[Congressional Record Volume 157, Number 152 (Wednesday, October 12, 2011)]
[House]
[Pages H6784-H6785]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                 IN OPPOSITION TO THE TRADE AGREEMENTS

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. The Chair recognizes the gentleman from 
North Carolina (Mr. Kissell) for 5 minutes.
  Mr. KISSELL. Mr. Speaker, I rise today to speak of the opposition 
that I will have to the free trade agreements that we'll be voting on 
today and to

[[Page H6785]]

speak of some of the details about those free trade agreements that 
seem not to be discussed. We seem to want to talk about how these free 
trade agreements will be good without understanding the details of what 
we'll be voting upon.
  My opposition to these trade agreements is not based upon any type of 
partisanship. That negative force called ``partisanship'' that is too 
much part of our lives here in Washington, I don't deal with. This is 
not partisanship. This is not some type of blinded protectionism, that 
somehow we need to close our shores. I'm very aware of the global 
impact of our modern economy. And it's not based upon any type of 
ignorance of the potential good that these so-called free trade 
agreements can present to us. Indeed, I have lived in a part of the 
country that has suffered immensely from free trade agreements. I 
worked 27 years in textiles and watched the jobs leave. My district, 
North Carolina's Eighth District, is still suffering, as it has for the 
last 10 years, because of the results of free trade agreements.
  Indeed, if you look at the facts of our Nation and where we are in 
our economy, it's hard to say that since free trade agreements have 
become part of our lives that it has been good for the Nation. We look 
at our working families. It was reported last week that our working 
families are now at income levels of the mid-1990s. We've lost so much 
of our industrial base. We've lost hundreds of thousands of jobs. And 
we continue to see our trade deficits climb and climb and climb.
  Mr. Speaker, we have the world's greatest economy. We need trade 
agreements, but not these trade agreements. We need for people to come 
to us and say we would like to play in the United States market, and we 
should say what terms that we should have for that.
  So what are the details of the Korean free trade agreement? We hear 
that it will create 75,000 jobs. The Economic Policy Institute tells us 
we will lose over 150,000 jobs. And we'll hear a lot about the jobs 
that were created, but we won't hear too much about those jobs that 
were lost, of which 40,000 jobs are estimated to be lost in the textile 
industry.
  We won't hear about how 65 percent of something can be made in 
another country and brought to South Korea and finished there and then 
brought into the United States, recognizing that China is the next-door 
neighbor to Korea. So how much transshipment is going to come out of 
China, the 65 percent to South Korea?
  We won't hear that North Korea will be allowed to send goods to the 
United States as a part of this trade agreement.
  We won't talk about the currency manipulation that South Korea 
engages in, just like China does.
  We won't talk about the tariffs that will stay in place, protecting 
Korean goods, while we drop ours immediately.
  We'll talk about that we can sell more cars in Korea, up to 75,000, 
if they choose to buy them--there's no guarantees--when we know that 
South Korea now is selling hundreds of thousands of cars in the United 
States.

                              {time}  1020

  Mr. Speaker, we need trade agreements, but we need trade agreements 
that work for us. This is not a reflection on the countries. It's a 
reflection on these old NAFTA/CAFTA-type trade deals that were 
negotiated years ago in the Bush era that have been dusted off and 
brought to us and being told to us that this is good for the American 
worker, this will create jobs. Unfortunately, the history of our trade 
agreements has been anything but that.
  I was with an administration official in North Carolina a year ago, 
and I was told how good free trade had been for North Carolina. And I 
said, I can't address that, but I can address that free trade has not 
been good for my district. I was told that they could show me the 
numbers, and I told them I could show them the empty buildings, many of 
which are not even standing now. They've just been torn down, not 
replaced with jobs. Retrain our people for what, to ship more jobs 
offshore?
  Mr. Speaker, I ask my colleagues to look at the details of this, look 
at our economy, and look at the jobs we have lost and say, is this good 
for America? No, it's not.

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