all the closed mills that used to produce

textiles and employ Americans. What did you do when workers were forced to crate their machinery for shipment to China? What did you say to them when they lost their jobs?

So far I see too many Democratic politicians pushing legislation that hurts the American worker, American poor, American elderly, American disabled and American children.

Hillary won't be any different. Will she raise taxes and restore funds to all the programs that were cut?

[xchrom]

7. bring back bilateral trade negotiations.

trade agreements should be handled one nation at a time -- and trade should NEVER be a carrot of american foreign policy.