[Congressional Record Volume 164, Number 181 (Thursday, November 15, 2018)]
[House]
[Pages H9531-H9532]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                                 NAFTA

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. The Chair recognizes the gentlewoman from 
Ohio (Ms. Kaptur) for 5 minutes.
  Ms. KAPTUR. Mr. Speaker, Ohio's jobs and trade message to our Nation 
is as loud and clear as it always has been: trade must be about people, 
not just goods.
  The job and wage destruction due to the original NAFTA continues to 
reverberate across our State and the

[[Page H9532]]

heartland. It undermines the economic security of hundreds of thousands 
of workers within our State and millions more across our Nation. 
Following the original NAFTA's implementation, town after town was 
emptied out of good jobs with good wages and benefits as jobs were 
outsourced south of our border.
  America has borne witness to NAFTA's vast job outsourcing and wage 
drag. Millions have suffered firsthand as dire predictions actualized 
and the grandiose promises of job creation failed to materialize. Our 
Nation has lost thousands of jobs to penny-wage environments where 
workers cannot even afford to buy the goods they make. They toil in 
sweatshops and maquiladoras, exposed to unimaginable toxins and unsafe 
working conditions. The original NAFTA fueled massive peasant migration 
from Mexico's countryside to our Nation as thousands of subsidized 
farmers in Mexico had livelihoods extinguished. Mexico's white corn 
industry disappeared. It was decimated.
  What a humanitarian tragedy is NAFTA. If anyone cares about people, 
not just goods, listen to my words: America must wake up to the impact 
our trade deals impose on people when negotiating with unequal 
economies.
  Just look to the devastation levied when multinational corporate 
interests dominate negotiations. Transnational banks and multinational 
corporations put a heavy thumb on the scales of economic justice for 
the poorest and for workers in our country as well as Third World 
economies. They exploit powerless people. Trade with our closest 
neighbors is never simply a zero-sum game.
  In the nearly three decades since NAFTA's original passage, our 
Nation has not even had 1 year of balanced trade accounts with Mexico 
and Canada. It has always been in the red.

                              {time}  1045

  Indeed, the NAFTA deal has managed to add over $1 trillion to 
America's trade deficits--red ink--and millions and millions of 
outsourced U.S. jobs.
  Mr. Speaker, NAFTA renegotiation is too important an opportunity to 
hang on faulty assumptions. America fell for that back in 1993. We 
cannot let it happen again.
  The devil is in the details. Incremental progress to uplift North 
American workers devastated by the original agreement will not be 
enough.
  With the release of text, which remains unfinished and unresolved, 
comes the task to determine whether the job outsourcing bonanza that 
has taken hold since NAFTA's passage in 1994 has truly been addressed.
  Let me ask:
  Have strong, enforceable labor standards been included, subject to 
swift and certain enforcement?
  Will transnational corporate interests retain the means to outsource 
American jobs to take advantage of rock-bottom wages in Mexico?
  Will we protect the rights of Americans to know what is in the 
imported food they are feeding their families, or will trade 
facilitation hold priority over food safety for people?
  Will Americans have access to affordable prescription drugs, or will 
the new NAFTA further rig the system to delay access to more 
affordable, safe generic drugs and biosimilars?
  Let me ask people who visit Ohio to witness vivid evidence of a trade 
agreement that failed America's workers and communities as plant after 
plant shuts down. Beyond just the NAFTA trade deficit, all our global 
trade deficits have ballooned under this administration's erratic trade 
agenda.
  In this wake, a modern NAFTA agreement to correct these injustices is 
long overdue. I have eagerly anticipated the release of specific text 
and a strategic agenda from this administration on how President Trump 
plans to bring living wage jobs back to America. Anything short of 
specifics that will clearly improve job prospects for Americans will 
fall short of the President's promises.
  Congress must not rush any deal of such magnitude by only letting the 
executive branch negotiate. Democrats have called on this 
administration to work with Congress to reach necessary and substantive 
achievements beneficial for all Americans. No more fast track. No more.
  Any new North American trade agreement must raise wages. It must 
create jobs in America and create a level playing field across the 
board.
  Mr. Speaker, after a quarter century of job hemorrhaging and the 
upending of American workers and livelihoods, NAFTA must result in 
rising standards of living and new jobs that create real wages and 
benefits here in our country.

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