[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 149 (2003), Part 14]
[House]
[Pages 18956-18957]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                             TRADE DEFICIT

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Pursuant to the order of the House of 
January 7, 2003, the gentleman from Oregon (Mr. DeFazio) is recognized 
during morning hour debates for 4 minutes.
  Mr. DeFAZIO. Mr. Speaker, when you are in a deep hole in Washington, 
D.C., what do you do? You dig it a little deeper. That is what my 
colleagues on the other side of the aisle are proposing with the Chile 
and Singapore free trade agreements.
  The United States ran a record $435.7 billion trade deficit last 
year, up from $358.3 billion in 2001, and we are headed toward a new 
record this year. We have a failed trade policy. We are exporting 
millions of jobs every year while Americans cannot find work. But this 
one is even better. This is truly a groundbreaking agreement.
  The Bush administration has gone further than the losers in the 
Clinton administration who pushed free trade and the Bush 
administration I and the Reagan administration, 20 years of failed 
trade policy in this country. This one is even better. We are going to 
export jobs and import workers. It has a little provision they snuck 
in, and Congress is not allowed any amendments in these trade 
agreements, that will actually import skilled workers to the United 
States. They are only coming on a temporary basis, only take away jobs 
on a temporary basis. We are going to export all those obsolete 
industrial jobs, they say. I think we need those industrial jobs, but 
that is the theory on that side of the aisle. They say do not worry, we 
will retrain people for these new jobs, the high-tech jobs, the skilled 
jobs.
  Now the estimates are that we are going to export 3.3 million highly 
skilled high-tech jobs over the next 5 years. And under this trade 
agreement, we are going to import workers to do the few that are left 
here. This is really great. This is wonderful. What a great country.
  Mr. Speaker, if the American people could only have a voice on this 
issue. They will not get a voice here in the House, and it is very 
unlikely they will get a voice in the United States Senate. We are 
exporting $1.5 billion a day in U.S. wealth. We are continuing to drag 
down the economy.
  The output of our economy over the last decade, according to credible 
economists, has been drug down by 35.2 percent over 10 years because of 
our trade deficit. What will this legislation do with Chile and 
Singapore, which is the forerunner for massive new free trade 
agreements all up and down South America? It will actually accelerate 
that decline. We are already running a trade deficit with Chile, and it 
will grow greatly under this.
  And with Singapore, yes, we had a little tiny trade surplus; but it 
is down by 50 percent in 1 year, and like with Mexico under NAFTA, we 
will be running huge and growing trade deficits with Singapore.
  We cannot continue to run these deficits year in year out, export 
American jobs year in and year out, export America's industrial 
manufacturing base

[[Page 18957]]

and continue to be a great economy. We are headed toward disaster here. 
In fact, the percent of our GDP that we are losing with these trade 
deficits is now exceeding the percent that Argentina was experiencing 
before their economic implosion or the Asian nations before their 
economic implosion.
  Mr. Speaker, how long will people around the world continue to lend 
us money to buy foreign goods and undermine our own economy? This is 
absolutely absurd what we are doing here, and we are going to do more 
of it. Only inside the Washington, D.C. beltway would people look at 
$500 billion trade deficits, loss of our manufacturing base, the 
importation of skilled foreign workers and say this is great for our 
country because one or two multi-national corporations that nominally 
are based in the United States, they probably do not pay taxes here, 
but still pretend they are American companies, will get a little bit 
under this agreement.

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