When Pressed on Her Free Trade Record, Clinton Admits Jobs Were Lost

MADDOW: In those big industrial states like Ohio and Illinois and Missouri, and to a certain extent North Carolina, how do you respond to voters who feel betrayed by the way that NAFTA has worked out? You know, working class people who look around and say our country didn`t get the jobs that were promised by President Clinton when that was signed. American jobs just got shipped overseas. That hollowed out a big part of our economy that provided good middle-class jobs. I mean, are working class people right to feel betrayed by how that worked out?”
CLINTON: Well, look, I have said repeatedly that I would like to renegotiate it. I think there were parts of it that did not work as hoped for. But I think you`ve got to take a broader perspective. Were some jobs lost? Of course. And was it painful and terrible that people lost their jobs and they saw factories that maybe they, their grandparents even had worked in, pick up and move? Yes. And that`s why I`ve come forward with some, you know, very strict proposals that if you`re trying to move jobs out of America, if you`ve ever gotten one penny of government aid – and lots of places have – you`re going to have to pay it all back. And if you are trying to move your headquarters overseas, and this thing called an inversion that I call a perversion, we`re going to slap a big exit tax on you. So, I think we do have to, you know, really bear down on companies that are picking up and moving and try to do everything we can to stop them. But I think it`s fair to say, Rachel, that more manufacturing jobs were actually created in the `90s. More were created under President Obama. We lost a lot of jobs, particularly manufacturing jobs, when George W. Bush was president. And as I said to Senator Sanders last night, he spent a lot of time, you know, re-litigating the `90s, he expresses his disappointment with President Obama. Let`s focus on where the problem was. We had 23 million new jobs and rising incomes when George W. Bush became president. Then we started losing hundreds of thousands of jobs and one of the reasons is they would not enforce the trade agreements. That`s why I voted against the big multi-national trade agreement CAFTA when I was a senator. You know, I worry that if we don`t have both sides of the equation in place
– you`ve got to have enforcement of trade agreements and you`ve got to have a much more robust safety net for people who might lose their jobs. So, I have a very clear idea about how to make trade work, and if I don`t think agreements work, I`ve said repeatedly for years, I vote against them and I will do my best to mitigate the consequences of the ones already in effect. And I will bear down and really enforce them. You know, I wish the Obama administration right now would crack down on China`s dumping of steel into our market. You know, that should not be permitted. We have some tools that are available to this administration. I`d like to see them use it. And I`d like to send a very clear message to China: You may have your own economic problems, but don`t try to undermine and take away jobs in our steel industry any more than you already have.”
MADDOW: “You agree with President Obama on so many issues. You stayed close to him in this campaign. There haven`t been a lot of issues on which you`ve highlighted real differences between yourself and his administration. Why do you think he hasn`t done that on China and on this steel issue?”
CLINTON: “I don`t know. But, you know, I wrote an op-ed that appeared in a number of newspapers a couple weeks ago. And I pointed out the problems with the steel industry. I also said I would not agree – in fact, I oppose designating China as a market economy. I think that that`s very hard to justify. They are not what we think of as a free market economy – my definition. So, I think in some of these areas, like opposing him on TPP, I did hope that we would get an agreement I could support. It turned out I couldn`t. So, in some of these areas where I worry about the consequences of these agreements, of administration actions, I am speaking out and I am urging the administration not to go forward with market economy and to crack down on dumping of steel.”