diff --git a/edx/analytics/tasks/common/sqoop.py b/edx/analytics/tasks/common/sqoop.py
index 561560388..9fb40c034 100644
--- a/edx/analytics/tasks/common/sqoop.py
+++ b/edx/analytics/tasks/common/sqoop.py
@@ -255,6 +255,15 @@ def import_args(self):
             arglist.append('--direct')
         if self.mysql_delimiters:
             arglist.append('--mysql-delimiters')
+
+        # Sqoop 1.4.6 adds --skip-opt by default, which in turn adds
+        # NO_FIELD_OPTIONS, NO_KEY_OPTIONS and NO_TABLE_OPTIONS to the sql_mode.
+        # MySQL 8.0 does not support these options, so we need to
+        # explicitly disable them.
+        arglist.append('--')
+        arglist.append('--no-tablespaces')
+        arglist.append('--opt')
+
         return arglist
 
     def source_database_type(self):