[Congressional Record Volume 155, Number 72 (Tuesday, May 12, 2009)]
[House]
[Page H5450]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




              AMERICA'S TRADE DEFICIT IS AGAIN ON THE RISE

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under a previous order of the House, the 
gentlewoman from Ohio (Ms. Kaptur) is recognized for 5 minutes.
  Ms. KAPTUR. Madam Speaker, today the United States announced that 
America's trade deficit is back on the rise. The 2008 annual trade 
deficit topped $677 billion. That is three-quarters of $1 trillion, 
knocking several points off of economic growth in our country, and yet 
in response to today's announcement of the growing deficit, U.S. Trade 
Representative Kirk said we need to work more on new and pending free 
trade agreements. But trade agreements based on the NAFTA job 
outsourcing model are what helped get us into this mess of rising 
unemployment and heavy borrowing in the first place.
  Take Mexico, for example, which is the red on this chart. When NAFTA 
was signed back in 1993, the United States had a trade surplus with 
Mexico of $1.3 billion. But in 2008, our deficit with that country had 
surged to more than $367 billion. This year, in only 3 months, we have 
already seen a $9.7 billion deficit with Mexico.
  Indeed, in every single year of NAFTA since 1993, more imports have 
come in here from Mexico than our exports there. The biggest U.S. 
export to Mexico has actually been our jobs. Good jobs.
  In an article published in 1993 in Fortune Magazine, the self-
proclaimed economic geniuses who urged NAFTA's passage, including Gary 
Hufbauer and economist Jeffrey Schott, said at that time that if that 
treaty passed, the United States would maintain, and I quote them, ``an 
annual current account surplus with Mexico of about $10 billion 
throughout the 1990s.'' Boy, were they wrong. Could they have been more 
wrong? Dead wrong. Consistently wrong.
  Since NAFTA was enacted, the United States has accumulated more than 
$1.2 trillion in trade deficits to both Mexico and Canada. The orange 
is the Canadian deficit. And this means lost jobs in our country and 
lost income to both Mexico and Canada. That $1.2 trillion of lost 
wealth in this country could pay for better health care. It could pay 
for better roads and bridges. It could pay for a better-protected 
soldier abroad and for police forces here at home. But instead, we 
shift these dollars and hundreds of thousands of jobs across our 
borders every single year leaving our home communities devastated and 
costing our taxpayers ever more.
  People ask: Why is President Obama spending money to try to re-engage 
our economy? And the answer is: What other choice does he have? Doing 
nothing in an economy with double-digit unemployment numbers is 
absolutely cruel. At a time when our home districts are straining to 
make ends meet, millions of people are facing foreclosure and pink 
slips are coming day after day, why would we want to send more of our 
jobs and dollars abroad working on new, and I quote the trade 
ambassador, ``new and pending free trade agreements,'' as Ambassador 
Kirk suggests, instead of focusing our time and energy on remedying the 
broken banking and economic system of our country? We have to fix that. 
We have to fix the foreclosure crisis. And we have to create well-
paying jobs right here in our own neighborhoods rather than weakening 
America further by shipping out more jobs and wealth abroad.
  Congress needs to stop making it easier for U.S. jobs to go to these 
far-flung, slave-wage havens, as in China, in Mexico, and in Panama. 
And by the way, countries like Panama are corporate tax havens as well.
  We need banking reform. We need help for homeowners. We need modern 
infrastructure, and we need lots more good jobs right here at home. 
Ambassador Kirk, won't you join us in the fight for America's economic 
prosperity? Why send more of our jobs away from our communities that 
need them most, particularly when you are staring in the face of 
reality, which is $1.3 trillion of trade deficit since NAFTA's 
inception, both with Mexico and with Canada, and not a single year in 
the black? Invest in the United States. We can leave Panama and Mexico 
to another day. It is time to reclaim our wealth and bring it back home 
where it belongs.
  I think the American people intuitively know something is really 
wrong, and they are trying to figure out why all this has happened. And 
I would say to some of the very institutions on Wall Street that have 
caused the deep harm to this economy, you are the very institutions 
that have helped to finance the outsourcing of these jobs.

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