[Congressional Record Volume 151, Number 61 (Wednesday, May 11, 2005)]
[House]
[Pages H3177-H3184]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]
VOTE ``NO'' ON THE CENTRAL AMERICAN FREE TRADE AGREEMENT
The SPEAKER pro tempore (Mr. Conaway). Under the Speaker's announced
policy of January 4, 2005, the gentleman from Ohio (Mr. Brown) is
recognized for 60 minutes as the designee of the minority leader.
Mr. BROWN of Ohio. Mr. Speaker, this evening I am joined by fellow
House Members, the gentleman from Ohio (Mr. Kucinich), the gentleman
from Missouri (Mr. Carnahan), a freshman, and other House Members who
will join us shortly as we talk a little bit about the Central American
Free Trade Agreement. Some call it the Central American Free Labor
Agreement, as we will soon see.
As you can see by this calendar, we are barely 2 weeks away from the
deadline set by the House majority leader, the gentleman from Texas
(Mr. DeLay), the most powerful Republican in the House of
Representatives, for a vote. They plan a vote in this Chamber on the
Central American Free Trade Agreement. This deadline coincides with the
1-year anniversary of when President Bush signed the agreement.
That does not seem like news, except for this: every trade agreement
signed by the Bush administration in his 4\1/2\ years in office, every
single trade agreement signed by the Bush administration has been voted
on within 60 days of its signing. The President signs the agreement
with Australia, with Singapore, with Chile, with Morocco; and this
Congress votes on it right away, in large part because there is not
huge opposition to the trade agreements.
This time, we are now at 347 days since Congress, since the President
signed the Central American Free Trade Agreement. That is how long
CAFTA has languished in Congress without a vote. Why? Because Democrats
and Republicans alike, people on this side of the aisle, people on that
side of the aisle, understand that the Central American Free Trade
Agreement is dead on arrival in the House of Representatives.
Last month, two dozen Democrats and Republicans in Congress joined
more than 150 business groups and labor organizations echoing a united
message: vote ``no'' on the Central American Free Trade Agreement.
Yesterday, just outside this building across the street, more than 400
union workers and Members of Congress again gathered in front of the
U.S. Capitol to deliver a united message; vote ``no'' on the Central
American Free Trade Agreement.
So Republican leaders in this House and the Bush administration
understood they had a problem. On this day it will be 12 months, 1
year, since the President sent CAFTA to Congress. There is not the
support in this country or this Congress for this trade agreement
because people understand what it does to our Nation, what it does to
our workers, what it does to our food safety, what it does to the
environment.
So what did the Republican leaders and President Bush do? They
brought the six presidents of these five Central American countries and
the Dominican Republic, they brought these six presidents to the United
States. In fact, the six presidents are touring our Nation on a United
States Chamber of Commerce junket going around the country trying to
convince the American people, the press, and the American Congress to
vote for the Central American Free Trade Agreement.
They traveled to Miami. They went to Los Angeles, they went to
Albuquerque, they came to my State of Ohio attempting to convince
Americans this is a good idea.
The Bush administration has not been able to sell it. Business in
this country has not been able to sell it. The free trade ideologues in
this Congress who need your vote for every trade agreement, they have
not been able to sell it.
So what is next? They bring the six presidents from Central America
to come in. Unfortunately, these presidents are not telling the whole
story. Like our own President, they tried to convince us that CAFTA
will lift up low-income workers and that CAFTA will create jobs here at
home.
{time} 2000
First of all, there is no truth to that. We have heard that on every
trade agreement. But what they do not say
[[Page H3178]]
about CAFTA, what they have not said is that the combined purchasing
power of the CAFTA nations, the combined purchasing power is equal to
that of Columbus, Ohio, or equal to that of Orlando, Florida, or equal
to that of Memphis, Tennessee. They do not discuss the fact that people
in Central America, the Central American Free Trade Agreement, these
six countries, they do not discuss the fact that they are not making
enough money to buy cars made in Ohio; they are not making enough money
to buy software made in Washington State or steel made in Pennsylvania,
or textiles or apparel made in North Carolina or South Carolina or
Georgia, or planes made in Washington State. Why? Because look at the
average wage in these countries.
The average wage in the United States is $38,000. People who are
making $38,000, the average wage, can usually own a car, oftentimes own
a small home, at least rent an apartment, sometimes own a home. People
making $38,000 a year are buying shoes. They are paying into Medicare.
They are buying clothes. They are consumers. They are buying products.
But look at the rest of the countries in the Central American Free
Trade Agreement: Costa Rica, $9,000; Dominican Republic, average salary
$6,000 a year; El Salvador, $4,800; Guatemala, $4,100; Honduras,
$2,600; Nicaragua $2,300. They are not going to buy cars made in Ohio.
They are not going to buy steel made in West Virginia. They are not
going to buy software from Seattle. They are not going to buy textiles
from North Carolina. What is this all about?
What this is about is for U.S. companies to offsource, outsource
offshore, send offshore jobs to these low-income countries. They will
set up factories in Nicaragua, so they will pay Nicaraguan pennies on
the dollar to manufacture products to sell back into the United States.
It will not raise their standard of living in Nicaragua; it will
certainly hurt our standard of living in this country.
But let me for a moment share again, when these six presidents toured
the United States, what they said and what they did not say. What they
did not say, with all due respect to these Central American leaders,
they did not tell us that NAFTA-CAFTA does nothing to ensure
enforcement of labor provisions in their own country. They have not
told reporters or the Congress or the public that more than 8,000
Guatemalan workers protested against CAFTA last month; two of them were
killed by the police in Guatemala. They did not mention that tens of
thousands of El Salvadorans who protested the Central American Free
Trade Agreement a year-and-a-half ago. They do not mention the 18,000
letters sent last year by Honduran workers to the Honduran Congress
protesting, decrying this dysfunctional cousin of NAFTA. They did not
tell us about the 10,000 people who protested CAFTA in Nicaragua in
2003. They did not tell us about the 30,000 CAFTA protestors in Costa
Rica just this past fall. Hundreds of thousands of workers in these six
countries have protested in 50 demonstrations in the last 3 years
saying that CAFTA is not good for those countries.
Before yielding to the gentleman from Ohio (Mr. Kucinich), I want to
sort of finish this story of the six presidents. The six presidents
last night assembled in Washington in the midst of their travels around
the United States to sell the American people on a bad trade agreement
between us and them. The U.S. Chamber of Commerce hosted a reception
for these visiting dignitaries rewarding them for their lobbying
efforts. You can walk around the Capitol today and the last couple of
days and you would see these presidents going from office to office to
office trying to convince American Members of Congress that they should
pass this trade agreement. But they were rewarded for their efforts at
a very lavish reception at the U.S. Chamber of Commerce last night.
You can see these presidents raise their glasses, toasting these
U.S., these large corporations in the country, thanking them for this
tour; you can see these corporate CEOs raising their glasses, toasting
these presidents of the six countries, thanking them for fighting for
this trade agreement which will, more than anything, help these large
businesses. I wondered if these CEOs and I wondered if these six
presidents reflected on what happens to small businesses in Ohio and
Michigan, those that do not want another failed trade agreement. I
wondered if they thought about the family farms in North Carolina and
Louisiana holding on for dear life. I wondered if they thought about
those workers in Nicaragua and Costa Rica and Guatemala and El Salvador
and Honduras and the Dominican Republic. I wondered if they thought
about that when they were toasting, the CEOs were toasting the six
presidents and the six presidents were toasting the CEOs. My guess is
they did not.
Tonight, we are here in this Special Order to talk about CAFTA facts
and the fact that CAFTA is dead on arrival and the fact, as I mentioned
earlier, that we are now down to 16 days. It will be 1 year, and this
deadline is approaching, 16 days until CAFTA is absolutely buried.
I yield to my friend from my neighboring district in Ohio (Mr.
Kucinich).
Mr. KUCINICH. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman. I want to say that
the people of Ohio are proud of the gentleman and the work that he has
done in challenging these unfair trade agreements. For me to have a
chance to join the gentleman in this important challenge to CAFTA is a
privilege, and I again want to commend the gentleman for the service
that he has given to the people.
I want to focus for a moment on one particular impact of CAFTA, and
that is the impact on the availability of generic drugs, something that
is another issue that the gentleman has worked on.
While the Bush administration says that they understand the need for
lower-cost medicines in developing countries, their actions demonstrate
greater concern for protecting the extremely high profitability of
leading pharmaceutical companies. In the trade talks that resulted in
the Central American Free Trade Agreement, CAFTA, our government
pressed for tighter restrictions on generic drugs in the Central
American countries. The result will be higher prices for medicines and
higher profits for the pharmaceutical industry paid for by some of the
poorest people on earth.
CAFTA has been one of the Bush administration's highest priorities in
international trade. As we know, it extends the NAFTA agreement to all
of the Central American countries that happen to be small and poor. The
CAFTA countries include Guatemala, Nicaragua, El Salvador, Costa Rica,
Honduras, and the Dominican Republic. It was formally signed by the
administration, and it awaits congressional votes, which is why we are
here to appeal to the Members of Congress to think long and hard before
they would even consider supporting CAFTA.
The Central American countries that would be affected by CAFTA have
significant health problems. AIDS, for instance, is more prevalent in
the CAFTA countries taken as a whole than in the United States.
According to Dr. Manuel Munoz, the director of Medecins Sans
Frontiere's AIDS treatment program in Honduras, ``HIV/AIDS kills one
person in Honduras every 2 hours, because the vast majority of people
with HIV/AIDS cannot afford lifesaving AIDS medicines.'' Malaria and
tuberculosis are also prevalent. As a result, the people of these
countries need greater access to essential medicines. Yet, CAFTA will
make access more difficult for most residents and impossible for too
many of them.
CAFTA accomplishes this by imposing new restrictions on the use of
pharmaceutical regulatory data that will have the effect of limiting
the availability of generic drugs.
Pharmaceutical regulatory data is the result of studies of patent
medicine's efficacy and safety. These studies are performed by the
companies seeking approval and are often expensive to undertake. The
data are submitted to the drug regulatory agency in the company's
application for approval.
When a company seeks to manufacture a generic version of a patent
medicine, it must typically show that its product is the chemical
equivalent of the patent medicine and that it works in the body in the
same way. The generic producer relies upon the drug regulatory agency's
prior approval of the patent medicine to make its case of approval of
the generic version.
[[Page H3179]]
What CAFTA does is it gives extra patent protections to the drug
regulatory data, thereby excluding any other user from relying upon
them. In other words, not only might a particular medicine be protected
by a patent, but, additionally, the drug regulatory data for that
medicine is protected by a patent. Even if the medicine's patent
expires, generic manufacture could be restricted due to the additional
patent on the use of regulatory data. According to Robert Weissman, an
attorney specializing in international trade and pharmaceuticals, ``if
the generics cannot rely on approvals granted based on the brand-name
data, in most cases, they simply will not enter the market. This is
especially true in small size markets, as in Central America, where
prospective revenues are limited.''
Now, CAFTA was formally signed on May 28, 2004. It will only become
law if Congress passes it. In 2002, the pharmaceutical industry gave
over $29 million in political contributions; three-quarters of that was
donated to the Republicans.
Recently, I am sure the gentleman is aware, the pharmaceutical
companies have been expatriating their profits to avoid paying income
taxes here in the United States. They really do not want to pay income
taxes there, but they want to control the political process here and,
by reference, in Central America with the help of these trade
agreements. I am glad to join the gentleman from Ohio (Mr. Brown) in
urging the Members of Congress to oppose CAFTA. Not only is it bad for
workers, not only is it bad for human rights, not only is it bad for
the environment, but it is bad for people's health.
Mr. BROWN of Ohio. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman from Ohio.
Think about what he just said. This agreement has made it even harder
for the poorest people in this hemisphere; again, look at the income
here. The United States average income, $38,000. The gentleman from
Ohio (Mr. Kucinich) mentioned Nicaragua, Guatemala, Honduras
especially; their income is less than 10 percent of ours, literally,
and they are forcing, because U.S. drug companies have convinced the
United States Trade Representative's Office, appointed by the Bush
administration, convinced them to squeeze the poorest people in the
world even harder on paying for prescription drugs. I mean, it is just,
when we talk about values, when we talk about morality, to do that to
the poorest of the poor that need HIV drugs, that need malaria drugs,
that need tuberculosis drugs, that need antibiotics, and they are going
to end up paying more money because, in fact, the United States Trade
Representative said to the government of one country, If you do not
change your laws, the gentleman from Ohio (Mr. Kucinich) talked about
this and has talked about it before, if you do not change your laws, we
are not going to allow you into the Central America Free Trade
Agreement.
It is not like the drug industry does not have way too much power
with the gentleman from Texas (Mr. DeLay) and with Republican
leadership and in the White House here in this country, where people
are paying two and three and four times what they ought to be paying
for prescription drugs; now we are seeing that drug industry exert its
power, helped by the U.S. Government, in the poorest countries in the
Western Hemisphere.
Mr. KUCINICH. Mr. Speaker, when you carry this along to its
conclusion, what we have is a condition where the people in the poorest
countries cannot protect their health. So we are looking at their life
expectancy beginning to decline, and one of the reasons is because they
cannot afford the cost of the prescription drugs. And just as people
here are held hostage by the pharmaceutical companies with the high
cost of prescription drugs, imagine what it is like for these poor
people in Central America, who are making a tenth, if that, of what we
make in this country, and they are paying a high cost for prescription
drugs because the pharmaceutical companies want these trade agreements
which protect their patents and will not permit generics to get the
help to people that need it the most.
Mr. BROWN of Ohio. Exactly right. I thank the gentleman.
As I said, Mr. Speaker, the gentleman from Missouri (Mr. Carnahan)
has joined us. We are also joined by the gentlewoman from Illinois (Ms.
Schakowsky), who has worked on trade agreements for years; and the
gentlewoman from Ohio (Ms. Kaptur), my colleague on the other side of
the State bordering my district to the west, who has been involved in
trade agreements probably longer and more aggressively and more
assertively than I think any Member of this body; the gentleman from
Missouri (Mr. Carnahan), a freshman who has taken this issue and run
with it. I yield to the gentleman.
Mr. CARNAHAN. Mr. Speaker, it is great to be with the gentleman from
Ohio on behalf of the great people of the State of Missouri that I am
fortunate to represent. I want to rise tonight to add my voice in
opposition to the Central American Free Trade Agreement.
I have several concerns with the agreement in its current form, not
the least of which are the effects it will have on American workers and
the middle class. Trade agreements like CAFTA enable American companies
employing American workers to send multiple aspects of their business
overseas. This in turn allows these companies to exploit cheap labor in
developing countries and import their products back into the United
States. The resulting problem is really twofold.
First, there are no real protections for the workers in the Central
American countries, and second, it is yet another means to put American
workers out of work. CAFTA's answer to protecting low-wage workers in
Central America is a self-enforcement provision.
{time} 2015
This really is translated into a nonenforcement provision because it
will not help these workers in any way. The countries involved in this
agreement do not have the necessary legal framework in place to protect
the basic and fundamental rights of working people. If we are going to
enter into trade agreements with other countries, it is our
responsibility to ensure we protect the basic rights of working people
in those countries and here at home.
Mr. Speaker, the other glaring deficiency with CAFTA is it will
essentially fire American workers. Approving this agreement will be a
guarantee that more jobs will leave our country at the expense of our
U.S. workforce. Because there are no labor protections in place in the
Central American countries to ensure adequate wages, domestic companies
can simply outsource their work to these countries at a low rate and
leave our workers out.
I will not support any agreement that displaces American workers and
does not support basic human rights. I want to urge my colleagues to
oppose CAFTA in its current form.
I want to also mention the differences between these two markets, the
U.S. market and the Central American market. The U.S. economy had a
$10.5 trillion GDP in 2002. It is about 170 times the size of the
economies in the Central American nations. It does not take a trade
expert to see the economic mismatch between the U.S. and CAFTA nations.
The viability of Central American nations as trading partners is an
important part of the administration's CAFTA sales pitch. That is why
U.S. trade representatives said Central America offers ``expanded
markets for American producers and new opportunities for U.S. workers
and manufacturers.''
But take a look at the U.S. Conference of Mayors Metro Economies
report released in 2003. It confirms the administration's CAFTA numbers
do not add up. The combined economic output of CAFTA signatories, Costa
Rica, Honduras, El Salvador, Nicaragua, Guatemala is about equal to
that of Orlando, Florida, as the gentleman from Ohio (Mr. Brown)
mentioned earlier. This falls far short of what the projections are by
the Bush administration.
These raw numbers are bad enough. Consider the fact that a typical
Central American consumer earns only a small fraction of a typical
American worker's wage, about $191 a month. It is clear that CAFTA's
true objective is not to increase U.S. exports. Central American
consumers cannot afford to buy American-made goods today. And CAFTA's
inadequate labor provisions ensure they will be unable to afford
American-made goods tomorrow. This
[[Page H3180]]
agreement offers little or no economic opportunity for American workers
and producers. The CAFTA model is really a recipe for disaster.
Congress must devise a trade agreement to promote business development
and jobs in the U.S.
CAFTA should help Central American workers earn enough to buy
American-made products. It is time to rethink U.S. trade policy, to do
what is right, not just for the big corporations, but what is right for
workers, small business, communities, and the environment.
The President is on the wrong track. Congress must demand a smarter
trade deal than the current CAFTA negotiation.
I thank the gentleman for leading this tonight, and it is good to be
here with you and the other Members to speak out on this.
Mr. BROWN of Ohio. Mr. Speaker, I thank my friend, the gentleman from
Missouri (Mr. Carnahan), for his good work and his interest, both in
protecting American jobs and his interest in fair play in Central
America so workers there have their living standards raised rather than
continue to stagnate, which is what these trade agreements have done.
We are also joined by the gentleman from Ohio (Mr. Strickland).
I yield next to the gentlewoman from Ohio (Ms. Kaptur) who, as I
said, has been working on trade issues for her entire 23 years in this
Congress.
Ms. KAPTUR. Mr. Speaker, that is the way it has turned out to be, and
I want to thank the gentleman from Ohio (Mr. Brown) for his great
leadership and vision and taking this CAFTA fight to the American
people. It is a great privilege also to join with the gentleman from
Ohio (Mr. Strickland), our esteemed colleague from south and
southeastern Ohio, who I know will be adding remarks and great insight
as the evening proceeds; the gentlewoman from Illinois (Ms.
Schakowsky); the gentleman from Missouri (Mr. Carnahan); and we had the
gentleman from Ohio (Mr. Kucinich) from the Cleveland area here a
little bit earlier.
It is really amazing to me when you have a trade agreement like
NAFTA, that is so absolutely a failure, that now there is a new trade
scheme, and they have got a name that rhymes with NAFTA. I just, I
cannot believe it. I cannot believe they are over there. They have got
a cookie-cutter system, and they are not paying attention to results.
If we look at the recent history of our country, going back to the
mid-1970s, when the first so-called free trade agreement was signed,
every single year the United States has begun to develop trade
deficits. That means we ship out more jobs abroad than we create jobs
here at home. And we end up taking our income and paying somebody else
to do the work that we used to do, and we accumulate these growing
trade deficits. And they get worse with every decade.
When NAFTA passed in the early 1990s, we actually had a trade surplus
with Mexico, which immediately turned into a trade deficit; and with
Canada we have doubled the deficit that we already had. When we signed
the agreement with China, which those of us who were here voted
against, we did not get any more jobs. We did not get any more income.
All we got was more trade deficit. It is so deep America has never been
in this kind of deep water before. In fact, this year the trade deficit
will accumulate at over half a trillion dollars. America has never
faced this kind of loss. So it is amazing to me that they name an
agreement to rhyme with one of the biggest failures.
And here are some charts, I think, that tell a fuller story about
what has happened with the NAFTA agreement. When NAFTA was signed in
1994, we had accumulated trade deficits with Canada; but then every
succeeding year, they got deeper and deeper and deeper. So, with
Canada, we have not really benefited.
And with Mexico, the surplus we had turned into a gigantic and
growing deficit. And now what is happening with Mexico, of course, some
of those jobs are being shifted to Latin America and to China. So NAFTA
has been a negative.
And what has been going on in terms of the United States, just take
the auto industry which is the primary category of deficit with Mexico.
We were already getting imports from Mexico prior to NAFTA's signing.
Now it is just an avalanche coming the other way. And what we predicted
has come true. Mexico has turned into an export platform to the United
States. And what we are doing is actually creating a world system where
people work for poverty wages or starvation wages. We have high-
productivity poverty rather than high-productivity prosperity.
And, finally, if one looks at the China agreement which has a
relationship here because this is the same cookie-cutter approach that
they are giving us with China, the deficits were growing, but then when
permanent normal trade relations, if you can call an abnormal trade
deficit normal, I have never understood the words they use. We are just
hemorrhaging with China. And just one company alone, Wal-Mart, takes 10
percent of the exports that China sends around the world.
So my basic point here this evening is, why should we have more of
the same? Why should we believe them when they say it is going to be
all right?
And, indeed, I would like to place in the Record an article that was
in the New York Times this week where the President of Costa Rica
actually said he wants to postpone legislative review on this so-called
CAFTA, which is an expansion of NAFTA, until an independent committee
finds that it will not harm the poor. Well, it surely will harm the
poor. And that is why, in nations like Mexico, we have historic
demonstrations in Mexico City for example, of farmers, of peasants, of
people just demonstrating and saying we cannot take it anymore;
particularly in the countryside, the people are saying we cannot take
it anymore.
So I want to thank my colleague for bringing this issue to light. I
think we have to be careful of the administration and their efforts to
try to come in here and try to buy votes and say, what kinds of
transportation project do you like? Oh, how much do you want? Do you
need a bridge? Which way do you want it to go, east west, up, down, you
know, below the ocean floor? I mean, we will do it for you. What else
do you need? Do you need a base? We are moving a few bases around. That
is what happened during NAFTA at the very end. The American people
would have won that debate, but it was bought. It was bought and sold.
And now look at the negative yield that it has produced for the
American people.
So I thank the gentleman from Ohio (Mr. Brown) for highlighting this
this evening. And it has been a pleasure to join my colleagues tonight.
[From the New York Times, May 10, 2005]
Free Trade Pact Faces Trouble in Congress
(By Elizabeth Becker)
Washington.--Social Security is not the administration's
only economic initiative that is in trouble in Congress.
The current centerpiece of President Bush's trade agenda,
the Central American Free Trade Agreement, is facing
unusually united Democratic opposition as well as serious
problems in overcoming well-entrenched special interest
groups like sugar producers and much of the textile industry.
With record trade deficits, concerns about lost jobs and an
overarching fear that the United States is losing out in the
accelerated pace of global changes, the sentiment in Congress
is shifting away from approving new free trade agreements.
``I don't like Cafta; I am not going to vote for it; and I
will do whatever I can to kill it,'' said Senator Harry Reid
of Nevada, the minority leader. ``We are approaching a
trillion-dollar trade deficit. We can't survive as a viable,
strong country doing that.''
Even more troubling to the administration, which says free
trade agreements are critical components of any effort to
enhance American global competitiveness, is the stance of
Republicans like Senator Saxby Chambliss of Georgia, who
wants to hold off on new bilateral trade agreements.
In a speech on the Senate floor and in a later opinion-page
article in the newspaper The Hill, Senator Chambliss said
that even though his state is home to global companies like
Coca-Cola, United Parcel Service and Georgia Pacific, he
could no longer support bilateral trade agreements without
being assured that ``American industries and workers are
truly benefiting from these agreements.''
The trade deal, which was signed one year ago, involves a
handful of tiny countries: Costa Rica, El Salvador,
Guatemala, Honduras and Nicaragua. But its prospects for
moving forward have been soured by larger questions about
China's enormous economic power and whether it is playing by
the rules
[[Page H3181]]
of trade in protecting intellectual property rights, valuing
its currency and calibrating the tide of its textile exports.
Also playing into the situation are unmet expectations from
the North American Free Trade Agreement.
The administration accuses the Democrats and other
opponents of putting too much on the back of this trade deal,
which would reduce tariffs for many American goods and, the
White House says, improve the chances for democracy and free
market economics in Latin America.
``Cafta can't be held captive to China or any other trade
problem,'' said Commerce Secretary Carlos M. Gutierrez, who
has been crisscrossing the country trying to sell the
agreement since he took office in January.
The administration admits that even in this off-election
year, when trade deals have the best chance of passage, it
does not have the votes to pass this one.
With little sign of progress, both sides notched up the
battle last week. President Bush announced that he would play
host this week at a high-profile White House meeting. Since
his first term, the Bush administration has promoted free
trade agreements with Central America and throughout the
Western Hemisphere as important components of its foreign
policy.
``For too many decades,'' Secretary of State Condoleezza
Rice said in a speech before the Council of the Americas,
``U.S. policy toward Central America and the Dominican
Republic has oscillated from engagement to disregard. With
Cafta, with the permanent engagement that free trade brings,
we can break this trend once and for all and we can
demonstrate that the United States is committed to the
success of all Latin American countries that embrace the
challenge of democracy.''
On the other side, centrist Democrats who normally vote for
every new trade deal said they opposed Cafta. They said the
administration had yet to outline a clear policy aimed at
narrowing the $617 billion trade deficit. And they challenged
the White House to write trade deals that reflected what they
saw as the pressing challenges of globalization in the 21st
century.
The administration characterizes most of these complaints
as protectionism and hopes that Rob Portman, the new United
States trade representative and a popular former member of
Congress, will be able to smooth the debate and win votes to
its side.
But Representative Benjamin L. Cardin of Maryland, the
ranking Democrat on the Subcommittee on Trade of the House
Ways and Means Committee, said in an interview that Cafta was
too small a treaty to warrant such attention.
``Cafta will have a minor impact on our economy; we should
be spending time on the big issues like China, agricultural
subsidies,'' Mr. Cardin said. ``If I were the administration,
I would not like my trade agenda to be judged on Cafta.''
Despite its small weight, many interest groups are deeply
divided over Cafta. The Latino groups and politicians who
oppose Cafta say that Nafta, the decade-old agreement with
Mexico and Canada, failed to fulfill its promise.
Representative Hilda Solis, Democrat of California, who
describes herself as the only member of Congress of Central
American descent, said she opposed Cafta because of Nafta's
record, which she said included 750,000 jobs lost in the
United States and little progress in improving workers'
rights in Mexico.
By contrast, Mr. Gutierrez, the commerce secretary, said
Nafta was a strong selling point for Cafta.
``I've been associated with Mexico for almost four decades
and Mexico is better than it has ever been,'' said Mr.
Gutierrez, who started his career in that country after
fleeing Cuba as a child. ``It now has its lowest inflation
rate, and its growth last year was 4.5 percent.''
But questions about labor rights and lost jobs are staying
at the forefront of the trade debate, not retreating.
American labor unions say the accord demands better
enforcement of existing labor laws in Central America without
imposing real sanctions. The administration defends the labor
provisions as groundbreaking.
Even the countries within Cafta have some noticeable
divisions. The ambassadors to the United States from Cafta
countries are traveling around the nation to try to persuade
members of Congress to vote for the accord.
But Beatrice de Carrillo, El Salvador's human rights
ombudswoman, said in an interview here that she opposed Cafta
because it was not strong enough to stop the destruction of
unions. And Costa Rica's president, Abel Pacheco, has said he
wants to postpone legislative review until an independent
committee finds that it will not harm the poor.
Mr. BROWN of Ohio. I thank my friend from Toledo, the gentlewoman
from Ohio (Ms. Kaptur). And the gentlewoman is exactly right. I have a
chart just with the Mexico trade deficit. The gentlewoman talked about
Canada, the U.S., all of this. And you can see, we went from a trade
surplus when NAFTA was signed to this, over $40 billion.
And I look at the year that the gentleman from Ohio (Mr. Strickland)
and I were elected to Congress in 1992. The United States, and I do not
want to bore people with numbers, but in 1992, the year we first ran,
the United States had a $38 billion trade deficit with the world. That
meant we bought $38 billion more than we exported. Last year we had a
trade deficit of $620 billion.
Every trade agreement, as the gentlewoman from Ohio (Ms. Kaptur)
says, they promise the same thing. They say more growth in the United
States, more jobs, more manufacturing, more exports to the United
States if you pass this trade agreement. Every time Congress passes
one, it gets worse. The trade deficit keeps growing. The job loss keeps
increasing.
The definition of insanity is when you do the same thing over and
over and over again and you expect a different outcome. They are asking
us to do the same thing. So we can see these same numbers come with
Central America by increasing, increasing, increasing, increasing
deficits every year.
I would yield to my friend, the gentlewoman from Illinois (Ms.
Schakowsky). I thank the gentlewoman for her leadership, especially on
trade issues and jobs issues and health issues.
Ms. SCHAKOWSKY. I thank the gentleman from Ohio (Mr. Brown), one of
our best experts on trade. And in fact, the gentleman actually wrote
the book, or at least a book on trade called ``Myths of Free Trade,'' a
book I am happy to have and learn a lot from. And I am pleased to join
all my colleagues. It is interesting that, so far anyway, those of us
who are here tonight are from the Midwest where we have seen so many of
our manufacturing jobs lost since the passage of NAFTA over 10 years
ago.
But, you know, I think as a people, as a Congress, certainly, we have
to say why do we want free trade agreements? What is the purpose of
trade agreements?
I think all of us here think that we know that there now is a global
marketplace, that the goal of economic integration, when done in the
right way, is not only inevitable but can actually be desirable. The
question is who benefits from it? What are, who are the winners and who
are the losers? And what is CAFTA for?
And, unfortunately, what we find is that the ordinary people of this
country, and the ordinary people of the Central American countries now,
the Dominican Republic and the Central American countries that are
supposed to be part of CAFTA, it is the ordinary people, the everyday
citizens, the hard-working people that are the losers, and the only
ones who are the winners are corporations that really have no
particular loyalty. They can pick up their capital, they can move their
plants, as they did from Illinois. We lost about 100,000 jobs because
of NAFTA. We saw a plant, a profitable plant, a Maytag plant, a nice
manufacturing plant in Galesburg, Illinois, pick up and take with it
over a thousand jobs. This was a plant that was actually making money.
Why did it move? Because it could actually make more money by
exploiting workers when they moved to Mexico.
In a trip that was in part organized by my colleague, the gentlewoman
from Ohio (Ms. Kaptur), I had the privilege of going to Ciudad Juarez
last year, a town that is really in the metropolitan area of El Paso,
Texas, separated by the Rio Grande River. And on one side of the river
you have got workers who are looking for good jobs to support their
families; and on the other side of the river, we see people who are
working in the plants for American companies. And what we saw were
workers who were actually, some of them, actually living in the packing
crates of the products that they were manufacturing for the companies,
the American companies that took those good-paying jobs and went to
Mexico.
{time} 2030
Mr. STRICKLAND. Mr. Speaker, I had the privilege of being there with
the gentlewoman, and I think we both really felt deeply in our hearts
the pain as we talked with workers.
I remember one woman that we talked with who had children, and she
told us she worked 9.5 hours a day, 5 days a week. She had 30 minutes
during the day as a break, and her total take-home pay was $38 a week.
And I just will never forget that woman and the fact that we have a
government that
[[Page H3182]]
has participated in that kind of what I would consider immoral
situation where a working mother would work that hard and be
compensated at that level. It is just pathetic.
Ms. SCHAKOWSKY. As the gentleman remembers, that woman had children
who she could not afford to send to school. It costs money to send them
to school, a modest amount of money by our standards but out of reach
for her because she does not make the kind of income that even would
allow her children to go to school or have adequate health care.
Is that the point of a free trade agreement?
The United States should and could lead the world by example through
a trade policy that improves the lives of individuals and not just adds
to the profits of the major corporations. We could and should benefit
workers here in the United States and create and sustain jobs that help
small- and middle-sized and family-owned businesses grow. And D.R.
CAFTA, Dominican Republic CAFTA, is not going to accomplish those goals
for us here, for our small companies, for our workers and is simply
going to increase this race to the bottom so that, how cheap can we get
labor?
I wanted to make a point about, are we really looking for markets in
these Central American countries? Do we really believe that we are
going to find people who are going to be buying our products? The
combined purchasing power of the Central American nations in CAFTA is
the same as Columbus, Ohio, or New Haven, Connecticut. The average
salary of a Nicaraguan worker is $2,300 a year, $191 a month. Are they
going to buy that car that is made in Ohio or in Michigan?
Ms. KAPTUR. Mr. Speaker, very briefly, we had visitors from two
nations, El Salvador and Honduras in our community. Some of our church
groups brought them in. These were young women workers in some of those
textile plants down there. They held up t-shirts that they made for
which they received 12 cents, and then we took them to stores in our
community. They found the very same t-shirts on the rack, and they were
priced at $20. And I remember the expressions on their faces. They
could not believe it. And yet those that are brokering in their poverty
wages and exacting high prices here, $20 for a t-shirt, are making
enormous amounts of money off of this kind of bonded labor and control
of our marketplace without proper government intervention.
So I also remember the gentlewoman from Chicago, Illinois (Ms.
Schakowsky) when we were down in Ciudad Juarez, I can remember the tear
coming down her cheek when she saw that family living in those packing
crates. I can remember that. When it pierces your heart, you never
forget it.
Ms. SCHAKOWSKY. Mr. Speaker, I do not want to monopolize this
conversation. I do feel so strongly that, as the greatest country on
the face of the Earth, the wealthiest country, the country that has the
capacity to create jobs, to help people, to lift our own people and
people around the world, to help lift them out of poverty, to set a
standard that would at least work towards that goal. What a shame that
we have before us a trade agreement that, as the gentlewoman said, my
sister, the gentlewoman from Ohio (Ms. Kaptur), just a repeat of NAFTA,
and we know the devastating results both here in the United States and
in Mexico and in Canada, that it did not do anything for us.
So I just am encouraged actually that we are seeing growing
bipartisan opposition to this. Let us go back to the drawing board and
come up with a real trade agreement that is going to achieve the goals
that we want, that is going to be helpful to us and to our neighbors
around the globe and certainly our closest neighbors here in Central
America in the Dominican Republic.
Ms. KAPTUR. Mr. Speaker, if I could interject here, the company that
the gentlewoman mentioned from Illinois, Galesburg, Maytag. I actually
own Maytags. What happened to the workers from the Galesburg plant?
Were they transferred? Did they get other jobs? Were they just without
work?
Ms. SCHAKOWSKY. Mr. Speaker, you can imagine a fairly mid-sized, kind
of small-town community, when a major employer like that leaves town,
it does not just impact that business or those workers. It resonates
throughout the community in a very negative way, and it is really hard
to recover from that.
I want to say, just bringing a Wal-Mart to a community like that so
you can buy really cheap products, is that our future in this country?
That we will be able to buy imported goods? Flags made in China? T-
shirts that are made for 12 cents? And that is not our future if we are
going to continue to be a great country. So it hurt Galesburg. It is
hurting communities all over our country.
Mr. BROWN of Ohio. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentlewoman from Illinois
(Ms. Schakowsky) and the gentlewoman from Ohio (Ms. Kaptur). As we
continue this conversation, when I listen to the gentlewomen talk about
this, we all talked about the trade deficit, that it went from $38
billion to $620 billion, the trade deficit with Mexico going from a
trade surplus to a trade deficit. Those are just numbers, and they make
sense but they are just numbers.
When you hear the gentlewoman from Ohio (Ms. Kaptur) ask about those
families in Galesburg, these are not numbers. These are families that
lose their job in Lorraine, Ohio, or in Portsmouth, Ohio, or in Chicago
or Toledo. They lose their jobs. What it does to their families, often
they lose their pensions with some of these companies. The schools have
significantly fewer dollars to run. The police and fire departments are
understaffed. All the kinds of things that are more likely, alcoholism,
all that happens with the families in our country.
Then you talk about those families in, I have seen them in Mexico; I
have seen them in Nicaragua; I have seen them several other places;
these families that are working, often 8 to 10 hours a day, often 6
days a week making clothes for us.
I was with a family in Nicaragua. They get paid 23 cents for every
pair of jeans they sew. The mother gets paid 23 cents for every jeans
she sews that end up at Wal-Mart getting sold for between $25 and $30.
I was at her home in Tipitapa, a little sprawling bedroom community as
you would say in this country, but it is a series of shacks made out of
packing materials form the plants they work for.
She was standing in this community home one day. I was talking to
her, and she was holding her 3-year-old daughter who had hair down to
about her shoulders, jet black hair, except that the bottom inch or two
of her hair was sort of discolored. I asked somebody what that was
about, and they said, probably this girl does not get enough protein
because the parents cannot afford milk. The parents do not buy meat
except for very special occasions because she is getting paid 23 cents
for every pair of jeans.
So this trading system that these trade agreements bring us bring
horrific poverty to the developing world where these people are working
harder than maybe any of us, working 60 hours a week, not to mention
how hard they have to work at home to do everything, getting to and
from work on a bus that takes an hour and a half each way, and all the
other things that happen to them.
Then you think of the pain it inflicts on our communities, our
schools, our health care system, our police, our fire departments, the
safety in our communities, on our families, on our self-respect. All of
that.
We can talk numbers, and we can prove our case with these numbers,
but all you have to do is look at people at both ends of the trade
agreement and where they sit and how their lives go and what we are
doing to them. And that is the story in so many ways.
Mr. STRICKLAND. Mr. Speaker, I want to thank the gentleman for
yielding to me. It is terrific to have the gentlewoman from Illinois
(Ms. Schakowsky) and my good friend and mentor, the gentlewoman from
Ohio (Ms. Kaptur) here.
I am glad this conversation is headed in the direction here this
evening in which I think it is heading because we are moving away from
the numbers. We are moving away from the charts, and we are starting to
talk about the people. The people whose lives are affected by the
decisions that are made by this administration and by those of us who
serve in this body. And we hear a lot of
[[Page H3183]]
talk today, and I am glad we do, about the need for morality in our
government.
I think it is immoral for our government to support policies which
benefit the richest people on the face of this Earth, many of them
Americans, many of them from other countries that own or operate,
manage those large multi-national companies. I think there is a moral
dimension here.
The gentlewoman from Ohio (Ms. Kaptur) mentioned some church people
who were engaged and involved in this. I think the churches in the
United States of America should be concerned about CAFTA. I think they
should be concerned about NAFTA. They should be concerned about human
exploitation.
Now, many of us in this Chamber belong to different faiths. I happen
to be a part of the Christian faith. And Jesus Christ said, As oft as
ye have done it unto the least of these, you have done it unto me.
I think we have an obligation, those of us who do embrace faith, to
let that faith express itself in the policies that we endorse as
individual Members of Congress and also have that impact, the policies
that are pursued by this country.
I think it is immoral, quite frankly, for us to enter into an
agreement that results in the exploitation of poor Mexicans or poor
people from Costa Rica or elsewhere. I think it is immoral for a
working mother to be paid 12 cents for a garment that is ultimately
sold for $20 or $25. And I ask myself, who is benefiting from such a
policy? There is money involved. Someone is getting very rich. And yet
it is a form of human exploitation.
So I wish our President and I wish leaders in this House would
understand that there is a moral dimension to United States trade
policies.
Ms. SCHAKOWSKY. Mr. Speaker, I just want to tell the gentleman that I
was visited by a group of religious leaders from CAFTA countries who
said exactly what the gentleman said. They said, we know that in many
cases our governments are supporting this policy, but we represent the
interests of the people in our countries, our parishioners, the people
who come to us every Sunday and during the week. And we know they are
really suffering, and we know that this trade agreement is just going
to be license to further exploit those people and their poverty, not
lift them out of the poverty.
And they were asking Members of Congress like myself to consider the
people; and that is, the gentleman is right, we have to think about the
faces. We have to think about the mothers and the fathers and the
little children that suffer because of that and in our country, too,
when those jobs are lost in our community.
Mr. STRICKLAND. Mr. Speaker, well, I represent a part of the
Appellations region of Ohio. Every time I go home and I think my
colleagues here have similar experiences. I talk to people who have
lost their jobs. They have in many cases lost their health insurance.
They have families. They may be 55, 57, 59 years of age. They have
chronic health conditions.
What is happening to us as a country that we would be willing to just
tolerate such conditions? It troubles me. It really troubles me. And I
do believe, as I said to a reporter yesterday, he said, Congressman,
tell me what is wrong with these trade agreements that you seem to be
so against? And I said, They leave out the human dimension. They leave
out concern for people.
Now, quite frankly, I do not believe Americans are willing to give up
our middle class, to lose our standard of living, to participate in the
exploitation of poor people around this world simply to get a pair of
blue jeans at Wal-Mart for a couple of dollars cheaper than they may be
able to get them than if they were made right here in the good old U.S.
of A.
I believe the American people have different values than that. I
think it is our leaders who need to question their values. I think it
is the people who are benefiting, richly benefiting from these
agreements, that ought to be called into question and their motives
ought to be questioned.
And there is, I think, one word that pretty much summarizes what is
the driving force behind NAFTA, behind the WTO, behind permanent trade
relations with China and now this so-called CAFTA agreement. And it is
greed. It is greed.
{time} 2045
How are we going to increase our own wealth or the wealth of our
investors? If that is going to result in poor Mexicans or poor
Americans being exploited, then I think our government has an
obligation to stand up and speak out, change course. We are on the
wrong course. I would say if I could talk with him, Mr. President, we
are on the wrong course. We are on the wrong track. We need to reverse.
We need to go back. We need to reevaluate the results of NAFTA.
As the gentlewoman from Ohio (Ms. Kaptur) had said earlier, why in
the world, given the results of NAFTA, would we pursue CAFTA? It is
almost irrational.
Mr. BROWN of Ohio. Mr. Speaker, as I hear you talk and I think about
what has happened with workers around the world, one of the great
things about our economy, one of the great things about our country is
if you work somewhere, if you work for General Motors or if you work
for the local hardware store, if you are a teacher or if you are a
nurse, you create value. You create either a profit for your company,
wealth for your company. You create value if you are not working for a
for-profit company.
Under our system, in part because of labor unions, in part because we
have a democratic system, and in part because of our history and our
traditions, you share in the wealth you create.
The lesson of these trade agreements you can go anywhere that we have
these trade agreements. You can go to Mexico, Nicaragua and China, and
you will notice that workers do not share in the wealth they create.
I heard the gentlewoman from Ohio (Ms. Kaptur) talk about this years
ago. The best example was you go to a General Motors plant in Mexico,
and it looks just like a General Motors plant in Ohio except it is
often newer. The technology is up to date. It is modern. The floors are
clean. The workers are working hard. The difference between a Mexican
auto plant and the American auto plant, the Mexican auto plant does not
have a parking lot because the workers cannot afford to buy the cars
they make.
You can go halfway around the world to Malaysia and go to a Motorola
plant, and the workers cannot afford to buy the cell phones that they
make. You can go back to this hemisphere, to Costa Rica, and go to a
Disney plant. The workers cannot afford to buy the Disney toys for
their children that they make. You can go back halfway around the world
to China and go to a Nike plant, and the workers cannot afford to buy
the shoes that they make.
That is what these trade agreements have failed to do. So when a Nike
worker in Oregon loses her job and a Nike job in China is created, that
means that Nike worker in Oregon is no longer paying into Medicare, no
longer paying into Social Security, no longer able to buy Nike, no
longer able to buy a car, no longer able to do whatever. So the world
has one fewer consumer. The world really is poorer. Nike is a little
bit richer, but the world overall is poorer.
In China there is no real wealth created because they are not able to
buy anything other than subsistence living and the community in Oregon,
in Medford or whatever town, has less wealth.
My definition of successful trade is when the world's poorest workers
can buy American products rather than just make products for Americans.
Then we will know that our trade policies finally are working.
Once this deadline has expired, the President normally takes 2 months
to pass a trade agreement. This one has taken 11.5 months. Republican
leadership, the gentleman from Texas (Mr. DeLay), the most powerful
Republican in the House, has said that we will vote on it by May 27.
That will be roughly 1 year.
We need to go back, as the gentlewoman from Illinois (Ms. Schakowsky)
said, and start again. I want a great trade agreement with Central
America because I think we can write one that will lift their workers
up so they will want to buy our products as we buy their products. We
can do that. We need to start again.
So once the CAFTA countdown, we are at 16 days, something like that
[[Page H3184]]
now, once that is past the end of this month, let us just go back to
the drawing board and write a CAFTA that, number one, we can be proud
of; number two, that will lift up workers in those countries and will
help invigorate the middle class in this country. It is very possible
to do that. It is just we do not have the will to do it.
Ms. SCHAKOWSKY. Mr. Speaker, if I could, it is bad enough I suppose
that usually these workers are paid such low wages, but should those
workers try to organize themselves into a union to try and stand up for
better working conditions and better wages, we know that in those
countries that human rights violations for people who want to form a
union are rampant; and the problem with CAFTA is that it really does
virtually nothing to protect those workers who want to organize.
We hear in CAFTA, ostensibly it requires enforcement of the local
labor laws, both that may exist in the country. Of course, those could
change, but even then the penalties are very, very weak. Violations of
core labor standards cannot be taken to dispute resolution, and the
commitment to enforce domestic labor laws is subject to remedies weaker
than those available for commercial dispute.
So every time we put the rights of capital, the rights of
intellectual property, the rights of the corporations up here and the
rights of workers even to stand up for themselves to try and
collectively bargain for better conditions or wages, and it is often at
peril of their lives that they do that, not just job loss, but we find
in many of those countries that it is very dangerous to be a labor
organizer. You can find those people dead.
The other thing is we spend a lot of time around here talking about
illegal immigration; and, again, if you think about it in human terms,
people do not generally want to leave their homeland. They would prefer
to stay there, the place where they are born, where their families
live, where their ancestors are, where they have roots. Why do they
leave those countries to come to the United States, to risk crossing
that river, risk crossing that border? It is because they cannot make a
living. They cannot provide any kind of a decent life for their family,
and they are willing to do anything to do that and so they come here.
If we want to be able to protect our borders and to have good trade
policies, then we have to look at things that will help to lift those
workers in other countries so that they can prosper in their homelands.
Ms. KAPTUR. Mr. Speaker, if the gentleman would yield, I want to
follow on that point because if one looks just at NAFTA and Mexico, and
the inability when we were debating that to include provisions for
those that were going to be displaced from their farms in Mexico, what
is propelling U.S. immigration is NAFTA because every year now we have
over 450,000 individuals from Mexico coming over our border, the vast
majority illegal.
You say, well, why would they do that? Because they are in desperate
circumstances. Desperation propels them, just as the gentlewoman from
Illinois (Ms. Schakowsky) says. Imagine being willing to die going
across the desert in Arizona to get here, a place you do not even know,
and what is at the root of it?
The root of it is that their land is no longer productive. The big
corporate interests down there buy imported corn, and these people were
given no way of transitioning. They had a heartless government, and I
think because they did, we might see the first massive historic change
in Mexico's elections next year. I hope so, and I want to say to the
gentleman from Portsmith, Ohio (Mr. Strickland), when he talked about
the churches and the synagogues and the temples and the mosques, they
are doing some of the most important work in these trade agreements.
They are trying to reach out to people, just like you said, and whether
it is fair trade coffee or whether it is quilts or whatever they are
buying, they are trying to bring it in and pay people a decent price
for whatever that product is and to cut out these middle extortionists,
I call them, people in the middle that are trading on that squalor and
that exploitation.
Also to say that one of the greatest religious leaders I ever met
said ultimately God's judgment would demand not just individual
morality for us as persons, but in a rich and powerful Nation like
America, justice of us as a Nation. So we are judged not just as
persons within our own family, but the kind of society and country we
create. We will be judged on many levels; and I think these trade
agreements are, as you said, immoral because those who are the least
among us are hurt the most.
I think of Norma McFadden from Dixon Ticonderoga in Sandusky, Ohio,
who worked there her whole life and was about my age and then was told
you get a pink slip, even though the company was profitable, and moved
to Mexico. What happened to Norma? What happened to Norma was she could
not afford health benefits because under the Federal program, COBRA, it
costs about $800 a month. Well, she lost her job. She could not afford
the $800 for COBRA. So at 55, 58 years of age, she went back to school
to become a phlebotomist to learn how to take blood, and she had to
drive to work in her old ramshackle car to try to go to school and
ultimately tried to get a job at a hospital as a receptionist and just
trying to tread water there in the years when really she should have
some peace of mind because she has been a working woman her whole life,
she has raised her family.
So, to me, these trade agreements are some of the most anti-life
measures that I have ever seen. They hurt people all over our world,
surely those in our country who just do not have another leg to stand
on; and I think God will judge America very harshly for what we have
done because we are in the power position in negotiating these
agreements.
Mr. BROWN of Ohio. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentlewoman from Ohio
(Ms. Kaptur), the gentleman from Ohio (Mr. Strickland), the gentlewoman
from Illinois (Ms. Schakowsky), the gentleman from Missouri (Mr.
Carnahan), and the gentleman from Ohio (Mr. Kucinich) earlier. I
appreciate that human spiritual component.
I would close in an optimistic tone. The gentlewoman from Illinois
(Ms. Schakowsky) talked about what happens with labor unions and human
rights in Central America and in South America and in Mexico. Just hold
up for a model what happened in Central and Eastern Europe in the last
20 years. The thrust of their equal rights movement came out of the
labor movement, and flowing out of that labor movement came a much
better way of life, came freedom, better economic security, more wealth
for workers, all that we should be striving for. That is why labor
standards for these workers in these trade agreements is so important.
As the CAFTA countdown comes, we are down to the last 16 days, it is
pretty clear NAFTA will be dead on arrival. It is time at the end of
May when we come back in June to start with a new trade agreement that
will lift workers up and make us both spiritually and intellectually
and in every other way proud of what we do.
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