[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 153 (2007), Part 22]
[House]
[Page 30351]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




              UNITED STATES-PERU TRADE PROMOTION AGREEMENT

  (Mr. DeFAZIO asked and was given permission to address the House for 
1 minute.)
  Mr. DeFAZIO. The dollar is dropping like a rock. We're borrowing $2 
billion a day from overseas to buy things we don't make anymore. We've 
lost 4 million manufacturing jobs. Millions of middle-class Americans 
are seeing their pay stagnant or declining.
  Our current trade policy is a dismal failure. It's a failed engine 
for our economy. Now comes the Peru Free Trade Agreement. The advocates 
tell you the burgeoning middle class of Peru, all three of them, are 
going to go out and be a huge market for the goods we don't make in 
America anymore.
  They tout the breakthroughs on modest labor and environmental 
provisions. Well, the destructive multinational-written chapter 11 
provisions remain at the center of this trade agreement. If trade is 
the engine that drives our economy, it needs an overhaul. Instead, with 
this bill, we are getting a new hood ornament, some side-view mirrors 
and a misbegotten cousin of NAFTA as a trade policy.

                          ____________________