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While U.S. unemployment improved in June, Dean said it’s still at a nine-year high and ignores the underemployed, which he pegged at 6 percent.
“These are people who had $50,000 good jobs and now they are making $25,000 or $30,000, and they have two of them, in some cases,” Dean said. “I am tired of having an economy where our best jobs are shifted elsewhere in the world.’’
Dean fans made up a thick portion of the crowd, often turning Dean’s 25-minute stump speech into a rally of revival proportions with interrupted calls of “amen’’ and “yes, yes.’’
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HOWARD DEAN: No. What I said-- Well, I'll tell you what I said in a minute. But I'll follow my train of thought here, most briefly. Free trade has benefited Vermont a great deal. Here's the problem with free trade, and here's why I support fair trade, and why I want to change all our trade agreements to include human rights with trade, as Jimmy Carter included human rights with foreign policy. I still think NAFTA was a good thing. I think the president did the right thing. But the problem now is that, 10 years into NAFTA, here's what we've done. We have shipped a lot of our industrial capacity to other countries. And the ownership pattern, and the ratio of reward between capital and labor in those other countries is what it was 100 years ago in this country.
So the reason for NAFTA is not just trade. It's defense and foreign policy. That is, a middle class country where women fully participate in the economic and political decision making of that country is a country that doesn't harbor groups like Al-Qaeda, and it's a country that does not go to war. So that's in our intersect. That's why trade is really in our long term interest. What we've done so far in NAFTA is we've transferred industrial capacity, but we haven't transferred any of the elements that are needed to make a middle class. The truth is, the trade union movement in this country built America, not literally-- Well, they did do it literally with the Brooklyn Bridge and the Empire State Building, and things like that. But they built America because they allowed people who worked in factories and mines to become middle class people. And America was the strongest country on earth, and still is, because we have the largest middle class on earth, with democratic ideals. That is, working people in this country, by and large, feel that this is their country, and they have a piece of the pie, and it matters what they think.
Now, if you want trade to succeed, ultimately, we're going to have to create a climate in other countries that are beneficiaries of NAFTA where they can create a middle class with democratic ideals. That means we should not have any free trade agreements, and we should go back and tell the WTO that "you need also to include environmental standards and labor standards." Here's why. Today, if you run a factory in Iowa-- Let's suppose you spend a million dollars a year disposing of all the waste products that come out that are toxic. You can go to another country and dump all that stuff in the river and on the ground. So America, because we have environmental standards, and we're willing to trade, straight out, free trade, with countries that it's cheaper by a million dollars, before you even get to wages, to do business there, I think that's a big problem. We're essentially saying, "Our environmental laws are strict. It's cheaper for you to go into business someplace lese. Go ahead." That's the wrong thing to do.
The same with labor standards. I don't know why we should be shipping our jobs offshore when kids can work 12 hours a day, seven days a week, for a small amount of wages. And isn't that what America fought against 100 years go? Wasn't that the victory of the trade union movement? So it seems to me that my position makes sense. We've gone through 10 years of free trade. We've gotten to a position where we now need to change our trade agreements.
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HOWARD DEAN: What I would say is, we've gone the first mile. The first decade has worked, for exactly the reasons you say. I don't disagree with the premise of the free traders. I had this discussion with Bob Rubin, and I said, "Here's the problem. We need an emerging middle class in these countries, and we're not getting one. So now is the time to have labor and environmental standards attached to trade agreements." He said, "You're totally wrong. I can't disagree with you more." I said, "How would you address the problem?" I haven't heard back. You have to deal with this problem. It's a serious problem.
JOE KLEIN: What if they say no?
HOWARD DEAN: Then I'd say, "Fine, that's the end of free trade."
JOE KLEIN: What do you mean, that's the end of free trade? Then we slap tariffs on these countries?
HOWARD DEAN: Yes.
JOE KLEIN: So you'd be in favor of tariffs at that point.
HOWARD DEAN: If necessary. Look, Jimmy Carter did this in foreign policy. If you can't get people to observe human rights, and say that we're going to accept products from countries that have kids working no overtime, no time and a half, no reasonable safety precautions-- I don't think we ought to be buying those kinds of products in this country. We're enabling that to happen. I'm serious.
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