Former Vice President Joe Biden’s trade agenda in the 2020 Democrat presidential primary replicates then-candidate Barack Obama’s trade promises in 2008 — promises that ultimately led to the Obama-Biden White House pushing the job-killing Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) free trade deal.
During this week’s CNN/Des Moines Register Democrat Debate, Biden vowed that he would not sign any free trade deals unless environmentalists and labor unions have a say in negotiations:
There will be no trade agreements signed in my administration without environmentalists and labor at the table … 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. [Emphasis added]
This same promise was vowed by then-candidate Obama in the CNN/Univision 2008 Democrat Debate alongside Hillary Clinton. When talking about his trade agenda, Obama said:
It is absolutely critical that we engaged in trade, but it has to be viewed not just through the lens of Wall Street, but also Main Street, which means we’ve got strong labor standards and strong environmental standards and safety standards, so we don’t have toys being shipped in the US with lead paint on them. [Emphasis added]
That promise ultimately led the Obama-Biden White House to push TPP, a free trade deal that would have made it even easier for multinational corporations to offshore American jobs by forcing America’s working and middle class to compete against Vietnam’s workforce. Workers in Vietnam earn as little as 60 cents an hour sometimes.
Similarly, the Obama-Biden TPP deal would have opened markets in Malaysia where Americans would have been forced to compete against that country’s workforce as well. Workers in Malaysia are often forced into horrific labor conditions and slave wages.
Obama-Biden’s TPP would also have allowed corporations in TPP-countries to bid for U.S. federal government contracts, a provision that would have used American taxpayer money to pay corporations overseas to create jobs in other countries.
Biden has a long record of supporting free-trade-at-all-costs, even if it means eliminating American jobs from the U.S. economy, gutting American industries to send them overseas, and forcing U.S. workers and U.S.-based companies to compete against foreign workers and subsidized foreign corporations with little-to-no protections.
As Breitbart News exposed, in November 1993, Biden claimed that NAFTA would increase jobs and production for American workers employed at Chrysler’s Newark, Delaware, plant by opening up the Mexican market. Years later, in 2007, those American workers at the Newark Chrysler plant were laid off as the plant closed down. At its height, about 5,700 American workers were employed there. When the plant closed, around 700 to 1,100 Americans were left without jobs.
John Binder is a reporter for Breitbart News. Follow him on Twitter at @JxhnBinder.