[Congressional Record Volume 163, Number 159 (Wednesday, October 4, 2017)]
[House]
[Pages H7836-H7837]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]
TRADE AND JOBS HEARING IN BROOK PARK, OHIO
(Ms. KAPTUR asked and was given permission to address the House for 1
minute and to revise and extend her remarks.)
Ms. KAPTUR. Mr. Speaker, as the NAFTA negotiations continue, it is
important for us to listen to our constituents on how we can make NAFTA
better for them.
To that end, I convened important stakeholders for a hearing in Ohio
on how NAFTA has hurt American workers and what we can do to help them.
Mr. Speaker, I include in the Record the testimony of Ms. Lee Geisse
of the BlueGreen Alliance, Cheryl Johncox of the Sierra Club, and Mark
Milko of Workers United.
BlueGreen Alliance Testimony, Lee Geisse, Regional Program Manager
We know that it is possible to have trade agreements that
don't engage the U.S. in a race to the bottom, but instead
lift up our own workers and workers throughout the world. We
applaud Congresswoman Kaptur's work on this issue and so many
others that are vital to the future of Ohio's workers,
economy and the environment! Thank you for bringing these
folks together and inviting the BlueGreen Alliance to
participate!
In 2006, the United Steelworkers and the Sierra Club formed
this unique Alliance--founded with the belief that we no
longer have to choose between good jobs and a clean
environment; we can and must have both. In these 11 years,
we've convened workers, environmentalists, and industry
leaders to forge partnerships that help us find solutions to
address historic problems like climate change in ways that
create and secure quality jobs. Together, we are a powerful
voice for good jobs, a clean environment, and a fair and
thriving economy.
The North American Free Trade Agreement, also known as
NAFTA, has been in effect since 1994. The current
Administration has announced plans for its renegotiation, but
without much detail. That renegotiation begins this month.
For far too many, NAFTA has meant the loss of good, quality
paying jobs and increased pollution, as the deal exacerbated
offshoring and profiteering off the backs of workers and the
environment. It's time for a trade agreement that levels the
playing field and makes deep reforms to strengthen workers'
rights and environmental standards. American workers should
expect agreements that ensure that other countries have to
play by the same worker safety and environmental rules that
we do. Anything short of [this] would be a failure.
NAFTA's replacement must support good union jobs, livable
wages, healthy communities, clean air and water, and a more
stable climate. Through an open, public process, the U.S. can
partner with other nations in mutually beneficial trade and
climate agreements that are fair, protect workers' rights and
jobs, safeguard the environment; ensure the democratic
processes of sovereign nations are not overturned by
unelected bodies; and raise the bar for consumer and public
protections in all nations that are signatories. The
BlueGreen Alliance recommends a new approach to trade that
lifts up workers and communities. This requires fundamental
changes to NAFTA, including:
1. Creating a transparent and inclusive renegotiation
process. NAFTA renegotiations should not be done in secret
but should be transparent and allow for public participation.
This means inviting and incorporating public input on U.S.
proposals for the agreement, and making negotiating texts
available for public comment after each negotiating round.
Workers, environmentalists, and other key stakeholders should
be part of the process to make sure negotiators understand
the impact of the deal on jobs and the environment. It is
critical that all stakeholders and the general public be
involved in a transparent, fair, and participatory
negotiating process.
2. Eliminating corporate courts that incentivize offshoring
and undermine environmental protections. NAFTA's Investor-
State Dispute Settlement (ISDS) provision has created private
courts in which foreign corporations can demand compensation
for environmental protections and other democratically
enacted laws before unelected, unaccountable, panels of
corporate lawyers. By creating unique privileges for foreign
investors, ISDS can incentivize offshoring and threaten the
very safeguards we have democratically enacted. NAFTA's broad
rights for foreign corporations, including ISDS, must be
eliminated--mere tweaks will not be sufficient. NAFTA's
replacement must eliminate ISDS so as to safeguard workers
and environmental and health protections.
3. Including strong and binding labor and environmental
protections--including wage and climate standards--in the
core text of the agreement. NAFTA has enabled corporations to
offshore production to take advantage of lower environmental
and labor standards abroad. This has significantly impacted
workers in both the manufacturing and service sectors. It has
spurred the loss of good paying jobs, carbon leakage, and the
export of pollution, while undermining domestic labor and
environmental protections. To fix this, NAFTA's replacement
should establish a binding floor of labor and environmental
protections across North America. It should require signatory
countries to adopt living wages for workers and to implement
policies to fulfill important international labor and
environmental agreements, including the Paris Climate
Agreement and the International Labor Organization's
conventions. These commitments should be included in the core
text of the agreement and trade sanctions should be used to
penalize violations. NAFTA must make a commitment to
prioritize workers and the environment.
4. Creating a stronger, independent enforcement mechanism.
Rules mean nothing if they aren't enforced. In the history of
the U.S. trade agreements, labor and environmental provisions
have consistently been ignored. Even post-2007 trade
agreements with labor and environmental provisions in the
core text have failed to produce disputes over widely
documented labor and environmental violations. To fix this,
the agreement that replaces NAFTA must create a new,
independent dispute settlement mechanism for enforcing labor
and environmental provisions rather than replicating the
failed system of the past. Stronger enforcement is critical
to ensure that the agreement is upheld and that it creates a
fair playing field among all parties.
5. Protecting and promoting Buy American and green
procurement policies. Currently NAFTA requires that the
federal government treat foreign bidders as if they were
American bidders when deciding how to spend U.S. taxpayer
money. It also includes rules that
[[Page H7837]]
limit governments' ability to use ``green purchasing''
requirements that ensure government contracts support
environmental protection. To protect and grow America's
manufacturing and service sector employment, create taxpayer
funded jobs in the U.S., and safeguard our air and water,
NAFTA's replacement should support domestic job creation and
responsible bidding standards.
6. Strengthening rules of origin. Rules of origin should
benefit producers and workers across North America. For
example, NAFTA's replacement needs to adopt more robust rules
of origin that require automotive manufacturers to make a
higher percentage of new vehicles and their parts in the
originating country in order to qualify for tariff free
trade. The agreement should ensure the signatory countries
receive manufacturing, investment, and production benefits of
the agreement. Under the current agreement, many countries
that are not part of the agreement take advantage of
loopholes to gain market access. The rules of origin and
regional value content need to be updated so that they can
incentivize manufacturing and production domestically.
We know exactly what causes outsourcing: low wages,
exploited workers in unsafe working conditions, and weak, or
non-existent, environmental, protections in other countries.
Americans, Ohioans, and working people everywhere need fair
trade deals that put workers and the environment first and
don't put corporate interests above our health, our rights,
and our safety.
The promise of NAFTA being a job creator was hollow, and
thousands of Ohio workers watched helplessly as this flawed
trade agreement led to the outsourcing of middle-class jobs.
While Donald Trump has promised to renegotiate NAFTA, the
skepticism is that his billionaire, climate-denying cabinet,
could actually make it worse!
All of our partners and allies must commit to helping
champions like Congresswoman Kaptur watch closely and ensure
that the voices of working people are heard throughout this
process to support--not undermine--good jobs, efforts to
address climate change, and safe worksites and healthy
communities!
____
Cheryl Johncox, Organizing Representative, Sierra Club
Thank you, Congresswoman Marcy Kaptur, for this very
important hearing associated with the North American Free
Trade Agreement Renegotiation. My name is Cheryl Johncox and
I am a member of the national field team of Sierra Club.
For more than two decades, the North American Free Trade
Agreement (NAFTA) has harmed communities across Canada,
Mexico, and the U.S.--particularly people of color and lower
income families--by undermining environmental protections,
eliminating jobs, increasing air and water pollution, eroding
wages, and fueling climate change.
To transform NAFTA from a polluter-friendly deal into one
that supports environmental protection, any renegotiation
must include, at a minimum,
1. Eliminate rules that empower corporations to attack
environmental and public health protections in unaccountable
tribunals. NAFTA's investor-state dispute settlement (ISDS)
system has empowered multinational corporations to bypass our
courts, go to private tribunals, and demand money from
taxpayers for policies that affect corporate bottom lines.
Corporations have used NAFTA to challenge bans on toxic
chemicals, the decisions of environmental review panels, and
protections for our climate. They have extracted more than
$370 million from governments in these cases, while pending
NAFTA claims total more than $35 billion. The cases are heard
not by judges, but by corporate lawyers outside the normal
court system. Broad corporate rights, including ISDS, must be
eliminated from NAFTA to safeguard our right to
democratically determine our own public interest protections.
2. Add strong, enforceable environmental and labor
standards to the core text of agreement. NAFTA's weak and
unenforceable environmental and labor side agreements
facilitated a race to the bottom in which corporations could
offshore jobs to exploit lower environmental and labor
standards in another country. Any deal that replaces NAFTA
must create a fair playing field by requiring each
participating country to adopt, maintain, and implement
policies to ensure compliance with domestic environmental
laws and important international environmental and labor
agreements, including the Paris climate agreement, and
treaties protecting Indigenous rights. In addition, each
country must make commitments to tackle critical conservation
challenges related to illegal timber trade, illegal wildlife
trade, and fisheries management. These commitments must be
included in the core text of the agreement and made
enforceable via an independent dispute settlement process in
which trade sanctions are used to correct labor and
environmental abuses.
3. Safeguard energy sector regulation by overhauling
overreaching rules. NAFTA's energy chapter, written before
awareness of climate change was widespread, must be
eliminated.. Other NAFTA rules allow renewable portfolio
standards, low-carbon fuel standards, and other climate-
friendly energy regulations to be challenged for impeding
business and hurting corporate bottom lines. Such rules must
be narrowed to protect climate policies in each country.
4. Restrict pollution from cross-border motor carriers.
NAFTA encouraged a rise in cross-border motor traffic without
doing anything to mitigate the resulting increase in harmful
vehicle emissions. Any deal that replaces NAFTA must require
cross-border motor carriers to reduce emissions in order for
their goods to benefit from reduced tariffs. In addition, all
cross-border commercial vehicles must be required to comply
with all state and federal standards to limit pollution.
5. Require green government purchasing instead of
restricting it. NAFTA's procurement rules limit governments'
ability to use ``green purchasing'' requirements that ensure
government contracts support renewable energy, energy
efficiency, and sustainable goods. NAFTA's replacement must
require signatory governments to include a preference for
goods and services with low environmental impacts and fair
labor practices in procurement decisions.
6. Bolster climate protections by penalizing imported goods
made with high climate emissions and lax labor standards.
NAFTA allows firms to shift production to a country with
lower climate standards, which can spur ``carbon leakage''
and job offshoring. To prevent this, and encourage greater
climate action from high-emissions trading partners, each
country must be required to impose a border tax on imported
goods made with significant climate pollution, and unfair
labor practices.
7. Add a broad protection for environmental, labor and
other public interest policies. NAFTA's many overreaching
rules restrict the policy tools that governments can use to
protect the environment and other broadly-shared priorities.
NAFTA includes no provision that effectively shields public
interest policies from such rules--only a weak ``exception''
that has consistently failed to protect challenged policies.
Instead; any deal that replaces NAFTA must include a broad
``carve-out'' that exempts public interest policies from all
of the deal's rules.
Any NAFTA renegotiation must be conducted through an open
process that invites the public to help formulate U.S.
positions and to comment on negotiated texts after each
negotiating round. Bolstered by resurgent support for a new
trade model, we commit to push for this environmental
overhaul of NAFTA, and against any polluter-friendly deal
that masquerades as change.
____
Workers United,
August 11, 2017.
Re NAFTA field hearing.
Congresswoman Kaptur,
Cleveland Office, Cleveland, OH.
Dear Congresswoman Kaptur: I just wanted to respond in
writing on a couple of facts on how NAFTA can affect workers
indirectly impacted by NAFTA in manufacturing.
1. Workers that supply the food service in factories that
are moved to Mexico.
2. Workers that work in the hospitality industry are
impacted because of the loss of good paying jobs, those
manufacturing workers no longer have the disposable income to
go to a racetrack, ball game or other sporting events at all
or as often.
3. The workers that still produce goods like our garment
workers are put in a bad bargaining position at contract time
because of trade agreements like NAFTA.
Please keep me in the loop on anything we can do to help in
this process to get this trade agreement amended.
Sincerely,
Mark A. Milko,
Area Director Workers United.
Ms. KAPTUR. Lee and Cheryl underlined the adverse environmental
effects of NAFTA and the need to strengthen environmental standards in
any renegotiated agreement.
I was proud to note their statements that Ohio has become number one
in solar manufacturing. Just as Mark said, it is important that we
ensure that these valuable manufacturing skills are passed along to our
youth, and not outsourced.
I am grateful for their contributions and welcome their continued
engagement as the negotiations proceed.
Mr. Speaker, I thank you for allowing me to include their remarks in
the Record. They are important for all Americans to read, especially
those negotiating the new NAFTA.
____________________