[Congressional Record Volume 165, Number 107 (Tuesday, June 25, 2019)]
[House]
[Page H5085]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                              STOP NAFTA 2

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. The Chair recognizes the gentlewoman from 
Ohio (Ms. Kaptur) for 5 minutes.
  Ms. KAPTUR. Mr. President, American workers and organized labor do 
not support your renegotiated NAFTA. Corporate America and wealthy 
elites might, but don't make any effort to sell NAFTA's half-baked, 
repackaged broken promises to our workers, be they industrial or 
farmhands. You defy the liberty of our democracy when corporate elites 
speak as the democratic process.
  The promise of higher wages and returning jobs is not to be believed 
without engagement to ensure the dignity of labor, of labor rights, and 
labor enforcement on this continent.
  Hidden between the lines of the current NAFTA text are dollar signs 
and profits for self-dealing, transnational corporations that have 
outsourced our jobs, and very wealthy lobbyists who negotiated NAFTA 
2's deal. They do not prioritize living-wage jobs, family-sustaining 
wages, or workers' environmental safety and health conditions across 
America. NAFTA 2 is still an escalator to the bottom for workers in 
industrial plants and farmhands.
  The ravages NAFTA inflicted on America's workers are etched across 
American communities devastated by the outsourcing of factories, many 
left in economic ruin. NAFTA served as the ``model'' of modern 
integration of First World and emerging world economies. It was 
replicated in Central America with what is called CAFTA-DR. The same 
plundering of non-rich communities ensued throughout Mexico and Central 
America. Many fell victim then to drug cartels and gangs, overridden 
with violence. Economic hope further vanished.

  Many of those refugees are coming to our borders, if we but 
understand the force driving them.
  Today's proposed new NAFTA will be worse. In the quarter century 
under NAFTA, more than a million American jobs were outsourced, our 
workers' wages stagnated, and U.S. trade deficits with Mexico and 
Central American countries increased exponentially, not just a little 
bit.
  The minimum million jobs lost in our country are only those that are 
certified. Can you imagine how many other jobs were lost related as 
suppliers to those jobs?
  Our Nation lost thousands of jobs to penny-wage environments where 
workers could not even afford to buy what they made as they toiled in 
sweatshops, which I have visited in the maquiladoras, exposed to 
unimaginable toxins. And millions upon millions of Mexico's small 
farmers were obliterated due to NAFTA.
  This man knew the fate that would be dealt him back in 1993, and it 
was. This is a Mexican farmer that no longer holds his land.
  The original NAFTA fueled massive migration from Mexico's countryside 
to our Nation, as thousands of very, very, small farmers had their 
livelihoods extinguished. A minimum of 2 million--million--Mexican 
farmers were displaced as U.S. agricultural products, heavily 
subsidized, flowed tariff-free south over a 10-year period, and 
Mexico's white corn industry was decimated.
  Does anybody here care?
  Wages in Mexico have gone down under NAFTA, and U.S. wages and 
benefits have been stuck for the majority of over a quarter century in 
our country.
  Due to NAFTA and CAFTA nations alone, our southern neighbors stock us 
with fresh produce. Meanwhile, our multinational grain outfits send 
millions and millions of tons of feed grain down there, displacing 
Mexico's farmers, and creating an endless flow of desperate, cheap 
labor across this continent.
  Some very powerful people must love this system, as ordinary, 
hardworking people are quashed across this country and held in bondage.
  America must wake up to the impact our trade deals impose on people. 
Surely our own citizens, but also people who are exploited from other 
places when you have unequal economies that are joined at the hip by 
transnationals who don't give a hoot about people.
  When multinational corporate interests dominate negotiations, and 
they have a heavy thumb on the scales of economic justice across the 
Americas, trade with our closest neighbors is never simply a zero-sum 
game, because too few control those levers of negotiating power.
  It is no surprise that nearly half a million migrants have been taken 
into custody at our southern borders this year alone. Half a million. 
In the past, undocumented immigrants were overwhelmingly single men 
from Mexico, but that flow has changed.
  As the President continues to negotiate NAFTA, I urge him to include 
an enforceable labor rights section, a Labor Secretariat in NAFTA 2, or 
this exploitation will continue.
  Let's stop NAFTA 2.
  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Members are reminded to address their 
remarks to the Chair.

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