[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 161 (2015), Part 4]
[House]
[Pages 4871-4872]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




          THE AMERICAN PEOPLE ARE ASKING FOR A NEW TRADE MODEL

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. The Chair recognizes the gentlewoman from 
Ohio (Ms. Kaptur) for 5 minutes.
  Ms. KAPTUR. Mr. Speaker, the American people are being kept in the 
dark by the Obama administration regarding the Trans-Pacific 
Partnership.
  So much secrecy forces us to ask an important question: Have any of 
our past free trade agreements really been net positive for our Nation 
and helped our workers? The answer is ``no.''
  Whether you look at the NAFTA accord with Mexico and Canada, where we 
are in huge deficit, if you look at the Korean agreement, if you look 
at basic trade with nations like Japan, which remains a closed market, 
every single agreement is all negative.
  Since 1976, our country has lost 47.5 million jobs due to trade 
deficits resulting from free trade agreements. During that time, we 
have accumulated a trade deficit of more than $9.5 trillion. What a 
drag that is on GDP. These growing trade deficits that outsource our 
wealth and weaken our economy devastate communities. Carrying a massive 
trade deficit has hindered economic growth and has limited our economic 
recovery by nearly 16 percent just in this past year alone. More and 
more people are slipping away from the middle class as a result, with 
inequality at the highest levels since the 1920s. Millions of Americans 
are losing faith in the possibility of upward mobility.
  Let's ask ourselves: What have past trade deals brought Americans?
  Just since NAFTA, Americans have lost in the manufacturing sector 5 
million jobs, and that is just since the early 1990s--one of every 
four. More than 57,000 manufacturing facilities have closed--57,000. 
Washing machines that used to be made in Newton, Iowa--Maytag--now are 
imported from Monterrey, Mexico. Hoppy bicycles that used to be made in 
Celina, Ohio, are now imported from Asia. Ohio knows well the cost of 
fast-track trade agreements that ship out good jobs and ``Made in the 
USA'' brands.
  Since NAFTA, our trade balance with Mexico and Canada has gone from a 
$5 billion annual surplus, creating jobs here in 1993, to a deficit of 
$177 billion today. That translates into three-quarters of a million 
more lost jobs--750,000 more lost jobs--just with Canada and Mexico.
  The quality of life for Americans has been declining under these 
agreements. Middle class America is shrinking as businesses have closed 
production and have moved overseas. Three out of every five displaced 
U.S. manufacturing workers have been forced to take a pay cut in order 
to secure any kind of job, and one out of three workers experiences a 
pay cut of more than 20 percent. These are among the luckiest workers, 
as frequently laid off workers over the age of 40 can't even find 
replacement work.
  This is not just a problem for America. Workers in other countries 
are caught too, as one worker described to me, ``like a lobster in a 
cage, crawling over one another just to survive,'' contributing to 
unspeakable poverty and waves of desperate immigration to the United 
States from countries south of our border and elsewhere.
  Clearly, NAFTA was a failure for America's workers. If we look at the 
Korean trade deal, which they said would be the salvation, it has 
worked exactly in reverse. We have already lost 75,000 more jobs to 
imports coming into our country from Korea. The exports going out have 
been just a trickle. In fact, our exports to Korea have gone down by 
7.5 percent. The Korean agreement was hailed as a wonderful opportunity 
for the American economy, something we just could not pass up. Well, 
take a look at what has happened. We imported 1,288,546 vehicles from 
Korea in 2014 and only exported 34,186. There are 40 times more imports 
coming into our country than exports going out. The Korean free trade 
agreement has been a failure for American workers too.
  With these Trans-Pacific Partnership negotiations continuing to 
advance, America should ask: Could it possibly be a good deal for 
American workers?
  We already have colossal trade deficits with some of the countries 
with which the negotiations are occurring--with Malaysia, with Vietnam, 
and, obviously, with Japan. The prospective TPP partners use 
protectionism and currency manipulation to gain unfair advantage, and, 
in some cases, they fail to regulate appalling labor conditions. These 
nations will not deliver on the promises made in support of TPP.
  History should teach us that we need a new trade model. America 
doesn't

[[Page 4872]]

need more job-outsourcing trade deals. The executive branch and, 
specifically, the National Security Council better start paying 
attention to the harm it causes when it forgets its global strategies 
have created undue harm here in the homeland. The people in the United 
States are asking for a new trade model that creates jobs and economic 
growth in our country again--I might say robust economic growth--for 
which the American people have been waiting for almost three decades.

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