[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 161 (2015), Part 1]
[House]
[Pages 433-435]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                      AMERICA'S FREE TRADE DEFICIT

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under the Speaker's announced policy of 
January 6, 2015, the Chair recognizes the gentlewoman from Ohio (Ms. 
Kaptur) until 10 p.m.
  Ms. KAPTUR. Mr. Speaker, I rise this evening to paint a picture of 
U.S. job loss resulting from our trade policies extending back now 
almost three decades.
  I rise because America has a huge ``good jobs'' deficit because we 
have a gigantic trade deficit. That means more imports come in here 
than our exports go out, largely because markets and other places are 
closed. Our workers and our communities have paid a tremendous price 
for this.
  I oppose any further NAFTA-like trade agreements, such as the Trans-
Pacific Partnership, which the administration is proposing. That will 
ship out more U.S. jobs. We have had enough. The American people have 
had enough.
  Since 1975, when Wall Street's free trade job outsourcing roulette 
began, America has amassed a $9.3 trillion trade deficit with the 
world. If you look at this chart, we have on here every single trade 
agreement that was signed and all of the lost jobs that resulted from 
the growing trade deficits we are amassing with countries around the 
world. This has never happened before over our history in the United 
States of America. It is a very serious problem.
  The staggering loss of productivity associated with this deficit 
translates into a huge job loss here at home. In fact, that $9.3 
trillion of accumulated trade deficit of more imports coming in here 
than exports going out has actually cost us over 47,500,000 lost 
American jobs.
  Most of those were really good jobs that paid living wages, jobs that 
just evaporated from our communities, jobs that were shipped to Mexico 
or to China, Korea, Bangladesh, Honduras, Guatemala, Turkey, El 
Salvador--everywhere in the world--largely to the Third World, and, 
frankly, to undemocratic countries where workers are treated like a 
bonded class.
  Our workers, no matter how loyal or hardworking, became expendable as 
this began. In fact, they were treated like expendable widgets. What is 
being hurt in the process is the belief of the public that the value of 
hard work has any meaning. There are some workers who have simply 
dropped out.
  Yes, American jobs are being outsourced year after year--for over a 
quarter century now--and workers are being treated like a game of 
musical chairs. Our jobs have been shipped out to penny-wage sweatshops 
hidden behind the Iron Curtain of anonymous towns in distant places 
most Americans will never visit. Anonymity, exploitation, and hidden 
squalor are as fundamental to free trade as the hollowing out of 
American jobs, our communities, and our middle class.
  Those who exploit workers in our country and globally believe they 
are so powerful that the American people won't be able to rein them in, 
and they think this Congress will continue to

[[Page 434]]

behave as it did before, despite the evidence that this doesn't work 
for the American people.
  Some of those very powerful interests are asking for another Fast 
Track trade deal to do it all over again in something called the Trans-
Pacific Partnership, on an even bigger scale, including nations with 
the grossest violations of basic human rights.
  Let me turn first to the broken promises of NAFTA, which was really 
the fundamental agreement passed--over my objections--in the early 
1990s and another agreement, CAFTA, that dealt with Central America. 
Fast-forward to this past summer when thousands of migrant children 
from Central America swarmed our southern border. Remember that?
  The American press acted surprised upon their arrival, and some 
people even threw tomatoes at buses that carried children from one 
detention facility to another.
  These children had lived under 20 years of NAFTA and CAFTA in Mexico, 
Guatemala, El Salvador, and Honduras. They had experience with the 
NAFTA trade agreement and the CAFTA trade agreement, which covers those 
countries, trade agreements that were sold as opportunities that would 
rise the tide of all boats, of all workers.
  What happened? Here in the United States, we had a huge loss of jobs 
to those countries, and Mexico's and Central America's infrastructures 
were not modernized. Their standard of living was not raised.
  In fact, the promise that those countries somehow would turn into 
stylistically rustic versions of the American consumer market never 
happened. They were told new jobs would abound, but our Nation began to 
hemorrhage jobs to Mexico as wages in Mexico and throughout Central 
America began to drop. Those deficits became part of the overall total.
  The problem is that in most of these countries where the free trade 
agreements were signed, what you see happening is more goods coming in 
here than our goods going out, a little trickle going to some places. 
In Mexico, what happened ever since NAFTA's passage was that we were 
promised trade balances. Every single year, it has gotten worse and 
worse and worse.
  This week, the broken promises sold to the American public and their 
elected officials is that these agreements would really work. The 
people who voted for those agreements should pay some attention to the 
debate of trying to withhold funding for the Department of Homeland 
Security because of the President's action on immigration.
  The stories of the youth being shipped back by the planeloads tell of 
families' lands being stolen from under them. The land was handed over 
to multinational corporate agricultural groups that come in and grow, 
for example, palm oil.
  Local displaced farmers were forced into urban settings--desperate, 
in search of food, in search of work at factories where jobs that were 
promised in return for the land--guess what--never materialized. Here 
on our own continent, the children became the refugees of transnational 
economic policies that harmed the entire continent.
  Hardly anyone even talked about that; but when you have this kind of 
disruption, when you have so much job loss, and when you have land, 
transferring title with millions of farmers disrupted from their way of 
life, what do we expect?
  Millions of displaced people in Mexico and Central America living in 
the shadow of border plants and urban factories exist in a state of 
peonage that makes older versions of slavery look positively 
beneficent, squatting on poisoned ground in jerry-rigged plywood and 
tar paper shacks.
  I have been in those shacks. I have gone to those places. When you 
do, you never forget it. Next door, water in gullies that surround 
these places is so polluted that communities smell of a rancid odor, 
and even chickens that they keep to try to feed themselves die from the 
drinking water. We have seen it. We have been there.
  The displaced population on the run is surging, thanks in large part 
to NAFTA and CAFTA's agricultural provisions, those very flawed 
provisions that provided no opportunity for adjustment as a First World 
nation met the economy of Third World nations.
  The terms of the agreement forced the revocation of land and allowed 
multinationals to begin buying up vast tracts in the interior, pushing 
untold millions of peasant farmers, who remain nameless, off their land 
and into the labor pool of the maquiladoras; yet we, as Americans, are 
surprised when their children, as migrants, flock to our southern 
border.
  If we seriously looked at the impact of our free trade agreements, we 
would easily see the havoc wrought on local economies throughout the 
lands on the other side of the border. Those who forced this to happen 
should know the consequences of their policies and what they reap: 
legions of desperate workers willing to do anything to survive.
  Now, let me turn to the Trans-Pacific Partnership that proposes to 
expand trade into regions with the worst labor violations and working 
conditions.
  We can't be fooled into thinking expanding trade agreements with 11 
new nations in the Pacific rim will actually be the end to American 
jobs being shipped overseas. Of the 11 nations with which the United 
States is negotiating the Trans-Pacific Partnership, nine have wage 
levels significantly lower than our own.
  This will only intensify the already real reduction in wages American 
workers are experiencing year after year as our jobs are shipped 
overseas to increase profits of shareholders as they take advantage of 
impoverished laborers.
  Worse yet, for the immigration debate, as those who run the maquilas 
of Mexico and Central America realize, the next move will be to Vietnam 
for even cheaper labor. Factories on this continent will shut down, 
further exacerbating the poor economic conditions of our southern 
neighbors, leaving even fewer options other than for those individuals 
to flee north, seeking any economic opportunity to sustain themselves.
  I wanted to spend a moment looking at the Korean agreement because 
that was one of the latest ones they brought up here as a free trade 
agreement. They promised there would be thousands of jobs and that 
America would be able to sell 50,000 vehicles to Korea.

                              {time}  2145

  Well, guess what. We haven't even hit 10,000, while there have been 
over 561,000--half a million--vehicles sent from Korea here. So look at 
what is happening with the Korean agreement, another free trade 
agreement, which just passed a couple of years ago. The proof is in the 
pudding.
  The Fast Track procedure, which allows no amendment here on the 
floor, yields this--more red ink for the United States.
  We were promised that the Korean agreement would create jobs and help 
balance our trade deficit in an effort to strengthen our economy and 
rebuild the American auto industry. Nothing could be further from the 
truth, as with every other agreement.
  We are in a deep trade deficit with Korea. The U.S.-Korean free trade 
agreement promised 70,000 jobs. In actuality, we have already lost 
40,000. It is going in exactly the opposite direction.
  The U.S. Census Bureau recently revealed that the United States had a 
$2.8 billion monthly trade deficit with Korea just in November of last 
year, the highest monthly U.S. goods trade deficit with Korea on 
record. The historic U.S. trade deficit with Korea was driven by a 
record-setting $6.3 billion in imports from Korea and a lackluster $3.5 
billion in exports to Korea from the United States. Auto sales did not 
surge, as we were promised. Exactly the reverse is true.
  And now we can look at China. You know, the story is no different. 
You would think we would have learned something. But if you look at 
trade with China--and China became a member of the World Trade 
Organization in 2001--Americans were promised, again, that that deal 
would expand market opportunities for United States companies, thereby 
increasing jobs here and American prosperity.
  How has this worked out? Let me share some specifics:

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  The United States has lost over 64,000 manufacturing firms and at 
least 5.8 million manufacturing jobs to China. In the year 2013, the 
latest complete year of data, America actually racked up a $319 billion 
trade deficit with China. And you know this to be true because 
everything you buy--coffee cups, clothing, electronics, even solar 
panels--are all made in China. And the massive deficit we have racked 
up with China just in 1 year--that 1 year--amounted to a loss of 1.5 
million American jobs. And that is just 1 year's damage.
  What America needs is not more of the same NAFTA-styled trade 
agreements. What America and American workers need is a trade policy 
that creates jobs, opportunity, and wealth in this country first. We 
need balanced trade accounts, not trade accounts that are in the red 
with every single country with which we have racked up these deficits. 
The American people--not just the global corporate elite--need to be in 
the driver's seat again, and that is where Congress has to do its job. 
Our Nation needs a trade policy that is results-oriented, that will 
yield jobs in America.
  We must open closed markets of the world. We must grow our exports. 
We must hold those who wrote these agreements accountable for the 
damage that they have done, and we must not create any more free trade 
agreements that dig the hole deeper.
  We must create jobs here in our country by moving our Nation toward 
economic independence--not dependence--by rebuilding our own 
manufacturing base here at home, by restoring our domestic energy 
security, and by making sure that these agreements result not in 
deficits, but in trade balances and, even more importantly, trade 
surpluses.
  Mr. Speaker, there are ways that a developed nation can trade with 
the developing world without gutting its own economy. America has got 
to figure out how to get there. And no trade deal should be brought up 
here under that Fast Track procedure where Congress can't amend until 
we fix what is wrong with these agreements. Haven't we learned in three 
decades that that flawed trade model just simply isn't working?
  Pushing huge trade agreements, like the Trans-Pacific Partnership, 
through Congress on a Fast Track course with no opportunity for 
amendment is not the way to create a strong middle class, rising wages, 
and real opportunity for the American people. Now is the time to hold 
this administration and this Congress accountable for changing course 
and start to invest in this country again and make sure that these 
trade partners with whom we do business open their markets. To do any 
less is to continue to harm the American people and continue to have 
this enormous downward pressure on job creation in this country and 
wage levels and benefit levels in this country, where the average 
American hasn't seen a raise in years. We have to change. This is too 
great a price for the American people to pay.
  So this evening, I thank those who are listening for their time. I 
thank the Speaker for the time this evening.
  I yield back the balance of my time.

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