Mike Huckabee (Trade)

Huckabee's Trade (section page)

Adapted from On The Issues

Free and Fair Trade

"As president, I will fight for America’s future and America’s farmers. I will:

• Reject Obama’s radical, EPA mandates that strangle farmers with bureaucracy and Washington nonsense.
• Fight for free and fair trade. Americans can compete with anyone in the world, but agriculture trade is often unfair and not free.
• Support American corn producers and the renewable fuel standard. Washington shouldn’t pick favorites or change the rules in the middle of the game.
• Abolish the Death Tax and protect family farms." [1]

Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP)

"I support free, fair trade, but I’m sick of America’s workers getting punched in the gut."

"We don’t create good jobs for Americans by entering into unbalanced trade deals that forgo congressional scrutiny and ignore the law only to import low-wage labor, undercut American workers, and drive wages lower than the Dead Sea."

"I cannot support giving this administration trade promotion authority (TPA) for the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP)" given the following reasons:

• Obama administration cannot be trusted to negotiate on behalf of the American people.
• President Obama should sort out a clear, honest framework of Trade Promotion Authority (TPA) with Congress before horse-trading with foreign bureaucrats.
• Political pressure from Obama administration will force Congress to accept even a lousy TPP agreement.
• Poorly crafted TPP will worsen problems on immigration and currency manipulation, such as number of foreign workers and artificially cheap imports.

"We need to expand trade and work with partners across the globe to grow our economy. However, this Administration (TPA) cannot be trusted to negotiate a deal that makes sense for American workers. [2]

More Quotes on Free Trade

• Trans Pacific Partnership isn't fair trade or free trade
  • Huckabee complained that American wages have been stagnant since Chinese trade agreements went into effect over the past few decades: "People are working hard, and they have less to show for it," he said. "We need to quit apologizing for being America, and we need to start making it so that Americans can prosper and not just so that the Chinese can buy Louis Vuitton and Gucci bags.

• Free AND fair trade: globalize, but help those whom it harms
  • I support free trade, but it has to be fair trade. We are losing jobs because of an unlevel, unfair trading arena that must be fixed.

• Diplomacy hasn't worked; impose sanctions on China
  • The federal government won't take the necessary steps when China refuses to play by the rules of fair trade. For the past six years, we've relied on diplomacy, when we should have imposed sanctions and brought legal actions against them. It's only very recently that our government has at last begun minimal action. We need less talk and more of that action.

• Supports NAFTA & CAFTA, if partners “hafta” abide by rules
  • "I think the free-trade agreements are wonderful to have, and I supported NAFTA and CAFTA. But I always say, then you “hafta” make sure that these free trade agreements are being abided by both parties, and that’s not what’s happened."

• Fair trade includes lead-free products & playing by rules
  • The main thing we have to do is to make sure that our free trade agreements involve fair trade. And that’s something that we’ve got to do a better job of enforcing, is to make sure that those products which are coming into the US are free of lead, that they’re safe, that they’re manufactured in the same kind of standards that we expect our American companies to use when they built things. And that hasn’t happened. And one of the reasons we’re losing a lot of jobs is that we’ve been in such a rush to make sure that we exemplify the boundaries of free trade, that we forgot that we’re all supposed to play by the same rules. If somebody cheats, you’re not playing the game fairly. When the Chinese send toys that have lead, they have dog food that causes our pets to die, when we have food that comes to us contaminated, when things that are created by people who have worked in sweatshops--how does an American worker expect to compete?

• A free country must feed, fuel, & fight for itself
  • When we start outsourcing everything and we are in that kind of a trade deficit, then just remember, who feeds us, who fuels us and who helps us to fight, that’s to whom we are enslaved. So if we can’t do those three things, our national security is very much at risk.

• We need fair trade because we’re losing jobs
  • The fact is, we don’t have fair trade. And that’s the issue we’ve got to address. Our real problem continues to be that an American company is having to pay an extraordinarily high tax on everything they produce, but the countries who are exporting to us don’t have the same border adjustability that we do.

• This country can never yield its sovereignty for any reason
  • I believe with all my heart is that this country can never, ever, ever yield its sovereignty to any other country for any reason, under any circumstance, ever That’s why I would agree that we not only need closed and secure borders, but more importantly, we need a re-understanding that we are a sovereign nation, and we do not yield ourselves over.

• Trade sanctions on Saudi Arabia for persecuting Christians

• China trade contingent on human rights & product safety

• No NAFTA Superhighway from Canada to Mexico

• Marketplace pushes innovation to top & prices to bottom
  • I believe in free trade and allowing the marketplace to push innovative ideas to the top & prices to the bottom. Perhaps the most compelling challenge is ensuring that a free trade correspondingly represents a fair trade.

• Farm subsidies ok because Europe & Asia do same
  • It has been policy to pay farmers a stipend for their crops to ensure the farmers will receive a guaranteed minimum price. Some conservatives believe that all agricultural subsidies should be discontinued and allow the market to function. In an ideal world, this would be good practice, but American farmers are competing with subsidized farmers in Europe and Asia, and the fixed costs faced by farmers involving land, equipment, seed, and supplies means that even if they do not sell a single stalk of corn, they will have significant expenses.

• Enforce trade law against subsidized Canadian lumber imports