[Congressional Record Volume 161, Number 5 (Monday, January 12, 2015)]
[House]
[Pages H221-H222]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]
AMERICA'S FREE TRADE DEFICIT
The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under the Speaker's announced policy of
January 6, 2015, the Chair recognizes the gentlewoman from Ohio (Ms.
Kaptur) until 10 p.m.
Ms. KAPTUR. Mr. Speaker, I rise this evening to paint a picture of
U.S. job loss resulting from our trade policies extending back now
almost three decades.
I rise because America has a huge ``good jobs'' deficit because we
have a gigantic trade deficit. That means more imports come in here
than our exports go out, largely because markets and other places are
closed. Our workers and our communities have paid a tremendous price
for this.
I oppose any further NAFTA-like trade agreements, such as the Trans-
Pacific Partnership, which the administration is proposing. That will
ship out more U.S. jobs. We have had enough. The American people have
had enough.
Since 1975, when Wall Street's free trade job outsourcing roulette
began, America has amassed a $9.3 trillion trade deficit with the
world. If you look at this chart, we have on here every single trade
agreement that was signed and all of the lost jobs that resulted from
the growing trade deficits we are amassing with countries around the
world. This has never happened before over our history in the United
States of America. It is a very serious problem.
The staggering loss of productivity associated with this deficit
translates into a huge job loss here at home. In fact, that $9.3
trillion of accumulated trade deficit of more imports coming in here
than exports going out has actually cost us over 47,500,000 lost
American jobs.
Most of those were really good jobs that paid living wages, jobs that
just evaporated from our communities, jobs that were shipped to Mexico
or to China, Korea, Bangladesh, Honduras, Guatemala, Turkey, El
Salvador--everywhere in the world--largely to the Third World, and,
frankly, to undemocratic countries where workers are treated like a
bonded class.
Our workers, no matter how loyal or hardworking, became expendable as
this began. In fact, they were treated like expendable widgets. What is
being hurt in the process is the belief of the public that the value of
hard work has any meaning. There are some workers who have simply
dropped out.
Yes, American jobs are being outsourced year after year--for over a
quarter century now--and workers are being treated like a game of
musical chairs. Our jobs have been shipped out to penny-wage sweatshops
hidden behind the Iron Curtain of anonymous towns in distant places
most Americans will never visit. Anonymity, exploitation, and hidden
squalor are as fundamental to free trade as the hollowing out of
American jobs, our communities, and our middle class.
Those who exploit workers in our country and globally believe they
are so powerful that the American people won't be able to rein them in,
and they think this Congress will continue to behave as it did before,
despite the evidence that this doesn't work for the American people.
Some of those very powerful interests are asking for another Fast
Track trade deal to do it all over again in something called the Trans-
Pacific Partnership, on an even bigger scale, including nations with
the grossest violations of basic human rights.
Let me turn first to the broken promises of NAFTA, which was really
the fundamental agreement passed--over my objections--in the early
1990s and another agreement, CAFTA, that dealt with Central America.
Fast-forward to this past summer when thousands of migrant children
from Central America swarmed our southern border. Remember that?
The American press acted surprised upon their arrival, and some
people even threw tomatoes at buses that carried children from one
detention facility to another.
These children had lived under 20 years of NAFTA and CAFTA in Mexico,
Guatemala, El Salvador, and Honduras. They had experience with the
NAFTA trade agreement and the CAFTA trade agreement, which covers those
countries, trade agreements that were sold as opportunities that would
rise the tide of all boats, of all workers.
What happened? Here in the United States, we had a huge loss of jobs
to those countries, and Mexico's and Central America's infrastructures
were not modernized. Their standard of living was not raised.
In fact, the promise that those countries somehow would turn into
stylistically rustic versions of the American consumer market never
happened. They were told new jobs would abound, but our Nation began to
hemorrhage jobs to Mexico as wages in Mexico and throughout Central
America began to drop. Those deficits became part of the overall total.
The problem is that in most of these countries where the free trade
agreements were signed, what you see happening is more goods coming in
here than our goods going out, a little trickle going to some places.
In Mexico, what happened ever since NAFTA's passage was that we were
promised trade balances. Every single year, it has gotten worse and
worse and worse.
This week, the broken promises sold to the American public and their
elected officials is that these agreements would really work. The
people who voted for those agreements should pay some attention to the
debate of trying to withhold funding for the Department of Homeland
Security because of the President's action on immigration.
The stories of the youth being shipped back by the planeloads tell of
families' lands being stolen from under them. The land was handed over
to multinational corporate agricultural groups that come in and grow,
for example, palm oil.
Local displaced farmers were forced into urban settings--desperate,
in search of food, in search of work at factories where jobs that were
promised in return for the land--guess what--never materialized. Here
on our own continent, the children became the refugees of transnational
economic policies that harmed the entire continent.
Hardly anyone even talked about that; but when you have this kind of
disruption, when you have so much job loss, and when you have land,
transferring title with millions of farmers disrupted from their way of
life, what do we expect?
Millions of displaced people in Mexico and Central America living in
the shadow of border plants and urban factories exist in a state of
peonage that makes older versions of slavery look positively
beneficent, squatting on poisoned ground in jerry-rigged plywood and
tar paper shacks.
I have been in those shacks. I have gone to those places. When you
do, you never forget it. Next door, water in gullies that surround
these places is so polluted that communities smell of a rancid odor,
and even chickens that they keep to try to feed themselves die from the
drinking water. We have seen it. We have been there.
The displaced population on the run is surging, thanks in large part
to NAFTA and CAFTA's agricultural provisions, those very flawed
provisions
[[Page H222]]
that provided no opportunity for adjustment as a First World nation met
the economy of Third World nations.
The terms of the agreement forced the revocation of land and allowed
multinationals to begin buying up vast tracts in the interior, pushing
untold millions of peasant farmers, who remain nameless, off their land
and into the labor pool of the maquiladoras; yet we, as Americans, are
surprised when their children, as migrants, flock to our southern
border.
If we seriously looked at the impact of our free trade agreements, we
would easily see the havoc wrought on local economies throughout the
lands on the other side of the border. Those who forced this to happen
should know the consequences of their policies and what they reap:
legions of desperate workers willing to do anything to survive.
Now, let me turn to the Trans-Pacific Partnership that proposes to
expand trade into regions with the worst labor violations and working
conditions.
We can't be fooled into thinking expanding trade agreements with 11
new nations in the Pacific rim will actually be the end to American
jobs being shipped overseas. Of the 11 nations with which the United
States is negotiating the Trans-Pacific Partnership, nine have wage
levels significantly lower than our own.
This will only intensify the already real reduction in wages American
workers are experiencing year after year as our jobs are shipped
overseas to increase profits of shareholders as they take advantage of
impoverished laborers.
Worse yet, for the immigration debate, as those who run the maquilas
of Mexico and Central America realize, the next move will be to Vietnam
for even cheaper labor. Factories on this continent will shut down,
further exacerbating the poor economic conditions of our southern
neighbors, leaving even fewer options other than for those individuals
to flee north, seeking any economic opportunity to sustain themselves.
I wanted to spend a moment looking at the Korean agreement because
that was one of the latest ones they brought up here as a free trade
agreement. They promised there would be thousands of jobs and that
America would be able to sell 50,000 vehicles to Korea.
{time} 2145
Well, guess what. We haven't even hit 10,000, while there have been
over 561,000--half a million--vehicles sent from Korea here. So look at
what is happening with the Korean agreement, another free trade
agreement which just passed a couple of years ago. The proof is in the
pudding.
The Fast Track procedure, which allows no amendment here on the
floor, yields this--more red ink for the United States.
We were promised that the Korean agreement would create jobs and help
balance our trade deficit in an effort to strengthen our economy and
rebuild the American auto industry. Nothing could be further from the
truth, as with every other agreement.
We are in a deep trade deficit with Korea. The U.S.-Korean free trade
agreement promised 70,000 jobs. In actuality, we have already lost
40,000. It is going in exactly the opposite direction.
The U.S. Census Bureau recently revealed that the United States had a
$2.8 billion monthly trade deficit with Korea just in November of last
year, the highest monthly U.S. goods trade deficit with Korea on
record. The historic U.S. trade deficit with Korea was driven by a
record-setting $6.3 billion in imports from Korea and a lackluster $3.5
billion in exports to Korea from the United States. Auto sales did not
surge, as we were promised. Exactly the reverse is true.
And now we can look at China. You know, the story is no different.
You would think we would have learned something. But if you look at
trade with China--and China became a member of the World Trade
Organization in 2001--Americans were promised, again, that that deal
would expand market opportunities for United States companies, thereby
increasing jobs here and American prosperity.
How has this worked out? Let me share some specifics:
The United States has lost over 64,000 manufacturing firms and at
least 5.8 million manufacturing jobs to China. In the year 2013, the
latest complete year of data, America actually racked up a $319 billion
trade deficit with China. And you know this to be true because
everything you buy--coffee cups, clothing, electronics, even solar
panels--are all made in China. And the massive deficit we have racked
up with China just in 1 year--that 1 year--amounted to a loss of 1.5
million American jobs. And that is just 1 year's damage.
What America needs is not more of the same NAFTA-styled trade
agreements. What America and American workers need is a trade policy
that creates jobs, opportunity, and wealth in this country first. We
need balanced trade accounts, not trade accounts that are in the red
with every single country with which we have racked up these deficits.
The American people--not just the global corporate elite--need to be in
the driver's seat again, and that is where Congress has to do its job.
Our Nation needs a trade policy that is results-oriented, that will
yield jobs in America.
We must open closed markets of the world. We must grow our exports.
We must hold those who wrote these agreements accountable for the
damage that they have done, and we must not create any more free trade
agreements that dig the hole deeper.
We must create jobs here in our country by moving our Nation toward
economic independence--not dependence--by rebuilding our own
manufacturing base here at home, by restoring our domestic energy
security, and by making sure that these agreements result not in
deficits, but in trade balances and, even more importantly, trade
surpluses.
Mr. Speaker, there are ways that a developed nation can trade with
the developing world without gutting its own economy. America has got
to figure out how to get there. And no trade deal should be brought up
here under that Fast Track procedure where Congress can't amend until
we fix what is wrong with these agreements. Haven't we learned in three
decades that that flawed trade model just simply isn't working?
Pushing huge trade agreements, like the Trans-Pacific Partnership,
through Congress on a Fast Track course with no opportunity for
amendment is not the way to create a strong middle class, rising wages,
and real opportunity for the American people. Now is the time to hold
this administration and this Congress accountable for changing course
and start to invest in this country again and make sure that these
trade partners with whom we do business open their markets. To do any
less is to continue to harm the American people and continue to have
this enormous downward pressure on job creation in this country and
wage levels and benefit levels in this country, where the average
American hasn't seen a raise in years. We have to change. This is too
great a price for the American people to pay.
So this evening, I thank those who are listening for their time. I
thank the Speaker for the time this evening.
I yield back the balance of my time.
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