[Congressional Record Volume 164, Number 49 (Wednesday, March 21, 2018)]
[House]
[Pages H1732-H1733]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                    OUTSOURCING U.S. JOBS AND WAGES

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. The Chair recognizes the gentlewoman from 
Connecticut (Ms. DeLauro) for 5 minutes.
  Ms. DeLAURO. Mr. Speaker, I rise to bring much-needed attention to a 
critical issue: the outsourcing of U.S. jobs and wages.
  I have been fighting on behalf of working people to stop outsourcing, 
to stop sending our jobs overseas; and fighting against low-income 
wages that outsourcing has caused since the day I came to the Congress.
  Right now, we have an opportunity to make real progress, pushing back 
against outsourcing. But in order to make that opportunity reality, we 
cannot accept the status quo on the North American Free Trade 
Agreement.
  Any renegotiated NAFTA must eliminate the incentives for outsourcing 
jobs, raise wages, and level the playing field for North American 
workers. It is our job to ensure that the

[[Page H1733]]

Trump administration keeps its promises to the middle class, and put an 
end to the outsourcing of jobs by fighting for strong, enforceable 
labor and environmental standards.

                              {time}  1015

  The U.S. labor proposal in NAFTA must dramatically improve to stop 
the outsourcing of good-paying jobs and the suppression of wages for 
working people. Unless we rewrite NAFTA with the workers at the center 
of our goals, we will repeat the same mistakes that we have made in the 
past.
  The North American Free Trade Agreement has already facilitated the 
outsourcing of a million American jobs to Mexico where corporations can 
pay workers poverty wages and dump toxins into the environment before 
bringing products back into the U.S. for sale.
  American workers and the environment lose. In fact, in 2004, in my 
district in Connecticut, we lost 300 good jobs at the BIC plant in 
Milford, Connecticut, because the company moved their razor operation 
to Mexico.
  Beyond BIC, NAFTA had a tremendously negative impact on my home State 
in Connecticut. In fact, we lost more than 100,000 manufacturing jobs 
since it was enacted and since China was allowed to join the WTO--the 
period between 1994 and 2016, according to the Bureau of Labor 
Statistics. That amounts to nearly 40 percent of the manufacturing jobs 
in Connecticut, taking into account both jobs created by exports and 
jobs displaced by imports.
  As these jobs moved overseas, the percentage of all private sector 
jobs that are manufacturing jobs in Connecticut declined from 20 
percent to 11 percent during the NAFTA-WTO period. I watched and I 
fought against the slow death of the Ansonia Copper and Brass Company 
as they suffered under these policies.
  In Connecticut, more than 25,000 workers are certified as having lost 
their job due to imports or outsourcing under the Trade Adjustment 
Assistance program--companies such as Carrier, Exxon Mobil, General 
Electric, Honeywell, Northrop Grumman, Dow Chemical, The Hershey 
Company, 3M, and others.
  So manufacturing jobs, good-paying jobs that you can support a family 
with, took a big hit in Connecticut because of NAFTA--workers who made 
electrical products, medical products, machined parts, printing 
products, clothing, automotive parts, aircraft parts, and the list goes 
on.
  When negotiated with the workers in mind, trade agreements can create 
jobs in America, and I will hold the Trump administration to that 
standard, just as I have done with every administration, no matter 
which party occupies the White House.
  Turning to investor-state dispute settlement, or ISDS, in trade 
agreements, ISDS makes it easier to outsource jobs from the United 
States by making it less risky. It makes it less risky for companies to 
move their manufacturing to places that have a weaker rule of law and 
an underdeveloped court system. The assumption is that, instead of 
relying upon rule of law and the courts, corporations can just sue the 
taxpayers of the host country.
  ISDS undermines the home advantage of a relatively well-developed 
court system and the rule of law like what we have here in the United 
States. Furthermore, ISDS can be wielded as a weapon to threaten and 
discourage efforts to raise wages, which encourages outsourcing. For 
example, the Egyptian Government was recently challenged by a 
multinational corporation because of a raise in the minimum wage.
  President Trump ran on a platform that called for an end to the 
outsourcing of good-paying jobs, yet his tax law, arguably his proudest 
achievement thus far, incentivizes outsourcing, encourages companies to 
export jobs by creating a lower rate for multinational corporations to 
invest abroad. This is nowhere near the corporate tax rate for domestic 
investments. This is a job killer.
  Right now, a company that makes their wares outside of the United 
States pays up to 13 percent in U.S. taxes. The same company making 
their wares in the United States pays 21 percent in taxes on their 
operations. I have recently introduced a bill striking the sections of 
the law that create this incentive to outsource.
  In closing, the biggest economic issue of our time is that too many 
people who play by the rules are in jobs that do not pay them enough to 
live on. They are struggling with rising costs of healthcare, with 
childcare, and some can't even put food on the table. We need to fight 
for these workers. We should not be sending their jobs and their wages 
overseas, and I will continue to fight outsourcing for hardworking 
middle class Americans. The stakes could not be higher.

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