[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 152 (2006), Part 8]
[House]
[Pages 10589-10590]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                    LONG-TERM CONSEQUENCES OF NAFTA

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under a previous order of the House, the 
gentlewoman from Ohio (Ms. Kaptur) is recognized for 5 minutes.
  Ms. KAPTUR. Mr. Speaker, I wish to especially thank Congressman 
Carter for allowing me this special privilege of appearing before he 
does this evening.
  Mr. Speaker, the wonderful time about speaking at this time of day is 
we get to cover subjects that may not be on the agendas of any 
committee but are of importance to the American people. Tonight, I want 
to talk about the long-term consequences of a trade agreement called 
NAFTA that passed over a decade ago.
  We were promised, as the American people, that NAFTA would result in 
more jobs, trade balances with Mexico and with Canada, and a higher 
standard of living in all of our countries. Indeed, exactly the 
opposite has happened. This country has now shipped out over 880,000 
jobs, nearly a million jobs and still counting, to Mexico and to 
Canada, and we have not amassed any trade surpluses but, indeed, have 
fallen into deep deficit with both countries.
  I have a couple of charts here that talk about this. Trade accounts 
with Mexico prior to NAFTA signing were positive. Every single year 
since NAFTA's signing, we have gone into deeper and deeper and deeper 
deficit, now over $50 billion a year, the largest ever, with each 
billion dollars representing a loss of 20,000 more jobs in this 
country.
  With Canada, the other country with which we were supposed to 
experience a trade surplus, we have also fallen into deficit. In fact, 
we have doubled the deficit that we had with Canada. And what is 
amazing about this is that every year it gets worse. The American 
people inherently know this because it is happening to them directly.
  At the same time in this country we have increasing illegal 
immigration, much of it from south of our border. What is interesting, 
most of the debate about immigration doesn't even touch on NAFTA. Yet 
if you look at what NAFTA has caused inside of Mexico, over 2 million 
peasant farmers have been displaced and another 500,000 more are coming 
each year. And why is that? Because the very small farmsteads of 
Mexico, in the Sinaloa Valley all the way down to Xcalas and Oaxaca are 
being destroyed.
  The agricultural provisions I tried to get into NAFTA back in 1993 
were never allowed to be considered on this floor. If we had done that, 
we would have been able to address the tragedy that is occurring in 
Mexico, which is the complete elimination of their small holders and 
their farmers. I call it a continental sacrilege, the heartlessness 
that is embedded in NAFTA that is costing jobs in our country, costing

[[Page 10590]]

jobs in Canada, costing the loss of life as people flee to try to feed 
themselves, as their whole way of life is being totally destroyed in 
Mexico.
  This week something very important happened. In the city of Ottawa, 
Canada, the capital city of our sister state up north, a major meeting 
was held between parliamentarians of the United States, Canada, and 
Mexico to begin to push back a continental effort to reform NAFTA. Both 
legislators, like myself, and representatives of those two governments, 
along with civil society groups met in Ottawa to halt NAFTA-plus, the 
expansion of NAFTA, something being called the Security and Prosperity 
Partnership.
  Instead, at a press conference in Ottawa on Monday, we announced that 
networks from across Canada, the United States, and Mexico are going to 
unveil a plan to bring an end to the kind of deep damage that NAFTA is 
causing in all three countries and replace it with a people-centered 
trade model. As I said in my remarks in Canada, trade agreements in 
North America must ensure rising standards of living and increase jobs 
in all of our countries.
  We met this week in Ottawa, and that meeting followed one we held 
last year in this city of Washington, D.C. This was our second forum. 
We will have a third in Ottawa a year from now, and likely a meeting in 
Mexico City in August.
  As one of our parliamentarians said, NAFTA has aggravated poverty 
across our continent. And the new Democratic Party Parliamentarian, 
Peter Julian of Canada said, ``There is no doubt that under NAFTA, most 
Canadians are poorer. We have been fighting to make adjustments,'' he 
said, ``and now it is clear that NAFTA has to be replaced.'' It is not 
working for the vast majority of the inhabitants of North America. It 
has failed on the bottom line.
  In anticipation of a summit that will be held in Ottawa in March 
2007, called the ``Three Amigos Summit,'' our group will create a North 
American secretariat to prepare for counter information and 
counterproposals and introduce simultaneous legislation in this chamber 
in Ottawa and in Mexico City to replace NAFTA. We will build 
opportunities for public engagement in civil society across this 
continent on the issue of proper continental integration.
  Mr. Speaker, a new charter for the people of the Americas is being 
drafted, one that will result in more democracy, more cooperation, more 
development for rising standards of living, not more loss of jobs and 
greater trade deficits.

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