[Congressional Record Volume 163, Number 72 (Thursday, April 27, 2017)]
[Senate]
[Page S2575]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]



                                 NAFTA

  Mr. President, there has been talk about NAFTA. There has been talk--
and I don't know if these are alternative facts coming out of the White 
House or what--that the President is going to pull out of NAFTA.
  I would just state this. I met with Robert Lighthizer, who is going 
to be our Trade Rep--and I understand that he will be a good one. He 
will succeed Michael Froman, who was an excellent Trade Rep for a 
number of years. When I met with Mr. Lighthizer in my office a couple 
of months ago, he talked about renegotiating NAFTA. When we negotiated 
the Trans-Pacific Partnership with 11 other countries around the 
world--40 percent of the world's markets--we did that over the last 
couple of years, we were renegotiating NAFTA. We fixed a lot of things 
in NAFTA that needed to be fixed, not just in the Mexico part of NAFTA 
but also Canada.
  One of the things that needed to be fixed was in our top market--we 
raise a lot of chickens in Georgia, Delaware, Maryland, Virginia, and 
other places. Our top market for poultry is Mexico. Canada doesn't buy 
our chickens. They keep us out. The Trans-Pacific Partnership 
renegotiated NAFTA, not just for poultry but for a variety of other 
commodities we want to sell.
  So my friendly advice to the President is, before he goes ahead and 
pulls out of NAFTA, why doesn't he and the administration take a closer 
look at what we renegotiated in the Trans-Pacific Partnership when we 
renegotiated NAFTA. I think we will find a lot of what we need to do, 
want to do, and what we can agree to do.