[Congressional Record Volume 142, Number 33 (Tuesday, March 12, 1996)]
[House]
[Pages H2095-H2096]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]



  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under a previous order of the House, the 
gentleman from Indiana [Mr. Burton] is recognized for 5 minutes.

  [Mr. BURTON of Indiana addressed the House. His remarks will appear 
hereafter in the Extensions of Remarks.]

[[Page H2096]]



              UNEMPLOYMENT AND UNDEREMPLOYMENT IN AMERICA

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under a previous order of the House, the 
gentleman from Tennessee [Mr. Duncan] is recognized for 5 minutes.
  Mr. DUNCAN. Mr. Speaker, shortly before Christmas, all in the same 
week, we received the news that three separate plants in my district 
were closing.
  The two largest employers in Tellico Plains, in Monroe County, TN, 
announced that they were moving, one to Honduras, one to Mexico.
  The largest employer in Etowah, in McMinn County, TN, Morgan 
Manufacturing Co., a blue jeans manufacturer, announced that it was 
going into bankruptcy, due primarily to NAFTA.
  Tellico Plains is a town of about 1,000 people. Etowah is a town of 
about 4,000. These are beautiful, wonderful places to live, but jobs 
are not easy to come by.
  These three companies meant a loss of about 1,000 jobs within roughly 
a 25-mile radius, and these were devastating blows to both these 
communities.
  I got Gov. Don Sundquist and his economic development commissioner to 
go to both places with me, and we are trying to get some help for these 
people.
  But, I wonder how much we can do when there seem to be more companies 
moving out than moving in, and downsizing seems to be the trend of the 
day.
  Then shortly after the first of the year, I discovered that two small 
textile companies in my hometown of Knoxville were closing due to 
NAFTA.
  In this same period I read that Hershey has moved most of its 
production from Pennsylvania to Mexico, that Fruit of the Loom closed a 
United States plant and opened a new one in Mexico, and on and on.
  And of course, AT&T announced that they were downsizing, getting rid 
of 40,000 employees. Yesterday, Ford announced a cut of 6,000. 
Altogether, at least 1 to 5 million jobs lost in just the last 3 years 
to corporate downsizing, and on and on.
  You have to wonder, Mr. Speaker, where we are headed. Already, most 
college graduates cannot find good jobs--so they are headed to law 
school and medical school, both fields with huge surpluses, just to 
postpone the inevitable.
  Our unemployment rate, while too high, is not bad, but our 
underemployment rate is terrible. And yet, we seem to be giving our own 
country away, through NAFTA, GAAT, the World Bank, foreign aid, our 
mega-billion dollar military adventures in Haiti, Rwanda, Somalia, and 
now Bosnia. Billions and billions and billions to other countries while 
our own people head for the unemployment office or have to settle for 
jobs in fast food restaurants.
  In the last few weeks, we have been told that last year was the worst 
ever for the United States from a balance of payments standpoint.
  We ran a record $111 billion trade deficit. Economists conservatively 
estimate that we lose 20,000 jobs for each 1 billion, so this means 
that we lost at least 2,200,000 jobs due to foreign imports this past 
year.
  People say don't start a trade war, Mr. Speaker, I certainly don't 
want one, but it looks like we are already in one and that we are 
losing.
  Senator Dole said in South Carolina a few days ago that he would not 
vote for NAFTA now without some changes in it.
  This is why many of us are cosponsoring the NAFTA Accountability Act, 
which says that we need to take another look at NAFTA.
  Many people now believe that the Congress was given misleading or 
incorrect information about the Mexican economy, in part at least 
possibly because the Treasury Secretary had made millions getting his 
clients to invest in Mexican bonds.
  At any rate, facts and conditions change, and we need to take another 
look at NAFTA. We should have free trade, but we shouldn't enter into 
bad trade deals in order to get trade, especially when all these other 
nations need our markets far more than we need theirs.
  I would like to place in the Record an article from the February 
issue of Chronicles Magazine by E. Christian Kopff, a professor at the 
University of Colorado.
  He said an article in Foreign Affairs Magazine in 1994 by Alan 
Tonelson ``proved that the prosperity of the American automobile, 
machine-tool, and computer-chip industries in the 1980's, while our 
television and VCR industries were disappearing, was due to 
protectionist treaties negotiated under President Reagan. The 
phenomenal prosperity of the Reagan years rested on protectionism. The 
Bush-Clinton years undermined that prosperity.''
  Then, Professor Kopff wrote: ``In 1993, Goldsmith predicted that 
multilateral free trade treaties yoking together such unequal partners 
as the United States and Mexico would cause unemployment in the United 
States while devastating the Mexican economy. Of prophets and treaties 
it is true that by their fruits ye shall know them. The December 10, 
1994, Economist loudly mocked Ross Perot's prediction of a ``giant 
sucking sound'' of jobs being drawn into Mexico an quoted outgoing U.S. 
Secretary of the Treasury, Lloyd Bentsen, that NAFTA was ``a win-win 
situation.'' On December 20, 1994, the Mexican peso collapsed. From the 
United States perspective, this magnified the advantage of Mexican 
labor costs. In 1992, excluding transshipments, the United States had a 
$5.7 billion trade surplus with Mexico. The U.S. Department of Commerce 
estimated that by the end of 1995 that will have turned into a $20 
billion trade deficit. Add to that $25 billion deterioration in our 
balance of trade the $50 billion bailout loan engineered by Secretary 
Rubin and Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan.
  In Mexico, inflation is estimated at 50 percent, the peso has lost 
half of its value, but salaries have risen only 20 percent. 
Unemployment for the poor and bankruptcies for the middle class are at 
record highs. The Mayans are in open revolt, and the average Mexican is 
close to despair. ``NAFTA is a typical case of mutual poisoning,'' 
writes Goldsmith. Michel Camdessus of the International Monetary Fund 
warned of a world catastrophe. Goldsmith notes, ``Submarines are built 
with watertight compartments, so that a leak in one area will not 
spread and sink the whole vessel. Now that we have globalized the 
world's economy, the protective compartments no longer exist.''
  The demoralization of First World nations and the ravaging of the 
Third World are accomplished for the benefit of international 
corporations. Goldsmith's summary is as clear as it is chilling: ``Some 
can still remember the old adage: `What is good for General Motors is 
good for America.' But that was in the days when the corporate economy 
and the national economy had the same purpose. Now there are two 
distinct economies. Not only do they have different interests, but 
those interests are conflicting. As corporations switch production to 
the areas with the cheapest labor and then import the products made 
abroad, they destroy jobs at home and increase the Nation's trade 
deficit.''

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