Bill Richardson: “We should have a relationship based on the recognition that China is a strategic competitor.” Richardson spends a good amount of time talking about the Chinese human rights record, both in regard to China’s own foreign policy to Burma and Darfur and in regard to China’s own workforce.
Chris Dodd: “I don’t mind that we compete with China, but we’re not competing on the same rules.” Dodd comes out and calls Chinese labor what it often is: “slave labor.” Dodd mentions the Harkin amendment back in the Carter administration, which set human rights standards as a condition of foreign relations and trade, and says we need to return to that standard. Dodd’s just shown a good depth of historical knowledge in American government, a strength that comes out of his long service in the Congress.
Joseph Biden returned to this issue and agreed with Bill Richardson and Chris Dodd, remarking in his characteristically aggressive way that there’s no way that labor rights standards cannot be part of the negotiations we hold with other nations.
You know, it’s pretty telling that the only person on the Republican side to mention the issue of worker rights in the debates this year has been Tom Tancredo, making the argument from a nativist point of view that American workers are being hurt by illegal immigration.
Barack Obama has just gone meta-analytical on this issue, briefly noting his agreement with the above, but then stating that American debacles like Guantanamo and Abu Ghraib have made it harder for the United States to engage in global moral leadership, because other nations don’t take the United States seriously on moral issues any more.
