INDIANAPOLIS - U.S. Sen. Bernie Sanders blamed trade policies which he fought and Hillary Clinton supported for the loss of manufacturing jobs in Indiana.
He spoke Friday at a United Steelworkers rally outside the Indiana Statehouse where workers were protesting United Technologies' plans to move two of its Indiana plants to Mexico.
"We must rewrite our disastrous trade policies that enable corporate America to shut down plants in this country and move to Mexico and other low-wage countries," Sanders said. "We need to end the race to the bottom and enact trade policies that demand that American corporations create jobs here and not abroad."
United Technologies announced in February that it would shutter a Carrier Corp. factory in Indianapolis and move 1,400 jobs next year to Monterey, Mexico, where workers will be paid only $3 an hour. Another 700 jobs will be lost in Huntington, Indiana, where the same parent company is closing a facility.
Since the North American Free Trade Agreement was passed by Congress in 1994, Indiana has lost 113,000 manufacturing jobs.
"Look around Indiana and you will find once vibrant and strong manufacturing towns like Gary, South Bend, Muncie, Bloomington, Indianapolis and Evansville shattered by abandoned factories, shut down steel mills, sky-high poverty rates and foreclosed homes," Sanders said.
The United Steelworkers Local 1999, which represents workers at the Indianapolis plant, has endorsed Sanders for president.
To read the senator's prepared remarks, click here.
Bernie Sanders, Sanders Campaign Press Release - Bad Trade Deals Cost Indiana Jobs, Sanders Says Online by Gerhard Peters and John T. Woolley, The American Presidency Project https://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/node/317678