Subject: Hillary Clinton Discusses Plans to Strengthen American Manufacturing in Indiana
From: Hillary for America Press <[email-masked]>
To: Hillary for America Press <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 27 Apr 2016 10:31:56 -0400
List-Id: <nationalpress2016.hillaryclinton.com>

**

*Hillary Clinton Discusses Plans to Strengthen American Manufacturing in
Indiana*

Hillary Clinton discussed her strategy to "Make it in America" by
supporting American manufacturers and preventing foreign countries like
China from abusing global trade rules, while touring Munster Steel in
Indiana, on Tuesday, April 26.  Clinton's plan to invest $10 billion in
American manufacturing companies and their workers,
<https://www.hillaryclinton.com/briefing/factsheets/2016/04/01/hillary-clintons-strategy-to-make-it-in-america/>
largely paid for by rescinding tax breaks for companies that outsource jobs
abroad, is a contrast with Donald Trump's belief that wages are too high
and Senator Ted Cruz's support for a national right-to-work law that would
attack workers' rights.

*The transcript of Clinton’s remarks, as delivered, is below:*

Thank you very, very much, and thanks to Eric Dean, president of
International Ironworkers, and to Fred McCraw, who is the union steward for
Local 473.  I am really honored to be introduced by them because I do care
deeply about the work that they do, the work that is done by building
trades skilled workers across our country.  And I’m especially pleased to
be here at a business that works closely and productively with their union.

I want to thank everybody associated with Munster Steel, in particular
Jeanne Robbins and Ron Robbins and Patricia Martin, who gave me a tour and
explained what I was looking at and how it ends up in those bridges and
buildings and everything that is built, and built to really survive and
perform the functions that it is supposed to.

It’s really great to be back here in northwest Indiana.  I want to thank
Mayor Tom McDermott for welcoming me back to Hammond.  Thank you very much,
Mayor McDermott.  I also want to acknowledge Mayor Karen Freeman-Wilson
from Gary.  Thank you for being here. I know there are other elected
officials – the sheriff, the county sheriff is here; the county treasurer;
council members; state – other state senators.  I am just really greatly
honored to be here with you.

I want to say something to follow up on what Eric Dean said, because it had
a profound effect on me.  I was a Senator on 9/11 from New York, and so I
got to know a lot of the people who were directly affected – certainly the
families of the 3,000 victims, many of whom needed help; the first
responders who ran toward the building when it was first – the first
building that was hit, and kept running when the second building was hit;
the police, the firefighters, the EMTs and others who saved countless lives
by getting people out of the towers before they collapsed.
But as Eric said, at the same time that the first responders were running
toward the World Trade Center, so were ironworkers and other skilled trades
workers.  The ironworkers in particular.  I mean, there are a legion of
stories of them literally getting off the worksite they were on somewhere
else in New York, New York City, in New Jersey across the river, finding
their way, hoping that because of their skills, they could aid in the
search and rescue.  Sadly, there weren’t very many people to be rescued.
People either died or escaped.  But the ironworkers stayed on that pile for
months, first to not only aid in search and rescue and recovery, but then
to begin to move the debris, the steel beams off the site to begin to clear
it.

So some of the ironworkers were on that pile for many, many months.  And
what Eric is referring to is what became obvious within days, that being on
that site, breathing that debris and that toxic air was going to cause
harmful health effects. And I became aware of that from visiting with and
talking to and listening to ironworkers, police officers, firefighters and
others.  And that’s when I began trying to help them get the health care
that they need.

One of my prized personal possessions is a cross made for me out of a piece
of steel from the pile by an ironworker who – with whom I was meeting in a
large group to talk about what I was trying to do to make sure that their
health was tended to.  And he came up afterwards and said he had taken this
piece of steel that had been burned, that was still showing the marks of
the terrible event, and had made that cross for me.  So I have a particular
sense of commitment to ironworkers, really to all the building trades,
because of what you do every day to build our country, but also what I saw
firsthand on that terrible day of 9/11.

It’s a real honor to be in this plant, a family that has committed three
generations to building this business and to carrying it on.  And Ron was
telling me about some of the investigations that his father came up with to
make this product even more effectively fabricated, whatever it might be.
So it’s a real reminder that we have in our country people who get up every
single day and go to work to build America.  It’s now our challenge to
figure out how we’re going to keep those jobs, grow those jobs, support
those businesses, support those workers, support those unions, so that we
can have a renaissance in manufacturing.

I believe passionately we can do this.  That is why in this campaign I have
laid out specific plans for how I would bring manufacturing back to places
like Hammond, how I would work with business and labor to create the
conditions that would enable us to do that, because it’s not enough just to
diagnose the problem.  We all know we’re losing jobs.  We all know that we
are facing unfair competition.  We all know that we’ve got forces in our
own country who seem determined to undermine manufacturing for reasons that
I find just absolutely absurd.

So if you’re looking at what’s happening, you can see people, and there are
probably some in this plant, who are doing the same job as their parents
did but less money and fewer benefits.  They’re doing everything right, but
maybe they can’t even find a job in their chosen profession.  And it’s got
to be hard to be optimistic about the future.  And it’s clear that we’re
giving too many Americans, particularly working Americans, a really raw
deal.

So in this campaign, it’s important that people not just give speeches and
get everybody riled up.  You need to ask them, what are you actually going
to do and how are you going to do it?  Give me the specifics.  Don’t just
give me the rhetoric and the demagoguery.  And that is why I have tried to
be as specific as possible.

I’m just bewildered when I hear the Republican frontrunner, Donald Trump,
actually say that wages are too high in America; that’s why he doesn’t
support raising the minimum wage.  And Republican governors and
legislatures like yours right here in Indiana are waging a relentless
assault on workers’ rights.  And I know Ted Cruz has called for a national
right-to-work law.  Well, right-to-work is wrong for workers, and it’s
wrong for America. And it’s important to stand up against these domestic
efforts.

We’ve got two sets of challenges.  We have challenges from our own country,
from businesses and political leaders who don’t seem to understand that we
still have to make it in America.  We’ve got to make things and sell things
around the world. And then we’ve got unfair competition coming from
outside.  So I recently heard that your legislature repealed the common
wage.  Is that right?  And it was supported by the chamber of commerce, I
was told.  This is in total violation of Economics 101.

I mean, how do we grow the economy if people are not being paid what they
deserve to be paid for the jobs they do?  We are a 70 percent consumption
economy.  And if we don’t pay people, we don’t grow the economy.  That’s
not good for families.  It’s not good for businesses.  It’s not good for
Indiana, and it’s not good for America.  So we’re going to go right at
this.  It’s one of the reasons why I’m a strong supporter of the prevailing
wage, of project labor agreements, and other ways of making sure that the
people we depend on to actually build our country get paid what they should
for it.

Now, I’ve been following what’s been happening in Indiana, and I’ve read
about some of the very large layoffs and the jobs being moved out of
Indiana, even moved out of our country.  I’ve read about Carrier.  And I’ve
got a set of plans that will incentivize companies who treat workers like
the assets they are, not costs to be cut.  And it is important that we do
everything possible to make any company that shifts jobs overseas pay back
any tax benefits they got from the American people.

Now, Carrier in Indianapolis plans to close down operations and lay off
1400 workers.  UTEC in Huntington is laying off around 700 more.  And that
is just six months after their parent company spent $12 billion on stock
buybacks for shareholders.  And I stress that point because there are a lot
of folks who think they know that all of this is caused by trade
agreements.

And I believe trade agreements contribute to it, but it’s also caused by
quarterly capitalism, by activist shareholders, by company CEOs who don’t
put their workers, their long-term success and profitability, ahead of
their own bonuses and the pressures that they are facing from the analysts
that evaluate their stock.

So I’m saying to CEOs who think they can make a quick buck by turning their
backs on our country – the country, by the way, that made them successful
in the first place – we are not going to let you take advantage of us
anymore.  I’m going to stand up to both CEOs at home and China abroad.  We
are not going to let either one of these forces affect us.  So if they
invest in America, we’ll stand with them.  If they pay their fair share,
we’ll stand with them.  But if they cut and run, we’re going to pay a price.

So we need to have a policy coming from the very top in the White House
where we don’t just complain, we act, and we organize to act.  And that’s
something that the ironworkers know a lot about, it’s something that we do
by looking in the long term, and that is what this company knows a lot
about.

I want to just say a few words about trade and steel.  One of the biggest
and most important battles is over steel.  China – and other countries, but
primarily China – have been dumping artificially cheap steel into our
markets to gain an unfair advantage.  I really appreciate the fact that
Munster Steel buys domestic steel.

​
And I thank the Robbins family for that.  In fact, they told me some of the
steel they buy comes from a plant in Arkansas that I know quite a bit about
because it was located there when Bill was governor of Arkansas.

So we’ve got this problem with China and other countries.  And why is China
doing this?  Well, because demand in their own country has slowed down.
But they want to keep their steel mills going because they want to keep
people employed while they try to figure out what to do about their
economy.  Well, that’s their problem, and we shouldn’t let them dump it
onto us.

And so what I am advocating is that, number one, they’re trying to solve
their domestic economic problems on the backs of American workers.  It’s
illegal, pure and simple.  Steel is crucial to our manufacturing base,
crucial to our national security, and I will not let this vital industry
disappear.  I’m going to make the steel industry’s survival one of my top
priorities.  Now, I’ve gone toe to toe with China’s top leaders on some
very tough issues, and as president I will go to bat for all of our trades
– for our steelworkers, our ironworkers, everyone who is absolutely looking
for that kind of champion.

We are going to use every tool we possibly can against China for their
illegal actions.  I’m going to appoint a trade prosecutor, reporting
directly to me in the White House, who will look for every possible way to
prevent them from continuing this behavior.  And I will have the federal
government join with the trades and businesses in bringing trade cases
against China.  We’re not going to wait for a union or a business to do
it.  We’re going to join forces.  We’re going to do it together.  We’re
going to go after the Chinese.

We are also going to reject – one of the reasons why I came out against the
Trans-Pacific Partnership trade agreement – we’re going to reject weak
automobile rules of origin in trade deals.  That gives Chinese steel and
other products an unfair back door to U.S. markets.  And it’s important
that we recognize that it can still very well be Chinese steel even if it’s
in a Japanese automobile.  So we’re going to trace all their steel.  We’re
going to have, as I said, a trade prosecutor who’s going to prosecute these
cases.  And we’re going to send an absolute message:  You’re not going to
get away with this anymore.  When I was a Senator, I testified for our
businesses, and at that time it was the steelworkers in New York, before
the International Trade Commission against some of their behavior back
about 10 years ago.  So I am committed to standing up and being as strong
in this as I possibly can.

So standing up for workers, standing up for home-grown businesses,
especially standing up for unionized businesses that recognize the
importance of a high-quality workforce like the people standing right
there.  Now, I think this is important for our whole country.  It’s
especially important here in the Midwest. Nearly one in five jobs in
Indiana is in the manufacturing sector.  That’s a much higher percentage
than in much of the rest of the country right now.  I have a plan to invest
$10 billion to bring unions, workers, businesses, universities, and the
government together to create new manufacturing jobs.  I have what I call
the Manufacturing Renaissance Tax Credit to encourage investments in
communities that are hit hard by layoffs and plant closings.  I want to be
a good partner for cities like Hammond and Gary that are really trying to
get back jobs and are making all kinds of efforts to do that.

I know, from my own experience, American workers don’t quit.  And I’m not
about to quit on them.  We’re going to lift up manufacturing, and I’m going
to go after those politicians and decision-makers, whether they’re in
Indianapolis or Washington, who have a very short-term memory.  They don’t
understand we built this country by making things and paying the people who
make them a middle class wage.  The American labor movement helped to build
the American middle class.

We have to bring back middle class jobs and wages.  We’ve got to get
families once again having a higher standard of living, feeling that they
are able to look to a better future for themselves and their children.  I
don’t think there is a more important issue in this explanation.  I’m going
to bring that message to Indiana, as I brought it to Ohio, as I brought it
to New York, brought it to Illinois, brought it to all the states that I
have competed in, because it’s a message that I care passionately about.

So I wanted to come today and I wanted to come to a place that is really
doing a great job, a great job in what you make, what you sell; a great job
in working with your employees; a great job having good relationships with
the Ironworkers Local. I can tell you, this is the model I want to see us
have across America.  And with your help, I will do everything I possibly
can to make that come true.  Thank you all.

###

For Immediate Release, April 2
​7​
, 2016
Contact: [email-masked]

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