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Democratic US Presidential hopeful Hillary Clinton has joined party rival Barak Obama in promising an end to tax breaks to companies that ship jobs overseas, playing to the gallery on the hot-button issue of outsourcing as she tries to resuscitate her White House bid.
". . . we are going to rid the tax code of these loopholes and giveaways. We're going to stop giving a penny of your money to anybody who ships a job out of Texas, Ohio or anywhere else to another country," Hillary said during a debate with Obama at University of Texas in Austin.
Hillary, who had in the past refused to join the anti-outsourcing bandwagon, has been perceived as a fence-sitter on the issue till now.
Taking a cue from Obama, who has been fiercely opposing outsourcing, the 60-year-old, who is banking on March 4 contests in Ohio and Texas to revive her fading campaign, appeared to be joining the hardliners in an effort to attract the blue-collared workers.
". . . you don't need an economist or the Federal Reserve to tell the American people that the economy's in trouble, because they've been experiencing it for years now," Obama said earlier.
Promising to restore "a sense of fairness and balance" to the US economy, he said, "We've got to stop giving tax breaks to companies that are shipping jobs overseas and invest those tax breaks in companies that are investing here in the United States of America."
"We're certainly going to begin to get the tax code to reflect what the needs of middle class families are so we can rebuild a strong and prosperous middle class," Clinton said.
Referring to the recent recall of 'harmful' Chinese goods from US markets, Obama stressed on "strong labour, environmental and safety standards."
Clinton promised trade agreements that not only have strong environmental and labour standards, but also "trade time-out."
"We're going to look and see what's working and what's not working, and I'd like to have a trade prosecutor to actually enforce the trade agreements that we have before we enter into any others," the New York Democrat added.
"We're also going to put much tougher standards in place so that people cannot import toys with lead paint, contaminated pet food, contaminated drugs into our market. We're going to have much more vigorous enforcement of safety standards," Clinton said.