[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 157 (2011), Part 10]
[House]
[Page 13593]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




   WE NEED A REAL JOBS AGENDA, NOT ANOTHER ROUND OF NAFTA-STYLE DEALS

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. The Chair recognizes the gentlewoman from 
Ohio (Ms. Kaptur) for 5 minutes.
  Ms. KAPTUR. Mr. Speaker, you want to know why we have a budget 
deficit?
  We have a budget deficit because we have a jobs deficit, and we have 
a jobs deficit because our Nation has been outsourcing millions of jobs 
for over a quarter century. White House after White House and Congress 
after Congress have allowed our manufacturing and jobs base to be 
whittled away through a trade regimen that outsources U.S. production 
and American jobs, financed by the same big Wall Street banks that 
caused the financial meltdown.
  Year after year the United States continues to rack up enormous trade 
deficits with nation after nation. The numbers don't lie. They tell us 
that over 2.7 million manufacturing jobs alone were lost just during 
the Bush administration. Washington must finally confront our so-called 
free trade failed policies if we are going to be serious about creating 
jobs in order to balance the budget.
  Last year, the trade deficit was another astonishing half a trillion 
dollars. Imagine a half a trillion, plus a half a trillion, plus a half 
a trillion, plus a half a trillion year after year after year. That 
equaled, just for last year, 7 million American jobs that were not 
created here because of our job-killing trade policies.
  Rather than stopping this enormous outsourcing of America, we're 
being offered up more of the same, more failed free trade agreements, 
this time with Korea, Panama, Colombia.
  Has Washington learned nothing, or are the economic powers that 
outsource these jobs bearing down on Washington so greatly that the 
American people can't be heard? The public's interest is being 
suppressed.
  These agreements are another expansion of the same policies and 
processes that were enacted with NAFTA. We were all told in 1993 that 
NAFTA would create millions of jobs. Instead, we have seen exactly the 
opposite, millions of jobs decimated.
  Our trade deficit with Mexico last year was over $66 billion in the 
red. In 1993, proponents of NAFTA, like Gary Huffbauer and economist 
Jeffrey Schott, promised we would have, and I quote them, ``an annual 
current account surplus with Mexico of about $10 billion through the 
1990s.'' That was an absolute falsehood. Obviously, they were all 
wrong, dead wrong. Instead, we saw over a third of all manufacturing 
jobs in the United States disappear since we signed that agreement and 
$1 trillion accumulated trade deficit with Mexico. Not a single year 
since NAFTA's is passage was the U.S. in the black.
  We heard the exact same fairy tale regarding China's Permanent Most 
Favored Nation Status. We were told that that agreement in 1998 would 
create millions of jobs in America. Instead, the result has been a 
cumulative $2 trillion trade deficit with China alone.
  When you think about the budget deficit, you'd better think about the 
trade deficit because they are absolutely interlinked. You're not going 
to balance the budget until the American people go back to work, and 
they can't go back to work when their jobs are being sent elsewhere.
  If you always do what you have always done, you will always get what 
you always got.
  The Economic Policy Institute's analysis predicts that the agreement 
that's proposed with South Korea will cost us an additional 159,000 
jobs in our country. Since this January, we have already rung up, look 
at the numbers, over $7 billion trade deficit with South Korea. With 
passage of the proposed agreement, do you think it's going to make the 
job situation better?
  If you want to see just how poorly negotiated the Korea deal is, take 
a quick look at the auto provisions. There's no reciprocity. Last year, 
Korea sold nearly half a million cars in our country; 500,000 cars. The 
United States, you know how much we sell to them? Six thousand. What 
kind of deal is that?
  And we'll be lucky if, under this agreement, where there's a hope 
that we might sell perhaps, 75,000 cars to Korea, so, they get a half a 
million, we get a handful? How's that a credible plan to create jobs in 
our country?
  And then there are the other two proposed agreements with Panama and 
Colombia, the latest NAFTA expansion. What are the major commercial 
interests there?
  The Government Accountability Office has identified Panama as a major 
haven for, guess what, tax avoidance. Panama is a popular destination 
for the very same multinational corporations that want to avoid paying 
their fair share of U.S. taxes by creating offshore subsidiaries.
  And how about Colombia, which is the most dangerous country in the 
world if you care about labor rights, and no free country in the world 
does not have labor rights. Over 2,000 trade unionists, 2,000 have been 
assassinated there since 1990. What a pleasant place to do business. 
And there has been no justice for their victims and their families in 
the majority of those murder cases.
  And what is the largest economic interest we have with Colombia? It 
has three letters. It isn't a place to export U.S.-made goods. Rather, 
it's more oil imports.
  How can those that support these failed trade agreements want more?
  We need to create jobs in this country again because, in order to 
balance the budget, you have to put the American people back to work, 
and you can't do that when you're outsourcing more of their jobs and 
importing more into our nation than we export.

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