[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 162 (2016), Part 10]
[House]
[Page 14387]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]


                   TRADE'S IMPACT ON AMERICAN WORKERS

  (Ms. KAPTUR asked and was given permission to address the House for 1 
minute.)
  Ms. KAPTUR. Mr. Speaker, we in the industrial Midwest and Great Lakes 
heartland know firsthand why the Presidential election was so hard 
fought and close in Ohio, Pennsylvania, Michigan, and Wisconsin.
  Our reasoning has endured a grim reality with a decades-long economic 
struggle to produce good jobs with good wages and benefits, but what we 
have experienced is a continuous outsourcing of millions of jobs to 
penny-wage sweatshops in Mexico, China, Bangladesh, and beyond. To the 
people of America's heartland, it feels like jobs are being moved just 
about everywhere but into the Midwest and Great Lakes.
  Daily we witness trainloads of imports flooding into our Nation, as 
closed and protected markets abroad block mutual exchange of exports. 
America hasn't had balanced trade accounts for three decades, and 
workers in those nations struggle to survive on measly wages and 
without spare cash cannot buy much of what they produce anyway.
  Meanwhile, pink-slipped U.S. workers have endured a painful toll--
annual wages now $7,000 less per year on average in northern Ohio--
while the cost of education expenses, health care, and everyday life 
rise and further squeeze pocketbooks.
  Please don't tell us robots took the jobs.
  This daily reality was the major backdrop to this recent election and 
deserves closer attention in the coming days. America's trade policy 
must result in trade balances, new jobs here, and preferably trade 
surpluses for our country, not job loss. That policy must be fashioned 
on the fundamental value of free and fair trade among free people.

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