President Obama denounced positions held by Democratic presidential candidate Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt) during his speech to the United Nations general assembly this morning.
While addressing the United Nations, Obama said, “The increasing skepticism of our international order can also be found in the most advanced democracies. We see greater polarization, more frequent gridlock, movements on the far-right, and sometimes the left, that insist on stopping the trade that binds our fates to other nations, calling for the building of walls to keep out immigrants.”
Although the comments about trade and immigration were a swipe at Donald Trump, on the far-left, Sanders has also called for restrictions on trade and immigration.
According to Sanders’ campaign website, the senator takes a strong stand against free trade agreements. It claims Sanders is against “NAFTA, CAFTA, permanent normal trade relations (PNTR) with China, the TPP, and other free-trade agreements.”
Sanders’ logic behind his opposition to free trade deals is that they allegedly “kill American jobs by shifting work overseas to nations which fail to provide worker protections and pay extremely low wages.”
In a post on Facebook, Sanders wrote that he believes, “Unfettered free trade has been a disaster for middle class and working Americans.”
“Trade is a good thing but it must be based on principles that are fair to American workers,” Sanders wrote. “The U.S. government can no longer allow corporate America to sell-out the middle class and move our economy abroad. It is high time we ended our disastrous trade policies and began to negotiate trade policies that work not just for corporate America, not just for CEOs who make huge compensation packages, but trade policies that are fair for the working people of this country.”
Sanders has expressed the same sentiment on Twitter:
Sanders’ comments about trade have even earned him Trump’s approval.
On the topic of immigration, although Sanders has vocalized his opposition to a Trump-style border fence, Sanders has also come out against an open borders policy.
In an interview with Vox, Sanders decried open borders as a “Koch brothers proposal” and a “right-wing proposal.” He claimed open borders “would make everybody in America poorer” since “you're doing away with the concept of a nation state.”
“What right-wing people in this country would love is an open border policy,” Sanders insisted. “Bring in all kinds of people, work for $2 or $3 an hour, that would be great for them. I don't believe in that. I think we have to raise wages in this country, I think we have to do everything we can to create millions of jobs.”