[Congressional Record Volume 164, Number 188 (Thursday, November 29, 2018)]
[House]
[Pages H9731-H9732]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                              {time}  1915
                               NAFTA 2.0

  The SPEAKER pro tempore (Mr. Budd). Under the Speaker's announced 
policy of January 3, 2017, the gentlewoman from Ohio (Ms. Kaptur) is 
recognized for 60 minutes as the designee of the minority leader.
  Ms. KAPTUR. Mr. Speaker, tomorrow President Trump will claim victory 
as the United States, Canadian, and Mexican officials gather to sign a 
replacement for the North American Free Trade Agreement. But let us 
make no mistake, this is far from a finished deal.
  Congress has the final say on trade. From where we stand today, what 
has been called NAFTA 2.0 still requires work to reach standards 
acceptable to the American people and American workers and companies.
  How can any President claim this victory the same week General Motors 
announces the idling of five North American facilities, and as it cuts 
15,000 living-wage jobs, including one in Lordstown, Ohio, not even 
counting the thousands and thousands more jobs that will be lost in the 
automotive parts sector in our country. What an affront to every 
promise President Trump has made American manufacturing towns.
  Ohio's trade message to our Nation is as loud and clear as it always 
has been. The job outsourcing destruction due to the original NAFTA 
deal, which passed a quarter century ago, over my great objection on 
this floor, continues to reverberate across our State and Nation.
  Now, we just saw at Lordstown, another, at that plant, 1,600 General 
Motors jobs, and upwards of 5,000 total job losses when the auto 
suppliers are counted at just that one facility.
  Following the original NAFTA's implementation, town after town lost 
good jobs with good wages and benefits.
  How many times must America's towns and workers bear witness to 
NAFTA's vast U.S. job outsourcing and wage drag? How many more?
  Millions have suffered firsthand as dire predictions actualized and 
the false promises of NAFTA job creation failed to materialize. 
Instead, they personally experienced the great sucking sound of job 
outsourcing, just what we said here on this floor back in the early 
1990s.
  Whether GM's decision was at all influenced by NAFTA 2.0 is 
irrelevant. American trade deals have far too long allowed corporate 
America to run rampant over America's workers as they seek out the 
penny-wage laborers who can't afford to buy what they make.
  I have a couple of charts here that I want to bring to the floor to 
describe what has been happening across this continent now for a 
quarter century, and what is upsetting the American people.
  Millions of U.S. jobs have been obliterated year after year, as 
replacement workers toil and work in unsafe sweatshops and maquiladoras 
south of the border exposed to unimaginable toxins.
  The original NAFTA was supposed to create trade surpluses for the 
United States. It was supposed to create job growth in the United 
States. And you know what has happened? Exactly the reverse.

[[Page H9732]]

  These are the numbers just for the year of 2016. You can see how big 
the trade deficit is with Mexico, nearly $70 billion and with Canada, 
$8 billion. Now, that is up fourfold since back in the early nineties, 
before NAFTA was passed, when we already had a small trade deficit with 
those countries, but it has just exploded.
  The original NAFTA fueled massive migration on the Mexican side from 
their countryside to our Nation as millions upon millions of small 
farmers' livelihoods were extinguished in Mexico. Mexico's white corn 
industry was decimated.
  Why do you think people fled to the United States? If you were 
hungry, and you had nothing, and you lived in desperation, well, you 
might do the same. What a humanitarian tragedy has been occurring for 
over a quarter century. And yet, policymakers in the United States and 
Mexico close their eyes to the human tragedy.
  Trade with our closest neighbors is never simply a zero-sum game. 
There have been lots of losers. In fact, our country's been a loser.
  Yeah, there are some pockets of transportation jobs down at the 
border. Anybody would expect that. But overall, a net loser.
  And guess what? Under the Trump administration, the red ink is 
growing.
  In the nearly 3 decades since NAFTA's original passage, we have not 
even had 1 year of balanced trade accounts, which is the true measure 
of whether a trade agreement is successful or not.
  So we look at the Trump trade figures here, going across the months, 
and you look at the red line. Every month the trade deficit grows, 
including with Mexico and Canada; not even 1 year of balanced trade 
accounts, and the numbers are getting worse.
  NAFTA provided vivid evidence of a severely-flawed trade agreement 
that failed America's workers and communities as plant after plant 
shuts down. And you know, the sad tragedy is, at Lordstown, the third 
shift was gone a couple of years ago. But as the second shift left this 
week, they were told by the GM officials in the plant, these jobs are 
going to Mexico.
  Beyond just the NAFTA deficit, all our global trade deficits have 
ballooned under this administration's erratic trade and tariff agenda. 
It makes no sense.
  General Motors says that one of the reasons they are moving the jobs 
to Mexico is because of the cost of the Trump tariffs, and that they 
have had to pay several billion dollars more for steel that goes into 
making these vehicles.
  Well, you know, in this wake, a modern NAFTA agreement to correct all 
of the injustices associated with continental trade is long overdue. I 
have eagerly anticipated the release of specific text in this NAFTA 2.0 
and strategic agenda from the administration on how President Trump 
plans to bring jobs back to America. He actually promised that in all 
the towns that have just gotten these pink slips. He said it in 
Youngstown. He told the people in Warren, Michigan, that they never 
had to worry if they voted for him; that they would never have a plant 
close down.

  Well, guess what? General Motors is closing down the transmission 
facility in Warren, Michigan.
  Thus far, both the trade deficit and the job outsourcing continue to, 
as the expression goes, go south. These numbers are going to get much 
worse for the workers and communities in our country.
  And the workers in Mexico, since NAFTA's passage, guess what? Their 
wages are going down. What kind of a system is this?
  Anything short of specifics in this redone agreement that will 
clearly improve job prospects for Americans will fall short of Trump's 
promises.
  Mr. Speaker, this is too important a moment to hang America's economy 
on faulty assumptions. We, in Congress, not I, but some in Congress, 
fell for NAFTA in 1994. We can't let it happen again.
  The signing of text tomorrow leaves with us a lot of work yet to 
complete. Let Congress do its job.
  Has this administration answered the question of whether the job 
outsourcing bonanza that has taken hold since NAFTA's passage in 1994 
has truly been addressed?
  It is hard to believe that will be the case, given the current news 
about General Motors; and that is not the only company moving jobs out 
of this country.
  Have strong labor standards been included in NAFTA 2.0 subject to 
swift and certain enforcement? No.
  Will corporate interests retain the means to outsource American jobs, 
to take advantage of rock-bottom Mexican wages? Yeah, they will.
  Will we protect the rights of Americans to know what is in the food 
they are feeding their families, or will trade facilitation hold 
priority over food safety?
  Congress has to ask, will Americans have access to affordable 
prescription drugs made in Mexico, or will the new NAFTA further rig 
the system to delay access to more affordable and safe generic drugs 
and biosimilars?
  Globally, will we work to open closed and controlled markets?
  Will we equalize the negative impact of the value-added tax in our 
trade agreement? There is nothing in this on that.
  Will tax policy stop favoring outsourcing? No, actually the Trump tax 
bill favored more outsourcing.
  Democrats look forward to holding hearings and oversight of how these 
questions will truly impact all of America and America's workers and 
communities. We have called on this administration to work with us to 
reach necessary and substantive achievements.
  There is a new administration taking power in Mexico itself. We need 
to listen and work with them.
  Any new North American trade agreement must raise wages and create a 
level playing field across the board. The American people are not 
interested in staged production signing ceremonies. They want a NAFTA 
deal that is fixed and that will create good-paying jobs in America 
with benefits you can depend upon and heal the economic injustices 
suffered for the past 3 decades as people are exploited by institutions 
more powerful than themselves.
  And if America is going to be the leader of the free world, she has 
to be the leader in free trade agreements that are fair and offer the 
opportunity of rising living standards for all people, not harming 
people, but helping people.
  Trade is not just about goods, it is about people. We have to put 
people first. We have to put people at the top of the agenda. We have 
to put workers at the top of the agenda and treat them for their true 
worth, and not any longer allow trade deals like NAFTA to hollow them 
out, to hollow their communities out, and to hollow America out.
  Mr. Speaker, I yield back the balance of my time.

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