http://www.progressive.org/news/2011/10/170238/look-record-bernie-sanders-2011-denounces-free-trade-pacts
"Bernie Sanders, speaking on the Senate floor in 2011: Mr. President, I rise in strong opposition to the free trade agreements with Korea, Colombia, and Panama.
Let's be clear: one of the major reasons that the middle class in America is disappearing, poverty is increasing and the gap between the rich and everyone else is growing wider and wider is due to our disastrous unfettered free trade policy.
If the United States is to remain a major industrial power producing real products and creating good paying jobs we must develop a new set of trade policies which work for the American middle class and working class and not just for the CEOs of large corporations. In other words, we must rebuild our manufacturing sector and, once again, manufacture products that are made in the United States of America.
Mr. President, over the last decade, more than 50,000 manufacturing plants in this country have shut down; over 5.5 million factory jobs have disappeared; and we now have fewer manufacturing jobs today than we did in May of 1941. Back in 1970, 25 percent of all jobs in the United States were manufacturing jobs. Today, that figure is down to just 9 percent. In July of 2000, there were 17.3 million manufacturing workers in this country. Today, there are only 11.7 million manufacturing workers..............."
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