[Congressional Record Volume 160, Number 142 (Wednesday, November 19, 2014)]
[House]
[Pages H8115-H8121]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                             AMERICAN JOBS

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under the Speaker's announced policy of 
January 3, 2013, the gentlewoman from Ohio (Ms. Kaptur) is recognized 
for 60 minutes as the designee of the minority leader.
  Ms. KAPTUR. Mr. Speaker, I rise today because the American people 
keep asking: Where have all the good jobs gone? And I truly appreciate 
my colleagues, Congresswoman Louise Slaughter of New York and 
Congressman Paul Tonko of New York, for joining me tonight.
  We are talking about jobs that can create a middle-class way of life 
for the people who occupy them as well as local businesses, jobs that 
produce living wages, that produce good health benefits and pensions 
and 401(k)s you can depend upon.

                              {time}  1645

  Now, since the 1980s, unlike any period following World War II, 
because the United States is importing more than we are exporting, we 
actually have lost millions and millions of jobs.
  People complain about a budget deficit. The reason we have a budget 
deficit is because we have a trade deficit. In fact, since the mid-
1970s, every single trade agreement the United States has signed of any 
consequence has resulted in more and more and more red ink.
  Go to any store in this country. I don't care if you are trying to 
buy a suit or an automobile or curtains, I really don't care what it 
is, if you can find something made in America, that is a discovery.
  What does that mean? It means that rather than exporting more than we 
import, we have been driving down the living standard of most Americans 
decade after decade. Jobs here disappear while capital moves abroad and 
exploits penny wage workers who have no hope for a better life because 
they live in places that have no Democratic values.
  It is a shocking number to put on the record, but since the mid-
1990s, this country has amassed over $4.3 trillion in trade deficit--
and that is a conservative estimate--amounting to a job loss of over 
8.5 million good jobs. That is what this red ink is all about. It is a 
shocking figure. The American people, they sort of know it innately, 
but when you really put it up there they go, ``Yeah.'' That is what 
happened.
  If you look here, this shows that, with more imports, you get fewer 
jobs. When the trade deficit keeps getting worse, if you are out of a 
job yet, keep buying foreign. I am not against trade, I am for balanced 
trade, but I am not for trade that puts our country in this kind of an 
economic hole.
  This is just one example--and we will go back to it a little bit 
later--this is the most recent agreement that the United States signed 
called the Korea Free Trade Agreement. We were supposed to be able to 
sell 50,000 cars in Korea.
  Guess what. We have been able to ship--here is our piddly little 
shipment over there--750,000 cars. Guess how many they have sent over 
here. Look at this arrow compared to that little tiddlywink there. 
Imported vehicles from Korea, over 561,000 compared to 7,450.
  So when you start wondering where your job has gone, think about what 
has happened to these trade agreements and how they have put us deeper 
and deeper in the trade hole and then in the budget deficit hole.
  When I ask individual Americans how their life is going under the 
corporate globalization model that has been accelerated by the so-
called free trade agreements, if they answer honestly and if they are 
not a multimillionaire investor, consistently, the response is one of 
great disappointment and too frequently one of great distress. The 
middle class in America is in trouble.
  It is safe to say that this is a direct result of the long list of 
free trade deals that have benefited only the wealthiest in the global 
environment in which we live, wealthy investors who can survive 
anywhere. In fact, they have a lot of houses--Paris, Geneva, you name 
it--but each of us has a house that is our most important asset.
  We come from little communities across this country, and we have a 
right to a good life. Our people have a right to a good life because 
they work so hard. Trade policy is the major reason, in my opinion, 
that America cannot employ all Americans seeking work.
  I wanted to allow my colleagues to also speak this evening. Let me 
just give you a couple examples, practical examples--actually, the list 
could go all across this floor if I were to roll it out. Fort Smith, 
Arkansas, ask the 1,860 workers who lost jobs at Whirlpool when 
production was shifted to Mexico.
  How about the 300 people who worked at the Vise-Grip plant in DeWitt, 
Nebraska, a town of only 572 residents, who all lost their jobs, and 
some would say their town identity, when the company moved to China to 
keep the name competitive.
  How about Maytag from Newton, Iowa--one of America's iconic 
products--shut down, moved to Monterrey, Mexico. If you look at the 
census statistics from the time that happened over a decade and a half 
ago until today, poverty in Newton has risen up to a level of 25 
percent.
  This is happening across this country.
  How about the 535 workers who made hearing aids in Eden Prairie, 
Minnesota, who were laid off when the Starkey Laboratories factory 
moved to Mexico and China.
  Every American listening knows a company or more that has done 
exactly the same thing. If you go down to those countries and you see 
how the people live, you couldn't stomach it; you simply couldn't. I 
have gone down to the maquiladoras in Mexico.
  I have asked the workers in those factories, ``Take me to where you 
live,'' and they do. It is truly sad to see a tiny little crate barrel 
house powered by a lightbulb connected to a battery, and this is what 
development brings them. Come now. Come now. The world can do better 
than that.
  13,000 citizens of our congressional district in Ohio had jobs 
shifted overseas, outsourced to someplace else. Oh, they know this tale 
all too well.
  I would ask my dear colleague from New York--New York has been 
battered, just like Ohio has been battered--Congressman Paul Tonko, one 
of the greatest leaders on economic growth for our country, who has 
taken time tonight during a very busy week to join us here, thank you 
so very much for coming to the floor tonight.
  Mr. TONKO. Thank you very much, Representative Kaptur. Thank you for 
leading us in this discussion. We are going to be joined in a minute 
with our representative from Rochester, New York, Representative Louise 
Slaughter, and she and I, we can suggest, live along the Erie Canal 
Corridor, she at the western end of upstate New York, I at the eastern 
end.
  That corridor became the birthplace of a necklace of communities 
dubbed ``mill towns'' with the development of the Erie Canal. Product 
activity, product discovery, product development was the theme ongoing 
in that region. People tethered their American dream in these mill 
towns. They came, they worked their fingers to the bone, they came up 
with product ideas, and that was the pulse of our community. 
Manufacturing was alive and well.
  Then we saw this onslaught of what was called a trade negotiations 
process, where we would get into this concept of providing for 
negotiations, but those negotiations have grown a far distance from 
trade barriers and negotiations on tariffs. It became a way to 
encourage public policy in a very veiled kind of concept, so that you 
were addressing far beyond the tariff measures and the trade burdens.
  What we have today, as you indicated, is trillions of dollars in 
trade deficit where these manufacturing jobs have left our home 
communities in upstate New York and are now, in many situations, in 
underdeveloped nations or newly developing nations.
  When we look at the Trans-Pacific Partnership that is looming as one 
of the largest, if not the largest, most complex trade negotiation 
ever, you are going to look at situations where you have a minimum wage 
of 25 cents, for instance, in Vietnam, or an average hourly salary of 
75 cents.

[[Page H8116]]

  This is not what we want to bring as a condition for our American 
workers. We can't compete with that, nor should we. We are holding down 
the workers' rights, the human rights, of these people in developing 
nations by agreeing to these sorts of agreements.
  I think that we can do better. We must do better. I stand for fair 
trade. This free trade concept where we sacrifice American workers, we 
find the rusting of manufacturing towns as a result, is not what the 
doctor ordered for the American economy.
  We need to be fair to the middle class. This is the great many of us 
who have found our American prosperity developed in manufacturing 
centers where we were able to raise a family and grow a community and 
develop a neighborhood simply by a just salary, sound benefits, and the 
security of knowing that your job was your grounding in that community.
  Free trade has taken away that American Dream for far too many, and 
we need to do better. We cannot continue to endure these trade deficits 
that are of the trillions of dollars and watch the many, many millions 
of jobs lost in the ensuing efforts because it is an unsustainable 
outcome.
  I have watched as so many manufacturing centers left our area. I 
represent the Mohawk Valley Capital District region of New York. We 
witnessed a huge exodus of jobs. I have people telling me today, as 
they are closing down factories, they cannot compete with situations in 
China, for instance, where there are many conditions that favor those 
businesses because of these sound partnerships that they have with 
their government, where they will buy the factory and, perhaps, pay the 
utility bill and then further manipulate the currency.
  There is a lot of work to be done on these issues. We need to make 
certain we go forward and have a sound overview by Congress, so that 
there is an investment by Congress and we are not circumventing our 
responsibilities and going forth with sound policy that will strengthen 
the great many of us called the ``middle class of America,'' provide 
for the American dream to be tethered in these mill towns, where we 
have manufacturing opportunities that are paying sound salaries, 
providing great benefits, and not destroying workers' rights.
  I thank you for leading us in this discussion and look forward to 
exchanging many thoughts here in the ensuing hour.
  Ms. KAPTUR. Congressman Tonko, thank you so much for coming to the 
floor this evening.
  I grew up in a family where the work ethic was really respected, and 
we believed in it because you could get somewhere. You worked long 
hours. Sometimes, you worked 7 days a week, but you could save a little 
bit of money.
  Now, you try to save money and the banks pay you .07 percent interest 
or something like that, so if you are a saver, if you have a good work 
ethic, if you have a good savings ethic, what does the market yield you 
really?
  What I worry about is the work ethic itself because I talk to many 
employers now and they say, ``Marcy, do you know what, if we have to 
hire 40 people,'' let's say, for part-time jobs in a retail store, they 
say, ``you can't believe how many people we have to go through until we 
find people who really want to work.''
  Well, one of the things that is happening across this country is 
large numbers of people don't believe working counts because they have 
seen what has happened in their own families. We stand to lose the work 
ethic itself among major segments of this population. That is very 
worrisome to me, and we see related social problems and rising poverty.
  I mentioned in the Maytag situation in Newton, Iowa--and I am not 
just picking on Newton, Iowa--but there was a community that absolutely 
lived for that company. It was invented there.
  Fred Maytag is buried right there, looking over his town and parks he 
endowed and all the people whose lives he helped to elevate. To see 
poverty increase 25 percent of the total community tells you where we 
are headed. That is just one place, but it is all across our country.
  Before I call on Congresswoman Slaughter to add her eloquent words 
this evening, I wanted to mention Norma McFadden, who worked in my 
district, one of 150 employees who made crayons for a company called 
Dixon Ticonderoga, one of Ohio's oldest manufacturers dating back to 
1835, before the factory was closed and offshored to Mexico in 2002.
  Norma, along with many of her colleagues, took advantage of what was 
then called ``trade adjustment assistance,'' which since has been 
eliminated, and she got an alternative degree as a phlebotomist.
  Many of the jobs of her fellow coworkers--there were no jobs for them 
to go to. That poor factory in Sandusky, Ohio, just shuttered. The 
property hasn't been reused. These were people who made a good product, 
they worked for years, they were proud of their community, they were 
proud of their company, and all of a sudden, it was all jerked away. I 
can guarantee you that the people who are working those jobs outside of 
Mexico City do not earn a living wage.
  What are we doing? What are we doing to this country and what hope do 
we provide to the people of other countries that their work matters? I 
say what we are yielding is social instability, instability.
  If you look at the murders around this country and what is happening 
with the drug epidemic in this country, don't think there isn't a 
connection between hopelessness and what is happening, not to some of 
the wealthy people that prowl around the Capitol who have the ability 
to pay to get here or who have lobbying firms here or somehow want to 
reach a Member of Congress on some very arcane amendment that they 
wanted.
  I am talking about the average person who will never come to 
Washington, who has a belief in this country, but it is starting to 
erode at the edges because their economic future is so uncertain.

                              {time}  1700

  I want to call on a real fighter for the American people, who has 
been a stalwart protagonist of enormous dimension here for jobs in 
America and for the fair treatment of workers everywhere, Congresswoman 
Louise Slaughter, the ranking member of the Rules Committee. She is 
such a gifted member.
  Thank you for being here tonight.
  Ms. SLAUGHTER. Thank you so much for putting this together. It is so 
important. I hope that people listening to us will understand that some 
of us here have been trying for years to try to save American jobs from 
bad trade policy.
  Every time the Congress debates a trade agreement, they make these 
grand promises. I remember NAFTA. They said 250,000 brand-new jobs were 
going to be coming to Rochester, New York. None of it ever happened. We 
were promised this great, bright future that didn't show up.
  Frankly, over my career here, which has been nice and prosperous and 
creative, I have never yet seen a trade policy that came out of this 
Congress of the United States that benefited in any way the American 
manufacturer or the American worker.
  I come from a district that was devastated by NAFTA, and I want to 
tell you a story about Eastman Kodak. Kodak, one of the great 
commercial institutions and innovators of the 20th century, once had 
over 60,000 jobs in the Rochester area. Now, there are only a few 
thousand left, and this is the trend all across the country.
  Eastman Kodak is a name that everybody knows, with Kodachrome and 
everything that they have done for motion pictures. A study was done 
once that showed that the word ``Kodak,'' stated to people that heard 
it, that it was solid, it was good and dependable--Eastman Kodak, the 
backbone, basically, of Rochester, New York.
  They were great patrons of the art, education, everything that they 
did. Actually, George Eastman made sure that every soldier that went 
away to the first World War got a camera. It was in a day that you had 
to send the camera back to the factory to be opened and developed. All 
these soldiers sent them back and forth while they were overseas 
fighting--or even in the country. They had this Eastman Kodak camera 
going back and forth every month.
  It would take me all night here to talk about how this is the company

[[Page H8117]]

that built the Norden bombsight that won the Second World War and 
engineers that have come from this company, which is now devastated. 
Now, they have started up some smaller companies, for which we have 
great hope.
  In fact, the laser beam that took down the three Somali pilots that 
were holding Captain Phillips--if you remember, they shot 
simultaneously off a major rocking boat, a big one. Captain Phillips 
and the pirates were in a smaller one.
  They shot simultaneously and killed the three pirates with a laser 
beam from Rochester. The night vision goggles that everybody is so 
concerned about and the Navy SEALs used to take down Obama bin Laden 
are component parts from Rochester. We have all that ability there, but 
we took the jobs right out from under them.
  This debate comes down to a thing called Fast Track, which isn't 
going to mean much to anybody, but in the seventies, we were the 
largest manufacturers in the world, and we were pretty darn sure we 
would be forever.
  We saw no end to that great prosperity because people were 
innovators, and we saw the wonderful things we were able to do. 
Generations of families would work at these major companies in all of 
our districts, and it was solid as a rock, and you knew it was always 
going to be there, until it wasn't.
  Fast Track came up in the seventies when we were the largest 
manufacturer, and the idea was that since we were so good and we wanted 
to help rebuild the economies of other countries and that we would 
allow the President and whoever negotiated the trade to simply bring 
the agreement, once they were finished with it, to the Congress of the 
United States, with no committee action whatever. We are not even told 
what is in those trade agreements. I personally have tried, on behalf 
of Hickey Freeman, to find that out about textiles and could not.
  The idea was we would simply vote up or down, no amendment, no 
nothing--just a quick vote and go--taking away the whole reason for our 
existence here to represent the people who sent us here and to do what 
we could to keep the United States prosperous and forward looking.
  When I was chair of the Rules Committee briefly--because it came 
under the purview of the Rules Committee--we were able to get rid of 
it. Unfortunately, the Korea Free Trade Agreement was filed before we 
were able to get rid of it, so Korea was done under Fast Track, and I 
appreciate so much what you have shown us with that. It was very 
troubling to me about Korea.
  South Korea, as we pointed out, shows 7,450 cars. There are 26 
dealers in South Korea that will sell American cars, but during the 
same period that we sold 78,000, they sold 561,626 here. We obviously 
wanted South Korea to prosper. We lost so many lives there. We fought 
very hard for their freedom.
  But we also signed a treaty that if anybody attacks South Korea, the 
United States is obligated to go and fight. Would you think that maybe 
with all of that--we rebuilt their economy, we saved their country--
that they might sell American cars?
  What we have seen and what we tried to say on this floor, the three 
of us all talking about it, is you are buying a pig in a poke here. 
This is not going to work because the simple reason is we never had 
enforcement on a single one of our trade bills. We simply reduce our 
tariff. Everything comes flooding in here.
  It is not tariffs that keeps our goods from selling in other 
countries. It is the unseen trade barriers. They don't like the bumper. 
The steering wheel is wrong. The window doesn't fit. Or they simply let 
it sit at ports, on docks, rotting and rusting and whatever, but they 
don't sell, and we have not a single thing to do about it.
  I have a bill that I am going to reintroduce in January--I am hoping 
we can get a lot more attention on it--which is a bipartisan bill with 
a lot of outside support that simply says that trade agreements being 
negotiated by the United States of America would also be accompanied by 
an enforcement part, which would be a person in the Labor Department 
who would do it, not the people who wrote those bills.
  The people who write those bills have such pride of authorship. I 
don't know of a single time--maybe once or twice with the WTO--where we 
have tried to do something about unfair labor practices, but we don't 
really worry about that. We just take it--or our people take it--those 
who have lost all the jobs.
  The bill we have says we can also do what we call ``snap back,'' that 
Congress can stop that until they do away with the unfair barriers that 
prevent our goods from being sold in their countries, as the agreement 
stated they would be.
  We are about to do another one, if you can believe it. This one is a 
humdinger. This one goes over 11 countries. Again, we have no idea what 
is in it, as I told you. They are trying to get it through Fast Track. 
We have a good start, I think, on stopping that.
  I am trying to get the number here. We have, I think, 30 Republicans 
that have signed on not to do Fast Track. We have about a total of 150 
Members of the House who will not and, certainly, the Senate. We have 
let the President of the United States as well as the trade negotiator 
know that Fast Track won't work here.
  Food safety is a real crucial issue. One of my colleagues, Rosa 
DeLauro, said that when you read about delta shrimp, you are probably 
reading about the Mekong Delta shrimp. The food safety issue is so bad, 
as we understand it in this trade bill, that if we cause them to lose 
any money when they bring in bad fish--which, in the first place, 
frankly, is not tested nearly enough when it comes in--or anything else 
that causes them to have any economic cost, they can sue us.
  Think about this for a minute. They can sue us because we enforced 
our own clean air standards and our clean water standards and our food 
safety standards. I will tell you it boggles the mind just simply to 
think about it.
  What we are asking--and we have let the President know and the whole 
world that we are trying to get to understand--is that this Congress of 
the United States will not stand by for Fast Track, and to have a bill 
come up here that will decimate, again, parts of this country in the 
United States, threaten our food safety laws, and not have the ability 
to read the thing, have committee action on it, and to amend it, all 
that would be gone under Fast Track, and we would only be able to vote 
up or down.
  I will tell you we have had such devastating losses from playing the 
game that way that it would boggle the mind that we would stand by and 
watch that happen yet again in cases where it would be even worse.
  I am so pleased to be here tonight and join with my friends who try 
to fight the good fight. This is a magnificent country, and all of us 
certainly have benefitted from it. Just to be able to be a 
Representative in the Congress of the United States is remarkable, but 
with that goes a heck of a responsibility.
  That responsibility is to leave this place better than we found it. 
We can't do that with this trade bill, so I urge all my colleagues, 
everybody listening, to pay attention to what is going on here and help 
us to get people that represent you to join us in the fight to stop 
this trade agreement in its tracks.
  As everybody else has said--and I think it goes without saying--I 
have no problems with free trade--well, free trade I have got a lot of 
troubles with. Let me back that up.
  I have no trouble with international trade. It is the wave of the 
future. We are doing it. Free trade has always meant that people come 
in here free and eat our lunch. Fair trade is a whole other issue. 
Let's have a little fair trade for a change. It would do us a world of 
good.
  Thank you very much, Marcy, for letting me be here.
  Ms. KAPTUR. I want to thank the gentlelady, as busy as you are, for 
joining us this evening and fighting for jobs for America's workers 
from coast to coast. Thank you so very, very much.
  Ms. SLAUGHTER. It is a pleasure.
  Ms. KAPTUR. We appreciate your contributions this evening.
  Following on what Congresswoman Slaughter has stated, I can guarantee 
you that, according to polls done by the Pew Research Center, which is 
a national polling organization, over half of Americans say that free 
trade has been about U.S. job losses. They have experienced it. They 
know that whether it is NAFTA, whether it is the China

[[Page H8118]]

deal, whether it is CAFTA--in Latin America or Korea, CAFTA has 
operated the reverse.
  Enough people have now, sadly, suffered. They have internalized what 
is going on, and they are wondering what has happened to this country. 
Not only have they lost their jobs, but because the economy hasn't 
grown as fast, we are seeing that there is a downward pressure on wages 
in this country.
  I see people being hired in plants in my district now in the auto 
industry, which is doing better because we refinanced it a couple of 
years ago, but before, people used to be able to go in there and earn 
$20, $30 an hour.
  Now, they are starting them at a little above minimum wage. They are 
working them 7 days a week, 10 hours a day. They are working two and 
three times as hard because there is this downward pressure on wages.
  I mentioned Norma McFadden having worked at Dixon Ticonderoga in 
Ohio. I can tell you two out of every five of the displaced 
manufacturing workers who were actually able to be rehired had wage 
reductions of more than 20 percent.
  Congressman Tonko.
  Mr. TONKO. I was just going to add to that statement, Representative, 
that there was a GAO study, a report that was called for by 
Representative George Miller and Representative Sandy Levin. That 
report clearly indicated that the provisions of these trade agreements 
have not been carefully and well-enough monitored and enforced. Also, 
violations that were discovered which require investigations were not 
done expeditiously. There are huge delays.
  That ought to raise some concern to Members of Congress who might 
just casually dismiss this authority that we should have to review 
these agreements. These agreements, again, are far beyond tariffs and 
trade barriers.
  They include public policy components that would range from worker 
protection to environmental concerns to food safety to consumer 
protection. These are all given dynamics that should not first and 
foremost be part of these agreements, but because they are, can have 
devastating consequences.
  Again, I think this effort here is about greed. It is about providing 
for those that can control and manipulate that economy at the expense 
of diminishing the worker. We have seen what has happened here as we 
have lost American jobs in our manufacturing base.
  The people who have been displaced from the manufacturing centers are 
now working in jobs that are providing for far less dollars--
remuneration--for the hard work that they invest into that new job.
  We are also watching the developing nations and their workers getting 
paid with a minimum wage of 25 cents or an average hourly rate of 75 
cents. That is really destroying the workers not only this in country, 
but around the world.
  To this Nation and her needs, it is about growing our middle class, 
growing our economy, protecting our middle class, and when we are 
sending off jobs in this casual, dismissive type of agreement concept 
called free trade, it is not a fair outcome, and fair trade is where it 
ought to be.
  We need to go forward. I agree with the comments made by 
Representative Slaughter. We need to make certain there is not a Fast 
Track opportunity where we circumvent the responsibilities of Congress, 
where we should have debate, where we should allow for amendments, and 
not just move to a single up-or-down vote.

                              {time}  1715

  That is dangerous, that is far reducing the involvement of Congress. 
It is relinquishing Congress of its responsibilities and its duties and 
the empowerment that it can bring to the American worker.
  So there is much work that needs to be done here. And as one who 
represents many manufacturing towns that in their heyday provided for 
great jobs and great opportunity and for the tethering of the American 
Dream, we need to move forward with progressive responses rather than 
this attack on working families in this country and around the world.
  Ms. KAPTUR. Congressman Tonko, thank you so very, very much for your 
comments. And obviously, New York has been battered, as so many other 
places in our Nation.
  Mr. Speaker, I yield to the gentleman from Youngstown, Ohio (Mr. 
Ryan). He fights every minute of every day for the people of our 
country, and certainly for the people of his district in northeastern 
Ohio, a leader here, a rising leader nationally, and we thank him so 
much for joining us tonight.
  Mr. RYAN of Ohio. Thank you.
  All these fights are side by side with my friends from Toledo and 
upstate New York. And you look, upstate New York with Ms. Slaughter, 
the Great Lakes States, I think we are the ones who have seen over the 
course of the last two or three decades really what has happened to our 
manufacturing base. I think both of you have hit the nail on the head.
  And you look at the politics and the elections, from 2006, 2008, 
2010, 2012, 2014, in my estimation, these are all about economics. 
These are about average people not feeling like they have opportunity 
to latch on to the American Dream.
  I think when we talk about these trade agreements, the issue 
inevitably comes down to manufacturing. How can we reinvigorate 
manufacturing in the United States again?
  And it is not just the trade agreements, but it is what other 
progressive policies do we have with the Tax Code, with investments and 
infrastructure, research and development, renewable energy.
  You talk about windmills. You have got to make everything that is in 
that windmill. The tons of steel, all of the component parts need to be 
manufactured. So why wouldn't we focus on getting that done here in the 
United States so we can put our folks back to work in manufacturing 
jobs that pay more, more secure pensions, more secure and higher 
benefits? That is, I think, ultimately the ladder up.
  I will give you an example where we got this right. We had an 
opportunity in Youngstown, Ohio, and Girard, Ohio, for an expansion of 
a new steel mill, up to a billion dollars. And we needed to do some 
site preparation work, and we were able to get $20 million from the 
stimulus package. Then the company said, You need to level the playing 
field with China.
  And so the President put tariffs on the steel tubing coming in from 
China. And in Youngstown, Ohio, we have a billion dollar steel mill 
that put our building trades to work for a year and a half to 2 years, 
over 1,000, 1,500-plus workers to build the facility, 350 new jobs, 
investments back in the community.
  That is when we get it right, when we level the playing field, when 
we put the tariffs on their dumped products coming into the United 
States. That, to me, is what this is all about.
  You go down the Ohio River, north on the turnpike over to Toledo and 
Chicago and into the Great Lakes. You go east on 90, and you go through 
Pennsylvania and into New York. These are the regions of the country 
that, if we want America to not feel so insecure economically, we have 
got to get these reinvestments back into these communities.
  We can't just give a blank check and ignore what needs to be 
negotiated. Our opportunity here, our job here, I think, is to lift all 
of these other countries up and not exploit and then have the bad food 
come back to the United States or the cheap products come back to the 
United States, whether we are talking about drywall or baby food or 
whatever the story is from the last couple of years.
  I think we have an opportunity to right the ship. We have got to have 
a coalition here in Congress that is willing to do that, and we do have 
an opportunity. Just think about this.
  I know my friend from Minnesota wants to speak a little bit as well.
  If we had a national manufacturing policy in the United States, if we 
said we are going to rebuild the United States, how many Members of 
this Congress, if we said, how much is your combined sewer that you are 
going to have to invest in the next 10 years? A billion? Some big 
cities are a billion dollars; hundreds of millions in small- to mid-
sized towns like the ones I represent, getting close to actually 
billions of dollars.
  If we put people back to work and made the investment and our 
building trades all went back to work, union workers, good contracts, 
good wages,

[[Page H8119]]

good benefits, we incentivized manufacturing with the Tax Code and 
research and all the rest, we invested in the renewable energies so 
that we can make the solar panels, make the windmills and we move in 
this direction, we could light up the United States again with a few 
key changes. But I think having a trade policy that Congress has input 
on, that levels the playing field, does not sacrifice our clean air, 
our clean water, our food, is the way to go about it.
  So I just wanted to stop in, thank my friends, thank the dean of our 
delegation in Ohio, Ms. Kaptur, for this leadership. We have got to 
keep pushing back. So I want to thank you for the opportunity to be 
here with you and look forward to hopefully beating this thing back.
  Ms. KAPTUR. Congressman Ryan, thank you so very much for your time 
this evening, for your leadership, for the great voice that you give to 
America's economic future and to all of those who work to make it 
possible. Thank you for the respect you show them and for the amount of 
time that you devote to Make It In America and toward manufacturing in 
America. Thank you so very, very much.
  Mr. Speaker, we have marvelous leaders who have joined us tonight 
from across the country, obviously, from our sister State of Minnesota, 
a Great Lakes State that has received its fair share of battering over 
the years, and a great, great Member, Keith Ellison, the leader in our 
Progressive Caucus, as well as, obviously, a leader in the Minnesota 
delegation.
  Thank you so very much for being with us this evening.
  I yield to the gentleman from Minnesota (Mr. Ellison).
  Mr. ELLISON. Mr. Speaker, let me thank the gentlewoman for yielding. 
I certainly appreciate it. And I want to thank her for taking up this 
important issue of trade agreements, trade generally and trade 
promotion authority.
  I just want to say that Minnesota has had its experience with trade 
agreements. According to policy experts, if you look at the North 
American Free Trade Agreement, which lifted tariffs and other trade 
barriers between North American countries, it has led to the 
outsourcing of over 30,000 Minnesota jobs. It also did bring in some 
jobs; but the net outcome, after you take the lost jobs and the gained 
jobs together, is a loss of 13,700 jobs.
  So the thing is that some people say, well, trade will help. It will 
help some people. But when you look at everybody, it has not been a job 
gainer for us, as it was promised to be. And I think that is very 
important.
  I am glad that Congressman Ryan and you and others have been speaking 
in a local framework. I am glad to hear about New York and Ohio.
  I can just tell you from my own State of Minnesota, we are not afraid 
of trade. We believe we have got the best workers in the world and we 
can compete with anybody, but only on the basis of a fair trade. We 
believe we can compete, we can make great products, but when other 
countries are dumping, when they are manipulating their currency, when 
all types of crazy things are happening like that, then we are not 
talking about fair trade. We are talking about free trade, and free 
trade is free-for-all trade, and free-for-all is not going to be good.
  I can assure you that when the trade deal comes that really does 
support labor standards and environmental standards in the right way, I 
won't be standing against it. But until then, I have to stand against 
it.
  I just also want to say that there has been a lot of talk recently 
because of this Trans-Pacific Partnership, this deal that has been 
negotiated over the last several months, and there is a lot of concern 
about it. But before people get really worried about the Trans-Pacific 
Partnership, which is the new trade deal, the new NAFTA, I think they 
ought to worry about something called Fast Track or Trade Promotion 
Authority, because here is the thing.
  Whether you like these trade deals or you don't like them, I doubt 
that you believe that they are perfect as they come out of the hands of 
the U.S. Trade Representative and all these other countries. I doubt 
you believe that they couldn't benefit from any negotiation or any 
amendment, because around here, we have never seen a perfect piece of 
legislation. Even the best can be improved. Yet, if we grant Trade 
Promotion Authority, we will only have an up-or-down vote. We will 
literally abandon our national sovereignty to other countries who will 
be able to sue American companies for lost profits.
  I don't mind dealing in an American court, but I do have a problem 
being in an international court just because we want to ban smoking, 
just because we want better environmental regulation, just because we 
want to take care of our people. We may then be sued for lost profits 
by some foreign company.
  Of course, one of the problems is that we don't know what the Trans-
Pacific Partnership really is. People have seen pieces of it here and 
there, but we don't know because it has been negotiated in secret. And 
my constituents say, Well, Keith, you send me--Congressman, you send me 
a copy of that Trans-Pacific Partnership. I want to know what it says.
  And I say, Mr. Constituent, I can't send it to you because I don't 
have it. They haven't let me see it, not in its entirety. They send you 
pieces of it. You can look at this chapter or that chapter, but you 
can't look at the whole thing.
  So they are going to basically, after they get their Trade Promotion 
Authority, they are going to give us a few weeks to basically look it 
over, and then we can only vote it up or down.
  Ms. KAPTUR. I say to the gentleman, these agreements are so powerful 
they actually should be treated as treaties because they involve so 
much more than just goods. When you get into the legal right to sue and 
you look at what has happened to our country under these trade 
agreements--I don't know about Minnesota, but in our part of the 
country, we have something called the emerald ash borer that has eaten 
through all of our ash trees. It is a multibillion dollar problem. 
Cities like Toledo and Cleveland are losing 10 percent of their tree 
cover--10 percent--and those all have to be replanted. And that critter 
got in here in packing material. But who gets taken to court from the 
other country for sending in dirty soil here? There is no legal 
recourse.
  If you look at the U.S. Department of Agriculture budget, in the 
invasive species account, you will find it skyrocketing as American 
taxpayers are being charged to try to clean up some of this mess that 
is happening across our country.
  It isn't just the emerald ash borer. It is critters like the Asian 
beetle, which came in on Chinese packing crate material and is eating 
hardwoods all across our country. The damage is enormous, and there is 
no court. There is no place where we can go to hold the importer and 
the exporter responsible within the laws of our country.
  What kind of a crazy system is this where we tie the hands of the 
American people?
  Under NAFTA, we were told that we would have 200,000 more jobs in our 
country. But when NAFTA was passed, we fell into trade deficit with 
Mexico; and actually, we lost nearly 700,000 jobs just to Mexico 
because of NAFTA. So these trade agreements, they say they are one 
thing, but they actually come back and turn negative numbers, negative 
numbers.
  I look at this Korean account. We were supposed to have 50,000 cars 
here, and all we have gotten is a handful--7,000. The Koreans have 
managed to sell over a half a million here.
  If you go to those countries and you look at how they keep our 
vehicles out and how they promote their exports of parts here--the 
automotive repair dealers were in here a few weeks ago. I ran into them 
in the hallway. Why were they here? Because when they try to repair a 
car and the part comes in from a foreign country--let's say you are 
putting the hood on. The car was in an accident and you have to replace 
the hood. The fit isn't as good. The metal is more thin. It isn't as 
good a quality metal, and they can't make it fit the repair. So then 
the customer in our country gets mad.
  These replacement parts are coming in from all over the world. It is 
an inferior product. It makes our repair dealers look like they are not 
doing a good job. It is not their fault, for heaven's sake. They are 
caught in this system that doesn't work for them, and it doesn't work 
for us. We have got to figure out a better way.

[[Page H8120]]

  I think Congressman Tonko wanted to add a remark. I yield to the 
gentleman from New York.

                              {time}  1730

  Mr. TONKO. As we continue to banter on this importance of trade--of 
free trade versus fair trade--I can't help but be reminded of the 
pioneer spirit that has taken this Nation to moments of greatness, 
where that greatness was written by the American worker, oftentimes by 
the immigrant who came to this country to pursue the American Dream.
  What we need to do here is have history instruct us. Let us 
understand what the greatness of this Nation is about. Our best days 
lie ahead of us if we do that, if we are willing to take lessons from 
American history, where our sons and daughters who, as our ancestors--
many of them immigrants--came to these shores. It was their creative 
genius. It was their integrity. It was their ingenuity. It was their 
work ethic. It was their passion as they tethered that American Dream 
that grew these opportunities of manufacturing in our mill towns. They 
were undeniably the impetus.
  Today, we need to be instructed by that pioneer spirit. We need to 
understand that, if given a fair shot, we can continue to grow upon 
that greatness, but if we suffocate that American Dream, if we 
suffocate the American worker, if we deny just remuneration for their 
sweat equity as they pour themselves into that job, if they are denied 
that job because of these trade deals, these negotiated outcomes that 
are denying again the worker across the world, then we all lose. It is 
important for us to understand that we need to invest in the 
manufacturing base. This is a walking away from history.
  This is allowing greed to take over the equation of job creation. 
This is about providing for greed for a very few. Look at the 
relationship between the worker and the owner, the manager of these 
situations. We have reduced the worker. We see what the average income 
is looking like. We see what the household income is looking like. We 
have destroyed this. We have put people into lower-paying jobs as they 
have lost those manufacturing sector jobs. We have not allowed for the 
job growth.
  We look at the chart that Representative Kaptur has displayed for us 
here this evening. It is overwhelmingly convincing. When you look at 
the activity in one direction versus the activity in the opposite 
direction, it is absolutely, blatantly, obvious that we need to do 
better, and we don't do that. We don't begin by relinquishing the role 
of Congress in this process. A Fast Track, as it has been talked about 
here this evening, denies the opportunity for fair debate. It denies 
the opportunity for amendments. It requires a simple up-or-down vote. 
We don't need to put public policy in for worker protection, 
environmental standards, child labor issues, consumer protection, 
public safety. All of these items are tossed into these agreements 
where there isn't the appropriate discussion and where the worker is 
held down--25 cents for the minimum wage in Vietnam, 75 cents for the 
average hourly wage, and then tossing people out of the American Dream 
here that they wanted to tether.
  That pioneer spirit needs to be fed. That pioneer spirit needs to be 
nurtured. That pioneer spirit needs to be respected. That pioneer 
spirit needs to be revered. When we do that with sound trade 
opportunities, we will prosper because we have the intellectual 
capacity as a nation--we have the work ethic as a nation; we have the 
creative genius as a nation--to prosper. Give us the fair opportunities 
to grow our economy and allow for trade policy to initiate a new era of 
greatness for this country. That is when we are going to respond in 
justice and in fairness--in social and economic justice--that will 
allow us again to write these new annals of history that will show yet 
another era of greatness for the American worker.
  Ms. KAPTUR. Congressman Tonko, thank you for your passion, for the 
voice that you give to millions and millions of people across this 
country on the floor of Congress. We know we have our finger on the 
heart of where the American people are. It is just this city that is 
out of sync with where the public is, and we have to get them aligned 
once and for all.
  You would think that a place that has been amassing mammoth trade 
deficits because of trade policies over the last 25 years would not be 
brain dead, but, apparently, some people are brain dead over on the 
executive side, and they have allowed America's communities to sink 
further and further into debt--into trade debt--and job loss. They are 
completely connected.
  If you go to these other countries--and I had this chart up here 
about Korea, but Japan is the same. If you look at the number of 
vehicles coming here versus our vehicles going there, we are dealing 
with closed markets. It is not like these other places like our stuff. 
They figure out thousands of ways to block our products from going in. 
Oh, gosh. Twenty or 30 years ago, I went to Japan to figure out: Why 
weren't they buying U.S. cars and U.S. auto parts? I brought free spark 
plugs, and I said to the head of Toyota and to the head of Honda and to 
all of these companies, Please, we will give you free spark plugs. 
These were the best plugs we made in our country. Just try them out. In 
those days, the Japanese would only accept about 2 percent of 
automobiles in their market from anyplace else in the world, okay? When 
our market was open, over half the vehicles on our streets were from 
every place else in the world--made there rather than here, okay? 
Today, 30 years later, it is the same in Japan. They may be 3 percent 
of their market. They didn't even take Yugos, for heaven's sake, when 
those things were on the market.
  You are facing closed markets abroad. You are facing mammoth trade 
imbalances. The most important things those brilliant people over at 
the National Security Council economic division should do is pay 
attention to the United States of America for a change and ask 
themselves: Why isn't this formula working?
  Do you know what? Your decisions are hurting the American people, who 
are funding your operation over there on the executive side. Somebody 
had better pay attention to these mammoth, mammoth hemorrhages because 
I will tell you what--this recent election I don't view as an 
ideological one. The American people are trying to find a way to start 
getting a little traction in their economic way of life. They are 
having trouble, and this city isn't listening. The structures that are 
there to help the American people are completely out of kilter, and 
they have been out of kilter for a long time. It is not fair to the 
American people. It is simply not fair.
  We have to raise our voices here. I know there are living rooms out 
there that are listening to us tonight, and they are cheering what we 
are saying because they have lived it. They have lived the job loss. 
They have scratched and tried to get two and three jobs to try to hold 
their families and their households together. We have seen families 
split up because of the lack of income, and it isn't their fault. They 
are trying. They are trying to get a foothold.
  I remember one President. I didn't like what he said, but he said, 
Walk with your feet. If you have got a problem, move somewhere else.
  Do you know what? Where we live, our communities, our homes, our 
families, our neighbors--the communities we have built together--really 
mean something. It is us. We have invested our lives there--our 
parents, our grandparents. It isn't so easily cast away. I hope that is 
not an old-fashioned American idea, but people have labored for years 
to build our libraries, to build our museums, to build our zoos, our 
marinas, all of our parks. You just don't so easily walk away. Our 
homes mean something to us. It isn't fair to the people who have 
contributed so much to the betterment of this country to have it so 
rough, and it isn't their fault.

  For all of the people I meet who are homeless, for all of the people 
who have fallen on tough times, they want to work. These are workers. 
Why should workers have to go on food stamps, for heaven's sake, in the 
United States of America? What an embarrassment that is for this 
country. Then we have certain people here in the Congress who say, Oh, 
just cut them off. What are they supposed to do? Where are they 
supposed to go when their jobs have been royally outsourced elsewhere? 
This is not a few jobs but millions and millions.

[[Page H8121]]

  I have had the gift in my lifetime of being able to travel, to go 
follow the job. Go see what happened when Trico moved out of Buffalo. 
Go see what happened when Mr. Coffee moved out of Cleveland. When you 
start following these places, then, all of a sudden, it becomes clear: 
oh, somebody is making a whole lot of money off of the outsourcing of 
jobs. Do you know what? It wasn't the people in my community. It wasn't 
the workers. It wasn't even the small business people. It is the 
capitalists who take the money--those people who are rich enough to own 
these companies--and who then figure out they can outsource it so they 
can make more money, not work with the people in these communities who 
have given their lives, their sweat for these places. It is so 
disrespectful. It is un-American. It is un-American what they are 
doing.
  Mr. TONKO. The gentlewoman talks about the ownership--the pride of 
developing community and neighborhood, the investment that the worker 
made in growing a family, developing a household, building a 
neighborhood in a strong and powerful and meaningful way. Those are the 
mill town memories. Those memories guide my heart and soul.
  I am from a mill town. I still live in that mill town and represent 
that mill town here in the House of Representatives, and it was the 
clamor of that assembly line that resonated to people of all ages in 
that mill town. It was the activity. It was the hustle and bustle of 
manufacturing that resonated, that became the pulse of manufacturing, 
and that became the heart of a mill town. You knew which day the mill 
was shut--there was silence--but now the silence is deafening, and we 
need to bring back that resurgence, that opportunity which meant the 
American Dream, meant an opportunity to earn a paycheck--the dignity to 
earn that paycheck--and to be able to raise a family and develop and 
maintain a household. That is what it is all about. It is about 
economic and social justice.
  So we have work to do, and I believe that Washington needs to listen 
to small-town mill town across this country, to the middle-income 
community that reminds us it is about the dignity of work; that they 
want to invest their skill set, that they want to invest their 
professionalism, they want to invest their work ethic in building a 
product, allowing us to taste that greatness of manufacturing.
  We look at the data that are assembled that should guide us here, and 
we see CEO salaries and productivity rising steeply upward. Meanwhile, 
flattened, if not dipping south, is the average worker's salary. 
Something is fundamentally unjust about that outcome. Something is 
fundamentally unsustainable about that outcome. If we are going to 
enjoy prosperity, every strata of the income ladder is affected if we 
are not dealing with worker fairness. Then and only then, if we address 
worker fairness, can we rightfully hope to have a better tomorrow. 
Isn't that what we are about--providing hope, instilling hope into the 
hearts and minds and souls of individuals and families, of workers--of 
the mill towns of the American economy?
  Ms. KAPTUR. Congressman Tonko, your service gives us hope, and I know 
it gives the people of your district hope. Thank you for joining us 
this evening.
  I am going to yield to Congressman Keith Ellison of Minnesota, who 
has spent the evening here with us.
  Thank you so much for working overtime on behalf of your constituents 
and all of America.
  Mr. ELLISON. Let me thank the gentlewoman.
  Again, I just want to point out that President Obama correctly said 
that income inequality is the defining issue of our time. I think he 
was right when he said that.
  When you look at why do we have the flat and declining wages that the 
Congressman from New York, Paul Tonko, just mentioned and that you have 
mentioned--why? What are the components of this?--I can tell you that 
it is clear that we have not invested in public infrastructure, which 
would put people to work and improve productivity. It is clear that we 
have cut the taxes of the wealthiest and the most privileged people in 
our society, and, literally, we have added them onto people in the 
middle, and we have failed to educate people properly. Yet one of the 
components that we can never forget is this trade policy. You cannot 
intelligently claim that you want to do something about income 
inequality and pass these trade deals which ship jobs overseas and put 
downward pressure on wages here.
  This is a key part of how we get the American middle and working 
classes back to getting raises again.
  Ms. KAPTUR. I thank the gentleman so much for that excellent point.
  I take it, by the signal, our time has expired. We thank all of those 
for listening who are present.
  Mr. Speaker, I yield back the balance of my time.

                          ____________________