[Congressional Bills 115th Congress]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office]
[H. Res. 132 Introduced in House (IH)]

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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.
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