[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 148 (2002), Part 3]
[House]
[Page 4168]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                             GLOBALIZATION

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under a previous order of the House, the 
gentleman from Tennessee (Mr. Duncan) is recognized for 5 minutes.
  Mr. DUNCAN. Mr. Speaker, yesterday in my hometown of Knoxville, 
Tennessee, the Levi Strauss Company announced that a plant was closing 
and 900 jobs would be moved out of this country. This follows on the 
heels over the past year of many other plants closing in east Tennessee 
and throughout this Nation.
  We have entered into some trade deals over the past several years 
that have not been good for American companies and American workers. 
They may have been good for big multinational companies, but they have 
resulted in millions of jobs going to other countries. I think that 
many, many people, in fact I think a great majority of the people in 
this Nation, are sick and tired of all of these jobs going to other 
nations.
  Our trade deficits have been running at almost unbelievable levels 
over the last couple of years, usually $25 billion to $30 billion a 
month, or even higher. Many economists say that we lose 20,000 jobs per 
billion, but even if the job loss is much smaller than that, it still 
means that we have been losing millions and millions of jobs over the 
last several years, and I just do not believe that we can sustain that 
kind of job loss indefinitely on into the future.
  In the short run, we do benefit from being able to buy cheaper goods 
from overseas. In the long run, however, we have lost and continue to 
lose millions of jobs to other countries. These jobs will not be easy 
to replace.
  Michael Kelly, a columnist for the Washington Post, wrote recently 
that ``Globalization ultimately depends on driving manufacturing jobs 
out of the U.S. and results in the loss of real jobs for real people 
in, say, Akron, Ohio. More than that,'' Mr. Kelly continues, ``it 
results in real costs to the Nation as a whole, and these costs are 
massive. When, as has happened all across the country, a factory shuts 
its doors and shatters a town, turning what had been a productive 
community into a ward of the State, what does that cost America? Over 
time, many, many millions, a price that globalists ignore. Finally, 
globalization results in the loss of a way of life,'' what was quaintly 
known as the American way of life.
  This columnist, Michael Kelly for The Washington Post, continues by 
saying, ``In the long run, global free trade may be, as its boosters 
say, to the greater good of all, but in the short and even medium run 
in any developed country, it is to the greater pain of many for the 
greater gain of a few. Those who do not understand this may be well-
intentioned, but the people who live in globalism's growing number of 
ghost towns must consider them shockingly ill-informed.''
  Then, Mr. Speaker, just yesterday Paul Craig Roberts, writing in the 
Washington Times, wrote this. He said, ``Today, free trade has come to 
mean opening U.S. markets to those who do not open their markets to us. 
To meet this competition, U.S. firms locate factories in low-wage 
countries in order to be able to compete in the American consumer 
market. Free-traders think this is fine so long as the American 
consumer is benefiting from a lower price. But, of course, if 
specialization and division of labor means shifting production to low-
wage countries, the U.S. population will find itself specialized in 
selling and servicing imported goods.''
  He continues on, and he says, ``Free-traders are out to lunch when 
they say things like `Oh, let the Chinese have the low-wage textile 
jobs,' implying that the United States retains the high-tech jobs. The 
reality is that the United States has had a trade deficit with China 
even in advanced technology goods since 1995.''
  And then he ends his column by saying, ``The United States already 
has the export profile of a Third World country. The massive influx of 
poor immigrants from the Third World and the outflow of advanced 
technology will complete the transformation of the United States from a 
superpower into a colony.''
  Mr. Speaker, this greatly concerns me. Already we have environmental 
extremists who protest any time anyone tries to cut any trees or dig 
for any coal or drill for any oil or produce any natural gas. They 
destroy jobs and drive up prices in the process and they hurt the poor 
and the lower income and the working people of this country. They 
always say, well, let us turn to tourism. But we cannot base the whole 
economy of this Nation on tourism.
  Mr. Speaker, we need a trade policy, we need economic policies that 
put America first, once again, and that put American companies and 
American workers first, once again. The obligation of this Congress is 
not to foreign companies and foreign countries; it should be to the 
American people. If we do not wake up, this country is going to be in 
bad, bad trouble, because I am not sure that this economy is bouncing 
back as some of the experts say. I hope it is. But after what happened 
yesterday in Knoxville and what has happened over the last year or so, 
I have my doubts. I think we need to take another look at some of these 
trade deals and put our own people first, once again, in this country.

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