[Congressional Record Volume 171, Number 65 (Thursday, April 10, 2025)]
[House]
[Pages H1593-H1595]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]
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TRUMP TARIFFS
(Under the Speaker's announced policy of January 3, 2025, Ms. Kaptur
of Ohio was recognized for 30 minutes.)
Ms. KAPTUR. Mr. Speaker, I rise today out of deep concern for the
manufacturing workers and families of northern Ohio, from Toledo Jeep
to our numerous parts suppliers and union shops across the Great Lakes
in both the United States and Canada. The Trump administration's
reckless and arbitrary tariff policy is putting their jobs and
livelihoods at risk.
These billboards just started to go up in our region. Trump's tariffs
are a tax. They are a tax on everything.
While yesterday President Trump claimed to pause all tariffs, he left
in place a 10 percent across-the-board tariff on all global trade
entering the United States, even in places like our region where we
have a very wonderful relationship with companies in Canada. We are an
integrated economy. We don't need any tariffs, not at our end of the
country.
Let me be clear. Tariffs are not a strategy. They are a tax on
working Americans and the firms that employ them. If not wisely
applied, jobs hang in the balance on both sides of our border between
the United States and Canada.
A part in a car or truck, in a steel mill, all of this that happens
in our area can cross over the border six times. Is it going to be a 10
percent tariff put on every time it crosses the border? This is crazy.
Tariffs threaten good-paying jobs. They raise prices at the checkout
line. They disrupt deeply integrated supply chains, like ours,
especially with Canada, Ohio's largest fair trade partner that keeps
our auto industry strong and globally competitive.
We don't need any more problems. We have been fighting global
competition now for half a century, and it is rough. Instead of a blunt
Trump instrument, we need a targeted approach that brings real
investment to American manufacturing and in the communities hollowed
out by decades of bad and broken trade deals and outsourcing.
I call on this administration. We do share in common a deep worry
about the trade deficit, but work with us. Work with Congress to craft
smart, strategic reciprocity agreements with each country. Ensure that
workers, like United Auto Workers, have a seat at the table, a voice,
and real power to negotiate on all sides of all borders.
For too long, what has been happening is billionaire companies and
corporate executives have been taking our production and outsourcing it
to penny-wage nations. It is slave labor, really, where people make
hardly anything, if $1 an hour, maybe $2 an hour, competing against a
First World economy like ours.
As the proud daughter of union workers, I know that the road to
rebuilding American manufacturing runs straight through our heartland,
through the working class, the people who work hard, the spine of
America's industrial economy in our Great Lakes region and the Midwest.
America's enemies around the world today are applauding the self-
inflicted tariff chaos that has been exacted on our people. They are
also plotting as they watch the U.S. stock market plummet, and then
bounce back a little bit, and then go down again, endangering and
impacting markets around the globe. Reckless and cavalier economic
policy could lead us into a Trump recession.
A record of trillions of dollars in U.S. wealth was just lost this
past week due to chaotic moves on tariffs arbitrarily imposed by the
Trump administration. This week, the hole was being dug deeper as
markets continued to free-fall. There was a partial rollback. Where
will the roller coaster head next week? Nobody really knows.
None of the tariffs that the President has proposed and implemented
have ever had a single vote in this Congress. This is unconstitutional,
and it has caused a loss in the 401(k) retirement accounts of tens of
millions of Americans. Those took a nosedive. They have been yo-yoing
up and down. We are talking about $10 trillion of market losses these
past few days. That is unprecedented.
Where is Speaker Johnson? Is he asleep at the wheel? Where is the
Republican Committee on Ways and Means? Is it on vacation?
The Trump administration's dangerous overreach is totally damaging to
our economy and unnerving to our
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trade allies around the globe. Crashing the U.S. and global economy is
not in the short- or long-term interests of the American people.
President Trump thought his so-called liberation day was a huge
success. If the goal was liberating Americans from their hard-earned
money and making them pay more for everything, whether it is their
car--thousands of dollars more are going to be placed on top of the
purchase of a car--the price of energy they pay, the price of gas, and
the price of food. Take your pick. Lumber and housing are outpriced for
most people now.
Meanwhile, when asked about car prices going up, the President gave a
rare, troubling response. He said: ``I couldn't care less.'' That is
what he said about automotive prices.
President Trump, come to Ohio. Come to us. Visit us with Canada. Let
us show you what we have done without your help for decades, trying to
rebuild the industrial spine of America.
I will fight for the American auto industry without tanking our
economy because, clearly, there are some people in charge who don't
know what they are doing and are raising prices on every single citizen
in this country.
Retirement plans should be sacred. What just happened on Wall Street
made a whole lot of people nervous.
We got so many phone calls in our office. Not only are jobs at risk
but retirement savings are put at risk. Investments are put at risk.
I spent too much of my time in this House and in this Chamber trying
to repair the economic damage to our economy from trade deals like
NAFTA, CAFTA, China PNTR. They said USMCA was going to fix everything.
Guess what? The trade deficit is getting worse every year. That means
our jobs are being hollowed out to someplace else, and they need to be
returned to this country. We need to negotiate that. It won't just
happen because we want it to happen.
As a private businessman and billionaire, Donald Trump never lifted a
finger to help us. He didn't stop the outsourcing of jobs during his
first term. They got worse. Jobs were outsourced.
We had family farm after family farm collapse across this country
through consolidation. He didn't do anything.
You need a partnership between the legislative branch and the
executive branch working with our companies. This is complicated. It
doesn't just happen.
As a result, we have these gigantic trade deficits. We haven't had a
balanced trade account in this country in over half a century. There is
a cost to that. It comes in jobs, wages, and the ability to pay your
way forward in your own family. It is happening in manufacturing,
agriculture, and energy, and there must be reforms in trade policy. We
all agree on that. It is not a question of whether but how.
Huge trade deficits translate into growing U.S. debt. We hear a lot
on the other side of the aisle about the debt. There would be a lot
more economic strength if we hadn't outsourced so many jobs. With
Canada, our largest fair trade partner, the books look pretty good.
The Great Lakes folks get along on both sides of the border, so why
disrupt something that is working? That is absolutely insane.
Tariffs can be a tool to create jobs and wealth, as well as bring
back jobs to our country, and we ought to head in that direction. Yet,
the President's efforts seem to be adding more trade deficits, not
balancing our trade accounts.
America can't import its way to jobs and wealth. It must export
products. We must grow things, make things here, and export them. Thus,
fair trade with nations that play by the fair trade rules must be our
objective.
Let's start there. Let's work with our friends and then open up other
markets and retool other markets where that isn't working in our
interests. You can't just do it with a broad brush stroke.
Working with Canada is very different than working with China,
believe me. At the same time, we must carefully ensure that we grow
jobs here through our trade policies and prevent price gouging by
adversaries that benefit from protection in the marketplace.
Here is what China does: It manufactures four times as much steel as
the world consumes, and then it strategically dumps to wipe out
production.
Come with me to Lorain, Ohio. It is deeply in my heart. I represented
it for 10 years until they gerrymandered our State again and took it
away. What happened to the workers in Lorain, Ohio, should happen to no
worker in this country. They deserve better for the hard work that they
do.
Mr. Speaker, let's stop the chaos of trade wars, arbitrary pauses,
crazy tariffs, and threats. The American people sent us here for
solutions. They don't need more tariffs that are really taxes on their
cost of living.
America's trade accounts need balancing. We don't need to keep
hemorrhaging. That will be the real test. The accounts will be the real
test at the end of this year, but they are already not looking good.
Yet, you don't make it better by killing the patient, the American
worker, with higher prices on everything that they buy and by jerking
away millions of dollars, the cumulative wealth of their retirement
accounts.
America must achieve free trade among free people, not more tariff
chaos.
Passover and Easter Reflections
Ms. KAPTUR. Mr. Speaker, I wanted to put in a word. In our office, as
all of this has been going on, I thought a lot about my own faith and
how to help the American people who are so worried about what is going
on.
I did some reflection on the faith community in which I was baptized
and still belong. Next Sunday, for us, is the most profound holy day.
We commemorate Easter, and it holds profound meaning.
This coming Saturday, in Judaism, Jews around our globe and
throughout our Nation will sit down for a Passover Seder.
For both religions, this weekend is one of the most significant
religious holidays in the calendar year, with expression and
remembrance on the importance of treasuring our heritage and endowment.
For 2,000 years or more, these days have expressed faith that can
move the human conscience. Faith motivates people's behavior to think
about the difference between daily life and the divine and what life
could be.
Christians are encouraged to be a sacrificial people and,
importantly, a resurrection people. Jews think of how hard it was for
their ancestors escaping Egypt and are thankful for all the joys that
they have in modern life.
With Easter and Passover in mind, I wish to place on the record today
reflections as a result of the Trump administration's recent actions
that are causing anxiety among the people who I represent. These holy
days seem to be a proper time to pray for them, to remember them, and
to seriously ask ourselves what we can do together to heal them, our
Nation, and our people.
Days ago, I was approached by a kind nurse who had endured a hard
day. She shared with me that a patient of hers in a local healthcare
center had immigrated to our country legally to work as a common
laborer. She had fled a troubled Latin American country where thugs
controlled the streets.
Leaving all behind, the worker had journeyed here from a place where
there was no hope for a better future. Then, last week here in America,
very sadly, she attempted to take her own life with a fentanyl overdose
because she feared being arrested by Trump administration immigration
officials.
She could not imagine going back to the hell from which she had come.
Here with no help to understand the law that she came here by, that she
could work in America, she was frozen with fear because of what she saw
on TV.
I immediately thought of the last words uttered by Jesus as he was
put to death by those who could not accept his religious teachings. He
asked: ``Father, Father, why have You forsaken me?''
This also parallels the story of Passover with the Jewish people
fleeing Egypt in search of a better life, where they could live free
from bondage and fear.
Are we not to care for strangers in a strange land, to treat our
neighbors as we would want to be treated? Do we leave them to wander
the desert or return to horror? Do we offer a hand out and up to ensure
that they can live in safety and security? I think this is a weekend
for examining our own conscience.
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My office has heard an influx of others fleeing horror, seeking
shelter, scared that they will be sent back somewhere. Haitians who
were here legally and working were scared in Ohio that they would be
sent back to the streets of Port-au-Prince that are controlled by
warlord gangsters and roving bandits. Who would want to go back to
that? These are people who are working, and every company I know is
looking for workers right now.
Local churches, synagogues, and mosques help to resettle Ukrainians
here legally who are fleeing war-torn regions in their homeland. Those
Ukrainians all received an erroneous email last week.
Imagine, when their relatives are fighting and dying in another
country, and they are here trying to hold their family together in some
minimal way, them receiving a letter saying that they would be able to
self-deport before it was claimed to be sent in error. In other words,
some person in some agency sent out the wrong letter, which causes even
more anxiety and fear in families who are already suffering.
What kind of a country are we becoming?
This week, our district staff took a call from a senior citizen who
has ordered her prescription drugs from Canada for many years. She
receives them by mail because she can't walk. She is deeply worried
that, with the new 10 percent Trump tariffs across the board, the price
of her medicine will go up beyond her ability to afford it.
There are a lot of people in charge of things here in Washington who
can't think in front of their own noses. They have never faced these
situations.
I asked myself: What would Jesus do? The Jewish people, who leave the
door open and a seat for Elijah, what would they do?
Our President has even threatened higher tariffs on all imported
medicine. Boy, that is a hard sock to the gut. This isn't something
someone who cares about people and their health and well-being would do
or should do.
If I were his mother, I would scold him.
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Our office is receiving numerous inquiries from retirees, working
people who worked hard and are deeply concerned about the drop in value
of their 401(k) retirement plans that they worked for.
Those just lost enormous value in the financial markets as the Trump
tariffs traded away the value of their earnings. Meanwhile, the cost of
everything keeps rising. Where I live, the price of gas rose 75 cents
more a gallon than I paid a week before.
I have heard from mothers worried their daughters and granddaughters
will lose their Medicaid coverage for mental health care and treatment.
God bless every American family that has a child with mental illness or
a relative with mental illness. You are saints caring for them.
A wife called worried her husband going through chemo for cancer
treatment would lose his Medicaid because of the cuts that are being
proposed here just 3 years before he becomes Medicare eligible.
If families are denied access to Medicaid without the finances to
cover care, what will happen to them? If your family is lucky and you
have never had an ill relative, you are lucky because there are
millions of people across this country that are suffering as I deliver
these remarks tonight. Walk in their shoes.
People on Medicare are about to lose access to telehealth. This is
terrible. Many seniors can't walk. I have neighbors. One lady fell out
of her bed. She couldn't get off the floor. She had one of those things
on her neck that she pushes and then the ambulances came from the local
fire department.
There are a lot of people living at the edge. We have to be concerned
about them. We can't cut their benefits. These are just some of the
countless stories and fears we hear. There are hundreds and thousands
more reaching out to Members of Congress in fear for themselves, their
families, their loved ones, and treasured members of their community.
America does not live in fear. That isn't why our country was
founded. We have been a refuge for our entire history, and we need to
continue to be a refuge for those seeking a better life. Who will speak
up for these people while they are painted as worthless or not worthy
of a place in our country by those who just want to slash and burn and
tax and deport and destroy?
Jesus' last words were uttered in the Aramaic language, and he
breathed his last breath asking why he had been forsaken. We can ask
this for people we know and we can do something to help. Some of us
must ask during Passover and Easter week who is being forsaken in this
wild rush to endow the billionaire class with more, more vast infusions
of money taken out of the hides and hearts of the American people?
What would Jesus do? What would Moses do? Why won't we as a country
and a people ask ourselves the question of how we can help, not hurt?
How can we help and not hurt?
Let us recommit to that objective in the greatest Nation in the world
that needs caring leadership and those that truly are capable of loving
one another and other people.
Mr. Speaker, I yield back the balance of my time.
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