[Congressional Record Volume 161, Number 48 (Monday, March 23, 2015)]
[House]
[Pages H1809-H1810]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




               DON'T ALLOW USTR HALF-TRUTHS ON KOREA FTA

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. The Chair recognizes the gentleman from 
Oregon (Mr. DeFazio) for 5 minutes.
  Mr. DeFAZIO. Mr. Speaker, last week in an unprecedented new 
transparency, the Obama administration sent up Special Trade Ambassador 
Froman and Secretary Lew to talk about his proposed Trans-Pacific 
Partnership. Now, you might remember that until now, if a Member of 
Congress wished to see this secret agreement, they would have to go to 
a special secure room, were not allowed to take notes, and couldn't 
talk about it. At the same time, it is shared in realtime with 500 
multinational corporations who don't have to go to a secure room and 
are involved in the negotiations. But they came forward and they gave 
us some facts, figures, and statistics. Unfortunately, the statistics 
were not accurate.
  Special Trade Representative Froman said that we are running a trade 
surplus with our free trade agreement countries. Wrong. False. 
Actually, in 2013 we had $180 billion goods deficit; and, yeah, we had 
a $75 billion services deficit. The aggregate means $105 billion 
deficit.
  Now, they kind of turned a little trick here. They pretend that 
something made entirely in China, shipped to Los Angeles, and then 
shipped over the border to Mexico is a U.S. export. Well, yeah, it 
created one trucking job and maybe one longshoreman job, but the 
manufacturing jobs are all in China. This is a new trick, and it still 
doesn't get them to balance, but they like to pretend.
  Then we were treated to some half-truths. I said: ``Well, isn't this 
substantially based on the Korea Free Trade Agreement.''
  ``Yes, it is.''
  ``Is that a success?''
  ``Oh, yes, it is. Well, look. In fact, look here. Isn't this 
incredible? $100.5 billion of exports from the U.S. to Korea.''
  Oh, well, wait a minute. That is half the truth. Here is the other 
half. Actually, $14.7 billion in goods from Korea to here. So we ran a 
massive and growing trade deficit since we entered into this agreement.
  I have tried to get specific with them. I said: ``How about autos? We 
were going to open up the auto market.''
  And they have something to tout. Our auto exports are up 140 percent. 
Wow. That sounds pretty darn good. And Koreans' are only up by 50 
percent. Wow. That means we are winning. Well, no, because U.S. auto 
exports went from 14,000 to 34,000; Korean auto exports went from 
827,000 to 1.3 million. That means we ran a deficit of 461,402 more 
autos created in Korea and exported here since we entered into this 
trade agreement. Yet that is what they are modeling this new agreement 
on.
  They are saying the tremendous success of NAFTA and Korea is what we 
want to duplicate in this Trans-Pacific Partnership which will include 
such honest actors as Vietnam, where they can use prison and child 
labor, and a number of other countries. Japan has engaged in currency 
manipulation distortion for decades to advantage their goods against 
ours, and then when asked about currency manipulation, they say: 
``Absolutely not. We can't have that discussion here. It would be to 
our disadvantage.''
  No. It would be to the disadvantage of some multinational 
corporations who take advantage of currency manipulation, like China 
and Japan, to make their goods cheaper, to put people out of work here 
and capture more manufacturing over there. Oh, yes, there is one big 
winner in currency manipulation who is worried about any restrictions 
on currency and capital flows. That would be Wall Street.
  Mr. Speaker, the two big winners for the U.S. in these agreements are 
the pharmaceutical industry--oh, what a wonderful, good friend to 
Americans. How many people does that employ here other than sales reps? 
It is almost all manufactured overseas now--and Wall Street. That is 
the way all these trade agreements have worked: a few very selected 
winners in the U.S.; the big losers are U.S. workers and U.S. 
manufacturing.
  The question I have been asking since I opposed NAFTA more than 20 
years ago is: How can you be a great nation if you don't make things 
anymore?

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