[Congressional Bills 115th Congress]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office]
[H. Res. 132 Introduced in House (IH)]
<DOC>
115th CONGRESS
1st Session
H. RES. 132
Calling on the President to initiate renegotiation of the North
American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) and further calling on the
President to consider withdrawing the United States from NAFTA if the
renegotiations are not satisfactorily completed within one year.
_______________________________________________________________________
IN THE HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES
February 16, 2017
Mr. DeFazio (for himself, Mr. Bishop of Georgia, Mr. Brady of
Pennsylvania, Mr. Cicilline, Ms. DeLauro, Mrs. Dingell, Mr. Ellison,
Mr. Gene Green of Texas, Ms. Kaptur, Mr. Lipinski, Mr. Nolan, Mr.
Pocan, Mr. Ryan of Ohio, Mr. Scott of Virginia, and Ms. Slaughter)
submitted the following resolution; which was referred to the Committee
on Ways and Means
_______________________________________________________________________
RESOLUTION
Calling on the President to initiate renegotiation of the North
American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) and further calling on the
President to consider withdrawing the United States from NAFTA if the
renegotiations are not satisfactorily completed within one year.
Whereas it was predicted that the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA)
would create a trade surplus for the United States of between
$9,000,000,000 to $12,000,000,000 and create 170,000 jobs per year in
its first 5 years, but instead NAFTA has resulted in more than two
decades of growing trade deficits with Mexico and Canada and massive
manufacturing job losses;
Whereas according to the Economic Policy Institute, by 2013 the NAFTA trade
deficit had already equated to an estimated net loss of roughly 850,000
United States jobs;
Whereas in 2016 the United States trade deficit with other NAFTA countries was
$172,995,603;
Whereas more than 865,000 United States workers have been certified by the
United States Government through the Trade Adjustment Assistance Program
as having lost their jobs to offshoring and trade with other NAFTA
countries;
Whereas the nearly 65 percent of American workers that do not have college
degrees have been hardest hit by NAFTA job losses and wage cuts,
negatively impacting entire communities;
Whereas according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, two out of every five
displaced manufacturing workers who were rehired in 2016 experienced a
wage reduction and one out of every four displaced manufacturing workers
took a pay cut of greater than 20 percent, meaning the average
manufacturing worker earning more than $38,000 per year suffered an
annual wage loss of at least $7,700;
Whereas, as manufacturing workers have lost their jobs to NAFTA, they have
joined the glut of United States workers seeking service sector jobs so
that wages in these sectors have also been pushed downwards and income
inequality has been exacerbated;
Whereas NAFTA has benefited large agribusiness corporations over family farmers
in all three nations, failing to address the very real problems of price
volatility for producers and consumers alike, while damaging livelihoods
in rural communities at home and abroad;
Whereas by failing to condition trade benefits on countries enforcing strong
labor and environmental standards, NAFTA incentivized corporations'
offshoring of jobs and exploiting of workers across North America in a
race to the bottom, and firms that remained in the United States faced
unfair competition from imports subsidized through social dumping;
Whereas NAFTA's labor and environmental terms were included in unenforceable
side agreements, but even more recent agreements' labor and
environmental terms included in core texts have also failed to change
actual practice because they have not been sufficiently enforced;
Whereas NAFTA was also the first United States trade agreement to include
special privileges for investors and the Investor-State Dispute
Settlement (ISDS) process that make it less risky for employers to
relocate jobs offshore, while simultaneously threatening democratic
policymaking at home and abroad;
Whereas corporations have used NAFTA's ISDS process to challenge bans on toxic
chemicals, the decisions of environmental review panels, court rulings
that support access to affordable medicines, and protections for the
climate, and corporations have extracted more than $370,000,000 from
governments in NAFTA ISDS cases, while pending NAFTA claims total more
than $50,000,000,000;
Whereas NAFTA was negotiated in an opaque process in which corporations were
granted undue influence while the United States public was prevented
from providing input; and
Whereas President Donald Trump campaigned on the promise of initiating
negotiations for a NAFTA replacement agreement within the first 100 days
of taking office, and pledged to withdraw the United States from NAFTA
if he could not make it ``much better'' for working people: Now,
therefore, be it
Resolved, That it is the sense of the House of Representatives
that--
(1) the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) should
be replaced with a new trade agreement that--
(A) includes strong, binding, and enforceable labor
and environmental standards in the agreement's core
text with requirements that are enforced;
(B) creates a fair playing field by requiring that
the agreement will take effect only upon each
participating country adopting, maintaining,
implementing, and enforcing domestic laws that provide
the labor rights and protections that are included in
the International Labor Organization's Core Conventions
and policies that fulfill the Paris climate agreement
and other core multilateral environmental agreements;
(C) ensures these commitments are enforceable
through an independent dispute settlement process and
subject to the same sanctions used to enforce the
commercial provisions of NAFTA;
(D) ensures market access is conditioned on
confirmation that labor and environmental commitments
are enforced, which means there is sustained evidence
that conditions on the ground have improved and an
assurance trade benefits will be withdrawn if
conditions on the ground deteriorate; and
(E) includes provisions to tax imported products
that are made under highly climate-polluting
conditions;
(2) such a new trade agreement--
(A) should guard against employer-dominated unions
by requiring that each participating country have laws
in place that--
(i) require unions to provide members with
timely access to union bylaws and to collective
bargaining agreements and tentative collective
bargaining agreements prior to ratification
votes;
(ii) require collective bargaining
agreements to be ratified by a free and secret
ballot vote of the workers covered under the
collective bargaining agreement; and
(iii) require management to permit union
representation in investigatory interviews;
(B) should not include protections for foreign
investors, including an Investor-State Dispute
Settlement (ISDS) process, so to avoid exposure of the
United States Government and taxpayers to financial
losses, threats to United States and other parties'
laws and sovereignty, the undermining of environmental
and health protections in extra-judicial tribunals, or
new incentives to offshore jobs;
(C) should not include provisions that undermine
Buy America, Buy Local, or any other domestic
procurement preferences or labor, environmental, or
other standards for procurement contracts;
(D) should require all imported products and
services and foreign service sector companies operating
in the United States to comply with United States
environmental, land use, safety, privacy, transparency,
professional qualification, and consumer access laws;
(E) should not include any provisions similar to
NAFTA's ``Chapter Nineteen: Review and Dispute
Settlement in Antidumping and Countervailing Duty
Matters'' or any extra-judicial review tribunal
empowered to invalidate the decisions of the United
States Government or judicial courts relating to anti-
dumping, subsidies, or countervailing duties;
(F) should include binding rules that will prevent
foreign governments from using currency manipulation to
undercut United States exports or subsidize their
exports meaning strong, binding, and enforceable
disciplines against currency manipulation that trigger
automatic corrective action against currency
manipulators, rather than simply triggering reports or
dialogue must be included in a replacement trade
agreements' core text;
(G) should strengthen NAFTA's ``rules of origin''--
(i) by raising the auto rule of origin to
require that 90 percent of a product's value is
legitimately sourced from a country that is
party to the trade agreement for the product to
qualify for benefits under the agreement; and
(ii) rules to eliminate transshipment and
other loopholes;
(H) should include rules that require imported food
and products to meet United States standards for
safety, inspection, and labeling requirements,
including country-of-origin labeling requirements;
(I) should not include intellectual property
provisions or other provisions that drive up the cost
of medicines, and should not include provisions that
would go beyond the existing World Trade Organization's
Agreement on Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual
Property Rights (TRIPS), which is already in effect in
all NAFTA member countries;
(J) should include a broad ``carve-out'' to
safeguard nondiscriminatory domestic public interest
policies from attack under any of the agreement's
rules;
(K) should not require access to United States
roads for commercial vehicles domiciled in other
countries and should require all foreign service
providers' vehicles and drivers entering the United
States to meet all United States highway safety and
environmental standards before being granted access to
and use of United States distribution and
transportation systems; and
(L) should safeguard each country's energy
independence and autonomy over environmental policy by
excluding terms such as those contained in NAFTA's
energy chapter, which require countries to maintain
proportionate shares of energy exports even at times of
domestic shortage or planned production reduction while
enabling challenges to widely used climate policies;
(3) negotiations for such a new trade agreement should take
place in a transparent, participatory, and democratic manner,
ensuring adequate congressional and stakeholder input
throughout the process;
(4) the President should initiate renegotiation of NAFTA
not later than June 1, 2017;
(5) the President should ensure each and every one of the
provisions described in paragraphs (1) and (2) is included in
the core text of such a new trade agreement with Canada and
Mexico that is to replace NAFTA before finalizing the
agreement; and
(6) if each and every one of the provisions described in
paragraphs (1) and (2) is not included in the core text of such
a new trade agreement with Canada and Mexico that is to replace
NAFTA within one year of the beginning of renegotiation of
NAFTA, the President should consider withdrawing the United
States from NAFTA as provided for in Article 2205 of NAFTA.
<all>