[Congressional Record Volume 148, Number 78 (Thursday, June 13, 2002)]
[House]
[Pages H3547-H3548]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                SUPER NAFTA MEANS SUPER TORNADO FOR U.S.

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under a previous order of the House, the 
gentlewoman from Ohio (Ms. Kaptur) is recognized for 5 minutes.

[[Page H3548]]

  Ms. KAPTUR. Mr. Speaker, this week the House was scheduled to take up 
a measure relating to fast track trade authority but, for some reason, 
it got pulled from the schedule and we were not told why. We know 
President Bush has called fast track one of his top legislative 
priorities, even though it will lead to more lost jobs and even higher 
trade deficits for our country. So it is a bit of a mystery why we did 
not take up this important measure.
  Mr. Speaker, the President wants fast track to pave the way for the 
so-called Free Trade Agreement of the Americas, a kind of super NAFTA. 
This super NAFTA would extend NAFTA provisions to all of the countries 
in our hemisphere except Cuba. But why would we want a super NAFTA, 
considering the damage that NAFTA has caused in the past 8 years? NAFTA 
has been like a tornado, ripping up jobs and tearing apart communities 
from the textile areas of the Carolinas to the agricultural valleys in 
California and Florida, to the automobile industry in the Great Lakes 
region.
  Now, according to the Los Angeles Times, the latest of our exports 
are high-wage jobs. Before NAFTA, we had a trade surplus with Mexico. 
We sent them more than they sent us. In 1993, in fact, before NAFTA, 
America held a surplus of over $6 billion with Mexico. Yes, that was a 
surplus. Where are we today post-NAFTA? Well, we had a trade deficit, a 
record deficit of nearly $30 billion with Mexico in one year; that is 
billion, translated into over 600,000 more lost jobs in our country.
  Do we think the balance of accounts was any better with Canada? 
Wrong. Our trade deficit with Canada for the year 2001 was over $50 
billion. That translates into 1 million less jobs in our country.
  Who can call this kind of policy a success? Most estimates indicate 
that more than 3 million jobs, direct and related, have been lost post-
NAFTA. Analysis shows State-by-State job loss figures range from a low 
of 6,838 in North Dakota to a high of over 364,000 in California. Other 
hard-hit States include my own of Ohio, but add Texas, New York, 
California, Michigan, Pennsylvania, North Carolina, Illinois, 
Tennessee, Florida, Indiana, Georgia, New Jersey, each with a loss of 
over 100,000 good jobs. Those may sound like numbers to the White House 
or some of my colleagues on the other side of the aisle, but each one 
of those numbers is a family fighting to put food on the table, to pay 
for college and medical costs, and is a strong indicator as well of 
America's waning manufacturing and agricultural strength. If that is 
the wave of the future, I sure do not want any part of it.
  Under the Free Trade Agreement of the Americas, the ``Super NAFTA,'' 
instead of just covering Mexico and Canada, now we are going to add 31 
more countries into the mix, like Argentina, Brazil, Colombia, and 
Venezuela. In the first 3 months of this year alone, we already had a 
trade deficit with those countries of $6 billion. So why would anyone 
want to exacerbate a situation which is already working against the 
interests of our people?
  This appears to be what the administration is fighting for: more lost 
jobs, more trade deficits. When will this job hemorrhage end? When we 
have no manufacturing base to speak of? When our markets are flooded 
with agricultural products from every place else in the world?
  Mr. Speaker, many of our working families are suffering. In fact, 
millions of them are. America is becoming a bazaar to the world's goods 
and, at the same time, we are hollowing out our own productive strength 
here at home. It is no surprise to us here to tell the American people 
that 75 cents of every farm dollar today is Federal subsidy.

                              {time}  1500

  Farmers are farming the government, not the market. Our agricultural 
policies are only working to hold the farm credit system together so we 
do not have a depression in rural America, and in manufacturing America 
we have had a depression. I do not know why it is not on the front 
pages of every newspaper in the country. We have lost over 2 million 
jobs, more in the last 2 years. Talk to anybody in the integrated steel 
industry. Talk to anybody in the machine tool industry. Talk to the 
electronics industry.
  It seems to me we ought to have trade policies that work for America 
again. We should not be trading away our good jobs, and fast track is 
not a responsible plan for a secure economic future. Why should we have 
a fast track for more lost jobs and higher trade deficits?
  Someone ought to pay attention, and we ought to reject any fast track 
proposal that is brought to this floor.

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