A Democrat who’s running for the U.S. Senate says trade policies backed by both Republicans and Democrats have put U.S. jobs in jeopardy. Bob Krause of Des Moines says there are “terrible examples” in Iowa where jobs have been shifted to factories and call centers in other countries.
“An economist…during the Clinton administration predicted the ‘big crash’ about a year before it happened,” Krause says. “…He is predicting now that we will lose 25 percent of the jobs in America due to out-sourcing. That’s after the jobs we’ve already lost.”
Krause is a critic of the North American Free Trade Agreement, commonly called NAFTA. He favors new “protectionist” measures instead. “We need to put up tariffs and do some immediate reviews on what we’re losing overseas,” Krause says. “Not only is it affecting jobs, but it’s affecting health, national defense. It’s affecting ecology laws. It’s affecting a lot of different areas of our life that we really don’t think about.”
Krause has been running for the U.S. Senate for about a year, but he raised less than $2000 in the first three months of the year for his campaign. In contrast, Roxanne Conlin — another Democratic candidate for the U.S. Senate — raised nearly $630,000 during the same period. That’s slightly more than Republican Senator Chuck Grassley did during the first quarter. A Rasmussen poll released this week shows Grassley holds a 13-percentage point lead over Conlin in a head-to-head match-up. Grassley, who is seeking a fifth term in the U.S. Senate, garnered the support of 53 percent of the people who were surveyed while Conlin got 40 percent support.
The other competitor in the Democratic primary race is former state Senator Tom Fiegen of Clarence who raised about $11,000 in January, February and March.