[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 151 (2005), Part 12]
[House]
[Pages 16284-16285]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                 CENTRAL AMERICAN FREE TRADE AGREEMENT

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under a previous order of the House, the 
gentleman from North Carolina (Mr. Jones) is recognized for 5 minutes.
  Mr. JONES of North Carolina. Mr. Speaker, I am back on the floor 
tonight to talk about CAFTA, the Central American Free Trade Agreement, 
that I think is the wrong agreement for the American people and 
particularly the workers of this great Nation.
  Mr. Speaker, I want to start with a quote by Ross Perot. This was 
during the presidential elections of 1992, at least the debates. And 
Mr. Perot said, you implement that NAFTA, the Mexican trade agreement 
where they pay

[[Page 16285]]

people a dollar an hour, have no health care, no retirement, no 
pollution controls, and you are going to hear a giant sucking noise of 
jobs being pulled out of this country right at a time when we need the 
tax base to pay the debt.
  Well, I would like to say to Mr. Perot that times have not changed. 
We need that tax base right now.
  Mr. Speaker, let me tell you a little bit about NAFTA. I was not here 
in the Congress when that was debated and when it was passed and became 
the law of the land. Before NAFTA we ran a trade surplus with Mexico. 
Now the U.S. runs a $45 billion annual trade deficit with Mexico. My 
State of North Carolina has lost over 200,000 manufacturing jobs since 
1993. The United States of America has lost over 2.5 million 
manufacturing jobs.
  The number of Mexican illegal aliens in the United States has grown 
from 1.3 million, and that was in 1992, the year before NAFTA was 
signed into law, to over 5.9 million in the year 2004. That is a 350 
percent increase. 350 percent increase. CAFTA will continue these 
trends. 85 percent of the language in CAFTA is identical to the 
language in NAFTA.
  Let us talk about Trade Promotion Authority, which I did not vote for 
by the way. America's, since August of 2002, annual trade deficit grew 
by $195 billion to $217 billion, and of that $150 billion with China.
  North Carolina has lost over 52,000 manufacturing jobs since TPA, 
Trade Promotion Authority, became the law of the land, and the United 
States of America has lost over 600,000 million manufacturing jobs.
  Mr. Speaker, CAFTA is not the answer. It is not that we are opposed 
to a CAFTA agreement, but this CAFTA agreement is not good for the 
American people.
  And let me give you just a little bit of an example of CAFTA and how 
it will impact those in Central America. It will not help to raise 
their income levels at all. It will not help them with health care, it 
will not help them with improving their livelihood, if you will. The 
average in Nicaragua is $0.95 an hour. Guatemala is $1 an hour. El 
Salvador is $1.25 an hour. These countries have few labor laws, 
environmental standards, and CAFTA does nothing if at all to improve 
those.
  CAFTA allows China to backdoor fabric into Central America where it 
can be assembled and shipped into the United States duty free. The last 
thing we need is to help China. We have outsourced 1.5 million jobs 
since 1989 to China.
  Mr. Speaker, in the little bit of time I have left I want to give you 
from the Washington Post today an article. There were many here on the 
floor of the House that wanted to give permanent normal trade status to 
China. I was opposed to that, by the way.
  Let me just read from the Washington Post and then I will close, Mr. 
Speaker. The trouble at Futai began the last day of May when workers 
received their monthly salary at about 4 p.m. For many the computer 
generated pay slip contained intolerable news.

                              {time}  1945

  ``From $60 to $100 a month for weaving sweaters, their piecework pay 
had slumped to $50 and $40 and even lower, they said. That, the workers 
complained, was not enough compensation for 11-hour shifts and one 
day's rest a month, the day after payday.''
  Mr. Speaker, this is the problem with these trade agreements. They 
are not good for the American people, and they are not good usually for 
the country that we reach these agreements with. And I hope that this 
House will continue to stand strong in a bipartisan way, Democrat and 
Republican, and stand in opposition to CAFTA; and if it is brought to 
the floor of the House in the next 10 days, I hope we will defeat it on 
behalf of the American worker who needs help from the United States 
Congress.

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