Lou Dobbs, the populist TV host who once considered a presidential run, has died at age 78. His legacy of defending working and middle class America against Wall Street, open borders and the donor class is more prominent in today’s politics than ever before.
Dobbs was known for his television shows fighting free traders, a class of economists and politicians who defended opening up the U.S. economy to rapid globalization that ultimately led to the loss of millions of American jobs in working- and middle-class communities across the Midwest.
“I despise this administration’s trade policy, the level of care and concern they have for the American people and the interests of this country in passing this foolish policy. [free trade agreements] “… It’s just disgusting,” Dobbs said of the administration of Republican President George W. Bush after a 2007 segment about the rise of food imports into the U.S. without proper safety regulations.
“What we have right now is managed trade, it’s managed trade on the European Union side and it’s managed trade on the Chinese side,” Dobbs said. Said In 2010, the free trade consensus that had dominated Washington, DC for the previous five years collapsed.
“It’s time for Americans to understand that not only have our elites let us down, but that they are betraying the very idea of the American Dream by degrading the middle class to ordinary people and, in some cases, forcing us into a race to the bottom against the cheapest labor in the world,” Dobbs said.
As Republicans in Congress tried to help give President Bush and then-President Obama fast-track trade authority, Dobbs, in several interviews, accused those politicians of using an undemocratic process to enrich special interests while destroying more American jobs.
Perhaps Dobbs’ most formidable opponents were the two major business associations representing the world’s largest multinational corporations, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and the Business Roundtable.
In 2009, when a group of Democratic and Republican lawmakers were pushing to include a tough “Buy American” provision in a spending bill, Dobbs criticized the Chamber of Commerce for its relentless lobbying against the provision.
“[The Chamber of Commerce] “They’ve been buying the president for eight years. They know what they’re doing,” Dobbs said after then-Rep. Don Manzullo (R-Ill.) suggested the group simply didn’t understand the “Buy American” clause.
“When you have an organization that calls itself the U.S. Chamber of Commerce that is against American manufacturing, that is against putting money in the pockets of American workers and American businesses, especially the small businesses that create 80 percent of our jobs, what does that say about our country? What is happening in our country? Have we fallen that far?” Dobbs said.
In 2007 60 minutes In an interview with Lesley Stahl, Dobbs denounced corporate outsourcers as traitors to American communities.
“It’s terrible that you would sacrifice the interests of your stakeholders, the communities where your business is based, the countries where your business is based, and put your middle class in direct competition with people all over the world who are working 57 cents an hour, just to get the cheapest labor possible,” Dobbs said.
Along with protecting the nation’s workers, Dobbs has also been a patriot on immigration, arguing for decades that legal immigration levels must be reduced and illegal immigrants removed in order to raise wages for working- and middle-class Americans.
“The idea that American corporations have brought 20 million illegal immigrants into this country to exploit them… is just unacceptable to me. For example, in the meatpacking industry, the average hourly wage 20 years ago was $19 and now it’s $9. The idea that employers should be allowed to do that is just unacceptable to me,” Dobbs said in an interview with Charlie Rose in December 2006.
“The minimum wage in this country is going down, not up,” Dobbs said. “So we already have a guest worker program, the H2 program, and there must be a reason why it’s not working. And we need more guest workers, and the minimum wage in this country is going down, so that means we have a labor surplus, not a labor shortage.”
“Who are the victims here? The victims are the workers of this country,” Dobbs continued, “because they pay taxes, they work in this country for wages that have been stagnant for over 30 years. They are the real victims.”
During a panel discussion in late 2007, Dobbs blasted elected officials who repeatedly used corporate arguments to defend the H-1B visa program, known for forcing Americans to be fired after training foreign replacements.
“Senator Ted Kennedy held hearings earlier this year and invited Bill Gates as a special witness to talk about H-1B visas. Bill Gates responded… he wanted an unlimited number of visas to attract ‘the best and the brightest,'” Dobbs said.
“…the reality is that if H-1B visas were issued indefinitely, as expected, it would be exponentially destructive. Under the current H-1B visa program, seven out of 10 H-1B visas go to Indian companies based in the U.S. for the purpose of domestic outsourcing to Indian H-1B visa holders, who are paid an average of $12,000 less than their U.S. counterparts,” Dobbs continued. “…the lies surrounding the H-1B visa program, the myths that U.S. companies have tried to spread around the H-1B visa, are astounding and I believe deserve a federal investigation.”
“Our borders are collapsing and our H-1B visa program is collapsing because American corporations and special interests have driven policy,” Dobbs said. “…The facts stand before all of us: both parties have ignored the will of the people and ignored their own responsibilities. The public officials we send to Washington, D.C., are largely slaves to the interests of American corporations and illegal employers.”
Just six years ago, Dobbs Tucker Carlson Tonight Explain the purpose of mass immigration to the United States
“When it comes to illegal immigrants, they are the ‘desirable’ group because the establishment, the Business Roundtable, the Chamber of Commerce and US multinational corporations want cheaper labor, they want open borders and they want ‘harmonised’ borders,” Dobbs said.
“The goal of the George Bush administration and much of the Obama administration was a ‘North American Union’ that would bind Canada and Mexico with the United States… The reality is, Americans understand what’s going on… Americans know when they’re being lied to,” Dobbs explained.
Tucker responded, “You’ve been saying this for 20 years. I vividly remember you saying something similar and people laughing when we worked for another network. You were totally right.”
John Binder is a reporter for Breitbart News. Email him at jbinder@breitbart.com. Follow him on Twitter. here.
