[Congressional Record Volume 141, Number 116 (Tuesday, July 18, 1995)]
[House]
[Page H7153]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




               ADDRESSING AMERICA'S GROWING TRADE DEFICIT

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under a previous order of the House, the 
gentleman from Oregon [Mr. DeFazio] is recognized for 5 minutes.
  Mr. DeFAZIO. Mr. Speaker, today we had the latest in a round of 
disastrous statistics relating to the United States trade policy. We 
ran a record 1-month trade deficit for May. We ran a near record with 
Mexico, over $1.5 billion. We are headed toward a $20 billion trade 
deficit with Mexico; $3.5 billion with that great bastion of democracy 
and capitalism, the People's Republic of China, a known terrorist 
nation, oppressing its own people, putting United States citizens in 
jail, dealing in nuclear weapons, and yet they still have most-favored-
nation status.
  What is the response of the new Republican majority, the Republican 
revolution, those who were going to bring change to Washington, DC? Do 
they defy the established order, the order that has been imposed in 
Washington, DC, by Wall Street and the multinational corporations? Are 
they calling for a change in this disastrous trade policy?
  We are headed toward a $170 billion trade deficit this year. If we 
use our own Commerce Department's
 statistics, that would mean over 3 million American manufacturing, 
family-wage jobs will be exported from this country due to unfair 
foreign trade practices.

  True, the Clinton White House, Mickey Kantor, our Special Trade 
Representative, are complicit in this, also. In fact, they did 
something probably George Bush could not have done had he been 
reelected, that is, getting both NAFTA and GATT through the House of 
Representatives and signed into law. So we have complicity at the top 
on both sides, a complicity of silence.
  So much of the campaign contributions flow from the corporations that 
are doing so well, and so few of the campaign contributions flow from 
the workers and the communities that are being devastated by this trade 
policy, this export of technology, this export of jobs. It is time to 
admit that American trade policy is a failure. How can anybody look at 
a string of annual growing deficits in trade, every billion dollars 
meaning 20,000 lost jobs here in the United States of America and say 
this policy is successful?
  There is only one major power in the world we run a trade surplus 
with, and that is Great Britain, because they are crazier about 
following the edicts of an economist that has been dead more than 200 
years, Adam Smith, than we are. They have opened more of their markets 
and their country to unfair trading practices than even the United 
States of America has done.
  Every other one of our major industry trading partners and our not-
so-major trading partners, like Mexico, have figured it out. That is, 
that you should have a trade policy that creates wealth in your 
country, you should have a trade policy that raises wages in your 
country, you should have a trade policy that creates jobs in your 
country, you should have a trade policy set up so that you do not run 
annual account deficits to the tune of $160 billion which puts your 
currency at risk in the world markets.
  All of our trading partners have figured that out. The Japanese laugh 
at the things we do, the so-called concessions that the Clinton 
administration got on auto parts. Spark plugs still cost $8 in Japan, 
and the same spark plug produced in the United States of America still 
costs $1, and you cannot get that $1 spark plug into Japan or into a 
Japanese engine because they say theirs are different.
  They are not any different. What is different is they are protecting 
their industry, they are protecting their jobs, and we have done 
nothing to open those markets. The statistics we got today point to the 
further failure of that policy.
  It is time to begin thinking about a new trade policy for this 
country. I am urging my colleagues to look at and hopefully sign a 
letter which I am writing to the President, the Speaker of the House, 
the majority leader of the Senate and the minority leaders on both 
sides asking that we name a bipartisan commission to review and 
investigate our trade policy and formulate a policy that make sense as 
we guide this country into the next century.
  Mr. Speaker, we cannot go on forever piling $160 billion trade 
deficit on $160 billion trade deficit any more than we can go on piling 
$200 billion national deficit on deficit year in and year out. You have 
got to get your trade in balance the same way you have got to get your 
Federal budget in balance. It is time for a change. I urge Members to 
join me in this effort.

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