La Prensa San Diego’s Publisher, Art Castañares, conducted a one-on-one interview with Senator Bernie Sanders before the rally Sanders held in National City on Saturday, May 20. Four questions of the interview are included here:
LPSD: You speak a lot about student college debt, but what about vocational and career training? What is your view on those kinds
of programs?
SANDERS: Look, every human being has different needs. Some will want to go to 4 year colleges; some will want to go to 2 year colleges. Some will want to go to specialty training schools. We need a whole lot of well trained workers in this country. Not everybody has to have a college degree, but people who get post-secondary school education should have free tuition, at public colleges, universities, and community colleges.
LPSD: We hear Donald Trump criticize trade with China and Mexico. What is your plan for dealing with trade imbalances and imports?
SANDERS: I have opposed all the trade agreements; NAFTA (North American Free Trade Agreement), CAFTA (Central American Free Trade Agreement), permanent normal trade relations with China. I believe that, overall, these trade agreements have enabled corporations to shut down in American, find cheap labor abroad, and then bring their products back into this country.
So I believe we need a major overhaul of our trade policies. We have the most lucrative market in the world. Corporations want to sell here. We have the leverage to tell them they should significantly increase their manufacturing abilities in this country, not in China.
LPSD: And what do we do with companies like Apple, for example, that hold profits offshore, and how do we create incentives for them to repatriate that capital?
SANDERS: We have legislation that would do just that. We are losing about $100 billion a year from corporations that stash their money in the Cayman Islands and elsewhere, and don’t pay a nickel in a given year in federal taxes. That’s nonsense. That’s unacceptable. We have legislation will limit that.
LPSD: As you travel around the country, and you see the difference in demographics of the crowds at your rallies versus others’, how do you see that affecting the election in November?
SANDERS: What I hope people appreciate, that in every primary and caucus, we have won by a large majority, the votes of people 45 years of age and younger, and what that tells me is that, if you are a Democratic Party leader, this is the future of the Democratic Party, IF, you’re prepared to open the doors and welcome those people in. But if you don’t want them, fine, then you’re going to have a much narrower Party, and a more upper income Party. And I want to change that. I want to welcome these people in. I want to get them involved in politics. We do that, and Donald Trump becomes a fringe candidate.