“Look, I love international trade,” he continued. “I love India so much I’ve taken my family there on vacation. The fact is, does one transfer a job to a foreign country to provide services and products to the home market? The answer is no. This is the first time it’s ever been attempted, and it’s idiotic.
“Henry Ford understood that if you pay high wages, people can afford to buy the cars they’re making—and if they can’t, unpleasant things are going to occur. If we look at wages, they are basically stagnant in this country for 30 years while profits have soared, and there has been very little participation in this growth for the working men and women in this country.”
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“I’ve never been able to rationalize a social structure that does not honor work in any form,” he said. “I was always told to honor hard work, no matter what. That’s a value structure that has dissipated, perhaps, over time. I’m not sure what we honor now as a society, other than C.E.O.’s and senior management who make extraordinary sums of money not necessarily related to performance.
“We are desperate in this country for a countervailing power to that of corporate America politically,” he said. “If you’re not willing to protect the American middle class in the values that make the American dream possible, you’re not going to get my vote. And I don’t care what your party says.”
