[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 163 (2017), Part 4]
[House]
[Pages 5328-5334]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                              {time}  1715
                             JOBS AND TRADE

  The SPEAKER pro tempore (Mr. Gaetz). Under the Speaker's announced 
policy of January 3, 2017, the gentlewoman from Ohio (Ms. Kaptur) is 
recognized for 60 minutes as the designee of the minority leader.
  Ms. KAPTUR. Mr. Speaker, I yield to the gentleman from Illinois (Mr. 
Rush) in the beginning of our Special Order this evening.


  Remembering Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., on the Anniversary of His 
                                 Death

  Mr. RUSH. Mr. Speaker, I commend Representative Kaptur for her 
outstanding leadership in this Congress and past Congresses. She has 
been a beacon of hope for so many of my constituents and so many poor 
and disenfranchised Americans. She never cowered in the face of those 
who restrict the rights of all.
  Ms. Kaptur has been my friend and someone whom I have shared so many 
conversations with about justice and fighting for justice, creating a 
nation where all people have the opportunity to have freedom, justice, 
and equality. I want to commend her for being such a stalwart battler 
for the people of America.
  Mr. Speaker, today marks the 49th anniversary of one of the darkest 
days in the history of this Nation: the day that Dr. Martin Luther 
King, Jr., America's drum major for justice, was assassinated.
  Dr. King was murdered while standing on the balcony of the Lorraine 
Motel in Memphis, Tennessee, on April 4, 1968. He was there to advocate 
for the rights of Black sanitation workers who were fighting for their 
dignity: for equal pay, for equal treatment, and for racial justice in 
the American workplace.
  In one of the dimmest hours in our history, a voice of reason, a 
voice of mercy, a voice of compassion, a voice for justice, a voice of 
the beloved community was silenced. Yet, Mr. Speaker, his work to hold 
the United States to its constitutional promises that are rooted in the 
very fabric of our Declaration of Independence remains largely 
incomplete.
  As you know, Mr. Speaker, America remains a divided nation, even more 
so now. We are tremendously disconnected from the ideals set forth by 
Dr. King's monumental ``I Have a Dream'' speech. Today, we still live 
in two Americas: one white and privileged, another filled with people 
of color, the poor, the disabled, and those lost in the margins, where 
people of color--Black and Brown--continue to be judged by the color of 
their skin rather than the content of their character.
  In the year 2017, Mr. Speaker, we find the names of countless men and 
women who have lost their lives at the hands of too many law 
enforcement officials

[[Page 5329]]

and too many police departments all across this country. Those 
individuals, Mr. Speaker, are now etched in the social justice history 
of this Nation because they were first judged by the color of their 
skin and not by the content of their character.
  The list is far-reaching, Mr. Speaker. I am speaking of Michael 
Brown, Tamir Rice, Freddie Gray, Laquan McDonald, Alton Sterling, 
Philando Castile, Rekia Boyd, Tanisha Anderson, Yvette Smith, Shereese 
Francis, and, lastly, 4-year-old Aiyana Stanley-Jones and so many, many 
others. I could go on and on and on, but the names of the men, women, 
and children victimized by errant and wayward police departments all 
across this Nation would keep us here for days, even months, if we were 
to recite them all.
  These stalwart young citizens are joined also by the many martyrs who 
lost their lives in the struggle for American justice, just like Dr. 
King: Viola Liuzzo; Emmett Till; Jimmie Lee Jackson; Medgar Evers; 
Chaney, Goodman, and Schwerner; the four little girls in Birmingham, 
Alabama; Fred Hampton; and many, many others who gave their lives 
during the fifties and sixties.
  In my hometown of Chicago, Mr. Speaker, the killing of Laquan 
McDonald rocked our city and the Nation by pulling the scab off a 
festering wound of police relations and the Black community.
  McDonald's death by 16 shots from a single police weapon fired by a 
police officer led to multiple investigations of previous police-
involved shootings and also sparked the investigation by the United 
States Department of Justice under then-Attorney General Loretta Lynch 
and the United States Attorney for the Northern District of Illinois. 
That investigation concluded that the Chicago Police Department 
officers engage ``in a pattern or practice of using force, including 
deadly force,'' that is a unreasonable. This report also found the 
Chicago Police Department has failed to hold officers accountable when 
they use force contrary to Department policy or otherwise commit 
misconduct.
  To put it bluntly, Mr. Speaker, the Department of Justice found and 
reported that the Chicago Police Department engages in force in 
violation of the United States Constitution.
  Mr. Speaker, I am here today because I am just beside myself. I am 
angry. I am so fed up, Mr. Speaker, because I learned recently that 
Attorney General Jefferson Sessions has issued a memorandum ordering 
officials at the Justice Department to review police reform consent 
agreements all across the country, including the agreement that is 
being negotiated with the City of Chicago.
  Mr. Speaker, our Nation has fallen so very, very far. Dr. King's 
dream has not been realized in this Nation. The day before his 
assassination--this Attorney General has retreated so very, very far 
from the high ideals of American justice.
  It is proven beyond a shadow of a doubt that police agencies--not all 
police officers, not all agencies, not all departments--but there are 
too many police departments, too many law enforcement officials, too 
many police officers who have wantonly killed innocent young men of 
color in this Nation, and it did not just begin in this year. It has 
been going on for decades. We are now at a point where some departments 
have been placed under a consent decree. The U.S. Attorney is now 
trying to retreat from that pattern.
  I am here, Mr. Speaker, to ask--to demand--that Attorney General 
Sessions retreat from his position, that he stop this memorandum from 
circulating in the department, and that he see the light of day that 
many innocent American citizens are being killed because of the wayward 
actions of those police officers who think that they are above the law. 
They can't just continue to kill wantonly and think that they are above 
the American law and the American Constitution.
  Ms. KAPTUR. Mr. Speaker, Congressman Rush is always calling the 
Nation to its higher principles. I thank him so very much for sharing 
our Special Order this evening.
  Congressman David Cicilline of Rhode Island is here on the floor. I 
also want to thank Congressman John Garamendi for sharing his hour with 
us.
  The focus tonight really is on jobs and trade, an issue on the mind 
of millions and millions of Americans. We have been joined by 
Congressman Brendan Boyle of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, as well.
  I will place this up for the Nation to see. It is a chart showing 
just U.S. trade relations with Mexico and Canada and what has happened 
since the deal was negotiated back in the early 1990s. It was also 
prepared before that, during the 1980s, when the United States actually 
had some trade surpluses on this continent with both Canada and Mexico.
  This shows, in 1994, when NAFTA was actually enacted. You could see 
the United States begin to kind of fall into deficit. Then we had just 
a precipitous trade deficit, including the collapse of the peso after 
the NAFTA trade agreement was signed.
  This is serious business for our country because this red ink 
represents lost jobs, lost productive power, and communities in 
disrepair across this country, where production units were just picked 
up and put either north or south of the border.
  Tonight, we want to focus on President Trump's Manufacturing Jobs 
Initiative, which he announced during the campaign and afterwards. Here 
were his words:

       Everything is going to be based on bringing our jobs back, 
     the good jobs, the real jobs. They have to come back.

  Well, after all we have lost, we certainly do need job creation in 
this country.

                              {time}  1730

  We are now into the third month of Mr. Trump's Presidency and closing 
in on his first 100 days in office, a period when most Presidents are 
able to pass something through this Congress that really matters to the 
American people. I remember when we were able to save Social Security 
back during the 1980s and when a Congress was elected in response to 
Ronald Reagan's excesses, and it was in the first quarter of the year 
that that was done. So we are waiting. It is 100 days now, and nothing 
significant has been done on the jobs and trade front.
  Candidate Donald Trump's campaign for President in my region of 
America was actually founded on the principle of fixing jobs and trade. 
People listened. But if we look at this first 100 days, we see that he 
has really taken a back seat to his billionaire donors and their 
interests and a staff that seems to be more and more peopled with 
individuals who spent a whole lot of time at Goldman Sachs, which is a 
company that has been notorious in helping to outsource jobs.
  Throughout the campaign, Mr. Trump touted his trade policies, 
assuring voters he would renegotiate NAFTA. Well, we have been waiting. 
During a debate, he said: ``NAFTA is the worst trade deal maybe ever 
signed anywhere, but certainly ever signed in this country.''
  I would say that that agreement is the foundational agreement, the 
precepts on which all subsequent trade deals have been negotiated that 
have placed America in a red ink position: many more imports coming 
into this country, many more of our jobs being outsourced elsewhere 
than our exports going out.
  So I ask: Are the strong planks for a new NAFTA part of what the 
Trump administration is proposing?
  Well, no. A leaked draft notice last week revealed a tepid agenda on 
trade that is little more than a rehash of what the President said in 
his campaign rhetoric. It is not a real plan. The one action item 
identified in the Trump trade agenda is the announcement of a study to 
find out why the United States is losing in global trade. It actually 
doesn't focus completely on NAFTA itself, and we need healing in this 
hemisphere before we start looking around the world.
  The reality is we know why the deficit is so bad. Bad trade deals 
have led to a loss of nearly 4 million American jobs and a deficit just 
last month of

[[Page 5330]]

$43.6 billion. President Trump promised a trade deal that would get 
Americans back to work and reduce our deficit. Instead, our deficit 
with NAFTA and Mexico and Canada is 31 percent higher. It got worse 
than a year ago. So I hope the President understands the real urgency 
of stopping U.S. job outsourcing, especially in the manufacturing 
sector. He should do more than pay lipservice. He should really take a 
look at how thin his administration proposals have been on 
renegotiating this agreement. He should establish real goals and 
timetables for U.S. trade to drive policy that will fix these job-
killing trade agreements and deliver real benefits for the American 
people.
  Now, we have Members who have been very active on this trade issue 
since being sworn in here in Congress.
  Mr. Speaker, I yield now to Congressman David Cicilline, former mayor 
of Providence, Rhode Island, and a very strong leader for working men 
and women across this country.
  Mr. CICILLINE. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentlewoman for yielding. I 
want to begin by thanking her for her extraordinary leadership on this 
issue. From the very day that I arrived in Congress, she has been a 
passionate, articulate, effective voice for working men and women and 
for the impact that bad trade agreements have had on the economy of 
this country and on her region, but on working families all across 
America. She has done it consistently and relentlessly. It has been a 
privilege to work with her, but I really do want to acknowledge her 
extraordinary leadership and thank her for convening this Special Order 
hour tonight.
  As Ms. Kaptur mentioned, the consequences of bad trade agreements 
have been felt by many regions throughout the country, but in my home 
State of Rhode Island, as an example, we lost more than 41,000 jobs 
since NAFTA was enacted. These are good wages. These are jobs that pay, 
on average, above nonmanufacturing jobs--jobs that really help build 
the economy of our State and of this country.
  When President Trump was elected, as Ms. Kaptur mentioned, during the 
course of his campaign he promised that he would do something different 
with our trade deals. He promised hardworking Americans that he would 
deliver results, but we are now 10 weeks into his Presidency, and we 
have seen a lot of talk and no action on fair trade.
  The President promised to label China a currency manipulator on day 
one. He hasn't done that.
  The President promised to use American steel for the pipelines. He 
hasn't done that.
  The President promised to make NAFTA work for American workers, but 
as Congresswoman Kaptur mentioned, there is a leaked letter from the 
White House that shows he is already looking to implement the same 
failed policies that are good for corporate America and bad for 
American workers.
  The executive orders that President Trump signed failed to address 
the real challenges that are facing hard working Rhode Islanders and 
hardworking Americans.
  Let's be very clear, Mr. Speaker, we don't need another report on 
trade policy. We need concrete actions that create good-paying jobs, 
that honor hard work with good wages and grow our economy. We need to 
end incentives that encourage corporations to ship jobs overseas and 
raise the Federal minimum wage. And while we should collect unpaid 
penalties, that is only going to happen if the President takes real 
action to clamp down on cheating, end job-killing trade deals, and 
create new standards that benefit working Americans.
  It already seems that President Trump's campaign promises to get 
tough on trade were all bark and no bite. If President Trump does 
indeed deliver on his promise to renegotiate NAFTA, any new agreement 
must include strong labor and environmental standards, strong Buy 
America provisions, prescription drug cost reductions, enforceable 
currency manipulation standards, and other pro-worker, pro-consumer 
requirements.
  Mr. Speaker, there is a terrific publication that I know you are 
aware of entitled ``The New Rules of the Road: A Progressive Approach 
to Globalization,'' prepared by Jared Bernstein, who is a senior fellow 
at the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, a former chief economist 
and economic adviser to Vice President Biden; and Lori Wallach, a 
lawyer and someone who has been director of Public Citizen's Global 
Trade Watch since 1995.
  It really sets forth the kind of principles that should guide a new 
trade deal: that we need to ensure that, first of all, the way it is 
negotiated ensures that it is going to benefit working men and women. 
We cannot allow corporate elites to dictate how NAFTA is renegotiated. 
The agreement could potentially become more damaging for working 
families and for our environment in the countries that we work with. If 
done wrong, it could increase job offshoring, push down wages, and 
expand the special power and protections that NAFTA provides to 
corporate interests that are reflected in the original deal.
  What we have to ensure is that what President Trump doesn't do is 
make a bad trade deal worse and pander to corporate and multinational 
corporations and his sort of crony friends, and the process by which 
this will be renegotiated will help to determine that. The provisions 
that are in it need to be guided by what is good for American workers 
and what is good to help grow American jobs.
  So not unlike so many other areas, it is disappointing because there 
has been a lot of good rhetoric about this, but very little action by 
the administration. I think we are all here tonight to participate in 
this Special Order led by the gentlewoman from Ohio to let the 
administration know that we are not going anywhere, that we are going 
to demand that NAFTA be renegotiated, that it be a trade deal that 
works for American jobs and American workers, and we are not going to 
allow the President to simply use rhetoric but actually not do the hard 
work to strike a better deal for American jobs and American workers.
  I want to just end where I began, by thanking the gentlewoman for 
yielding. This is an issue of tremendous importance to my home State, 
where manufacturing is so important, the birthplace of the American 
industrial revolution, and one of the reasons I continue to work hard 
on the whole Make It In America agenda. We need to start creating 
conditions for the creation of good manufacturing jobs here in America 
so we can export American-made goods, not American jobs. I thank again 
the gentlewoman for yielding.
  Ms. KAPTUR. I thank Congressman Cicilline. He hit it right on the 
head. We ought to be exporting goods, not importing this many more than 
we export, and we ought to be creating jobs right here. I am sure he 
has seen companies from his community, from his State, literally picked 
up and then magically transported to some other environment, like 
Mexico, in one of the maquiladoras, and maybe windshield wipers or 
plastic parts or auto parts that used to be made in the United States 
then are made down there. I certainly have seen it.
  Mr. CICILLINE. Absolutely.
  Ms. KAPTUR. If we look at this chart, just for those who are 
listening to us this evening, if you go back to the mid-1970s, as 
Congressman Cicilline pointed out, you will see the United States was 
pretty buoyant. We were actually exporting more than we were importing.
  But then when China Most Favored Nation passed in 1979, 1994 NAFTA 
passed, and all of a sudden what was happening is the reverse flow 
started. We started importing more than we were exporting, and every 
time you get a billion dollars of red ink, you lose 5,000 more jobs in 
this country.
  Well, my gosh, as NAFTA actually took full bore and then China 
permanent normal trade relations took effect here, CAFTA, which was the 
Central American Free Trade Agreement, here was the Colombian Free 
Trade Agreement, here was the Korean Free Trade Agreement, every single 
agreement that happened, we ended up getting

[[Page 5331]]

more imports into our country than exports out, and promises were not 
kept.
  Our focus tonight is mainly on NAFTA, but if we look at Korea, they 
were supposed to be taking 50,000 cars from us. We were supposed to 
have more balanced trade. Well, guess what, they didn't keep up their 
end of the bargain. Other markets around the world, such as Japan, 
remain closed to this day to cars from other places in the world.
  You say: Congresswoman, that can't be possible.
  I have seen it with my own eyes. I have visited there many times. 
When I first began my career, Japan had about--oh, 3 percent of the 
cars on their streets were from anyplace else in the world. Today maybe 
it is 4 percent, maybe it is 3.5 percent, but there are all kinds of 
nontariff barriers where they keep cars out. Yet you look at our 
country, they have put manufacturing plants here, they send product 
over here. It simply isn't a two-way street, and Japan is the second 
largest market in the world for automobiles. So the trade isn't fair. 
The American people know this. They are trying to fix this. It really 
requires the President's leadership to do it.
  Congressman Cicilline talked about steel trade--I just want to put on 
the Record--with China, and we see what a big player she is in the 
market and doesn't play fair. I just want to put some numbers on the 
Record. China's expansion of steel since 2000 has grown to over 2,300 
million metric tons. That is a big number to imagine. But only 1,500 
million metric tons are needed to actually serve the global 
marketplace. So what you have got is over 800 million metric tons of 
steel just floating around the world in warehouses and stored up in 
provinces in China, and they are dumping the steel.
  Why does that matter?
  Because in places like I represent, Lorain, Ohio, U.S. Steel just 
pink-slipped hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of more workers. 
Republic Steel, which sits next door to U.S. Steel, has shuttered their 
plant because of imported steel.
  The President could do something about that. He could have done 
something about that the second day he was in office. Nothing has been 
done. All these workers, some of whom have worked in these plants for 
28 years, in modernized plants where hundreds of millions of dollars of 
investment have been made to upgrade the capacity of these plants, 
rather than save that capacity for our country for the years ahead and 
to try to deal with this Chinese dumping, they are allowing more 
workers and more companies to go belly up in this country. It is wrong. 
It is wrong. This needs to be fixed. This is big time for jobs and 
economic growth in our country.
  I want to thank Congressman Brendan F. Boyle, who understands this 
problem full well. As a younger Member of Congress and one who really 
speaks on behalf of working men and women in Pennsylvania and coast to 
coast, I thank him so much for taking time and joining us tonight. I 
yield to the gentleman.
  Mr. BRENDAN F. BOYLE of Pennsylvania. Mr. Speaker, I thank the 
gentlewoman for yielding. I have to say that the working people of not 
just Ohio but this country are very lucky to have Marcy Kaptur fighting 
for them and for her years of service. There is not a more passionate 
champion for working Americans in this House than the gentlewoman from 
Ohio.
  Mr. Speaker, I come here not with a prepared text, but really to 
speak from my heart. As the son of two hardworking parents who were 
working in industries that were supported by organized labor, and it 
depresses me to see the great decline in our workforce today that is in 
a union.
  Now, the subject that we are speaking about tonight is about the 
trade deficit, and I just started talking about unions. To some that 
might seem as if I am off topic, but there is no question the two are 
absolutely related.

                              {time}  1745

  Mr. Speaker, I want to correct a fallacy that sometimes is out there 
about those of us who may be critical about NAFTA and other trade 
deals. I am not antitrade. I recognize that the United States of 
America, despite being a large country of over 320 million people, we 
are only 5 percent of the world's population. We must engage in trade 
with the rest of the world. I also look at those economic statistics 
that tell us, without question, the most productive workforce in the 
world today is the American worker.
  So if the grounds of trade are fair and if the rules of the game are 
fair, we can compete with anyone. Our workers can compete and 
outcompete anyone in the world. But, Mr. Speaker, they have not been 
fighting on a fair playing field.
  Now, let's not forget that over the last 20 to 23 years or so since 
NAFTA was passed, that happens to also coincide with this point in 
American history in which most wages have been stagnant. Indeed, for 
middle class people and lower middle class folks, their real wages have 
declined, not to mention the most lower income quintile, which has seen 
a dramatic drop in real wages.
  I think that it would be unfair for any of us to say that this is 
because of NAFTA or that this is because of any specific trade deal. 
But it is also very fair for us to point out that none of these trade 
deals did anything to raise the living standards and wages of American 
workers. Here we are in an environment in Congress in which, recently, 
we were talking about the TPP and moving forward with other trade deals 
and talking about nothing really to raise wages and living standards 
for our own workers here at home.
  Look at the example of NAFTA, something that was promised to raise 
wage standards in Mexico, that we would benefit from having on our 
southern border a country with a rising middle class population. There 
is no question that would be in the best interest of the United States 
and, obviously, in the best interest of Mexico.
  However, Mr. Speaker, here we are in the last few years with more 
jobs going to Mexico, including the closing of the Nabisco plant in my 
district that I stood on the well of the House floor and protested 
against. It goes to a nice new facility in Monterrey, Mexico. Is that 
helping to raise wages in Mexico? Actually, wages are lower today in 
Mexico than they were 3 years ago. That is an economic fact.
  Under the letter of the law of NAFTA, that is something that our 
administration could take up with our Mexican counterparts, but they 
don't. Instead, we see Nabisco. And I am taking one specific example 
because it affected my district. We see them closing a plant that had 
existed in Philadelphia since before my parents were born lay off 325 
workers, lay off double that in Chicago, and move to Monterrey, Mexico, 
which they can do in accordance with NAFTA.
  If we are going to move forward with new trade deals, which 
inevitably at some point in years moving forward we will, I would 
simply ask--and strongly suggest--that we look out not just for the 
corporate interest, not just for what is in the best interest of 
consumers, but also what is in the best interest of American workers.
  We should not be surprised that we see this tumult in the United 
States politically at the same time that we are seeing stagnant wages 
and stagnant benefits for decades. Those two are inextricably linked.
  Mr. Speaker, finally, let me say to all those who are interested in 
working on this trade issue on both sides of the aisle: You have 
committed and passionate public servants on this side of the aisle who 
want to get it right, who want to ensure that we finally have trade 
deals that put American workers first and foremost.
  Ms. KAPTUR. Mr. Speaker, I thank Congressman Boyle. He has raised so 
many important issues tonight on jobs and trade and how we fix this 
problem for the people of our country and, frankly, the world.
  One of the issues is which banks are actually financing this 
outsourcing. I can tell you, they are not banks in the communities that 
I represent. They are not big enough to put all that money, to actually 
take these big companies and move them out of the United States and 
plunk them down in a Third World environment. It is largely Wall

[[Page 5332]]

Street banks that do that. So they fly over the heads of people that 
live in communities across this country.
  The gentleman talked about Nabisco moving. I had an experience. I 
went out to Newton, Iowa, a few years ago when Maytag was closing. I 
felt so bad as an American that a gold star label company that had 
manufactured reliable, high-quality products in our country was 
closing. I learned what was happening. What I didn't realize was that 
the production that closed in Newton, Iowa, large parts of it were 
moved south of the border.
  I was traveling down to Monterrey, Mexico. I was going down there, 
actually, to find out what had happened to someone who was murdered, 
who had been a student in our community and was murdered in Monterrey, 
Mexico. We went by this big complex that said Maytag, Amana, all of 
these American companies that had been outsourced to Monterrey. I said: 
Stop the cab. I am taking a picture. This is exactly what I am talking 
about.
  I said: Let me ask a question to some of the people that were walking 
by and living in the area. I said: Can the people who work in that 
Maytag plant in Monterrey, can they afford to buy the washers they 
make?
  Guess what? No. In fact, where they lived, there was no running 
water. There was no decent water to drink.
  I thought: This is what we stand for as a country? What is wrong with 
this picture? For our country, in districts like mine, the results of 
all this lopsided trade are that citizens in northern Ohio, on average, 
are earning $7,000 less than they did when this century began, because 
of this. The playing field is simply not level.
  Several years ago, I was visited by a group of United Automobile 
Workers from Milwaukee, Wisconsin. They told me--and I just love these 
wonderful, generous human beings. They had all been pink-slipped. They 
had just lost their jobs. They came to see me to tell me their stories 
on trade and what it had done to them.
  They said: Marcy, we are training those who are going to replace us 
in Mexico. But we went down to Mexico, and we felt so sorry to see 
where the people lived and the conditions under which they were working 
that we are collecting medical items, and we are doing humanitarian 
shipments to that town.
  I thought: Oh, my goodness, what a generous group of Americans who 
are facing such horror in their own lives and yet they were doing that 
for people who live on this continent--and were, by the way, going to 
be earning, like, one-twentieth of what the workers in Milwaukee 
earned. So it was all about cheap labor.
  I really felt bad for the cheapening of the Maytag product. I am 
probably going to get in trouble for saying that, but it is the truth. 
I certainly learned a lesson by traveling to Newton, Iowa.
  Now, another story, this is on plastic seals. I happened to visit a 
plant in the Tijuana area, and I walked through the plant in Mexico. 
This company had been moved from Ohio and its equipment shipped down to 
Mexico.
  I walked through this plant. It was about 100 degrees that particular 
day. I turned the corner. There were no fans taking out the exhaust. It 
was bloody hot, and it had to be 110 degrees. These men were working. 
They had T-shirts on. It was very hot that summer. They were pulling 
down these large levers because they were melting plastic and rubber. I 
witnessed this.
  I thought: Boy, that really looks dangerous with that thing that they 
are pulling down because it was moving like this. I thought: Boy, they 
have got to really pay attention every time they move that steam press 
down so they don't catch their arm in there.
  I took pictures, and I sent them back to Ohio. I got a letter from 
one of my constituents. This constituent said: Congresswoman, did you 
really take a look at the picture you took?
  I thought: Well, yeah, I was looking at the workers.
  He said: No. No. Look at the machine, the machine, up in the right-
hand corner, the button with the tape over it.
  I said: Oh, yeah.
  He said: I used to do that job. Do you know what that button is?
  I said: No.
  He said: That is the safety button.
  In other words, when the equipment was shipped and the machine 
started, life wasn't worth as much in Mexico, so these workers were 
working with much greater risk of injury to themselves because the 
equipment had been tinkered with in a way that told me a lot about 
health and safety standards and how they are really not enforced in 
places like Mexico.
  I finally want to end with a story that relates to trade. It doesn't 
just have to do with goods. It has to do with human beings, with 
people, and why renegotiating trade deals is so important for what our 
Constitution says we stand for: life, liberty, and the pursuit of 
happiness. This is a country that believes in liberty and justice for 
all. It has to do with the undocumented workers in our country who are 
coming from south of our border.
  We hear all kinds of rhetoric about that, but the truth is that I 
face the reality of what happened in the agricultural sector with 
NAFTA. What happened is we wanted two-way trade with Mexico, but what 
the trade agreement did is it caused great problems in Mexico in that 
over 2 million small farmers in Mexico were displaced by the NAFTA 
agreement because our country was 18 times more efficient in corn 
agriculture than the Mexican people. These workers and owners of these 
little ejidos, these little, tiny farms that were subsistence farms, 
they were just completely obliterated--2 million or more people.
  Well, guess what? When you lose your livelihood and the trade 
agreement doesn't provide for readjustment, what do you think desperate 
people do? They run anywhere to eat, and north of the border looks 
pretty attractive.
  As I heard all of these speeches during the campaign about what we 
are going to do on trade and how we are going to fix everything, I have 
never heard any of the major candidates talk about: How are you going 
to fix the problem for the people in Mexico who lost their livelihoods, 
their ability to produce for themselves?
  The undocumented worker problem has a big, big root in Mexico. It was 
an uncaring set of governments that negotiated these agreements that 
caused that hemorrhage that creates an endless flow of people who are 
desperate, who will do anything to survive. You wouldn't want this to 
happen to your family.
  I am all for yellow corn from the United States. I eat corn. I just 
served it the other night to our family. But when a trade agreement 
wipes out the livelihoods of millions of people, it upsets an entire 
continent. So now the solution is not to figure out a way to have 
readjustment in agriculture in Mexico as part of a renegotiated NAFTA 
agreement; the answer is supposed to be a wall.
  Do you know what? Walls don't feed people. Proper trade agreements 
feed people when they are done the right way and you don't obliterate 
people's lives. That is what really matters.
  When I see what the White House is producing, I haven't seen anything 
yet that really gets us to balanced trade accounts in a way that people 
matter and the communities in which they live matter. And it isn't 
always a default to what Wall Street wants and cheap labor and 
substandard working conditions and substandard living conditions.
  We have to do better than that. We have to aspire to a system where 
people are invited into a trade union in which we have rising standards 
of living, where we have balanced trade accounts again, and where 
people's incomes and living standards rise. If we don't get there, we 
are going to have even greater social problems on this continent.
  Today, I met with El Salvadoran workers, talking about the conditions 
in that country, what has happened there with the maquiladoras and the 
situations that people face in their daily lives. This race to the 
bottom is not working. It is not working in our country. It is not 
working in the Latin American countries or in Canada. We simply have to 
aspire to the highest values that founded this country.

[[Page 5333]]

  Mr. Speaker, I yield to the gentlewoman from Connecticut (Ms. 
DeLauro), someone who knows all about those values. Congresswoman Rosa 
DeLauro is a true leader of our trade efforts to reform this really 
terrible trade regimen that isn't helping anyone but the wealthiest 
investors who have invested in the movement of these companies abroad.
  Connecticut we think of as an eastern State close to New York, but 
Connecticut has been battered in so many corners by trade. 
Congresswoman Rosa DeLauro is an indefatigable Member of the House. I 
don't know how the people of Connecticut found her, but keep sending 
her here because she really does her job with distinction. I thank her 
so much for joining us this evening.

                              {time}  1800

  Ms. DeLAURO. Mr. Speaker, what a great compliment from someone who is 
a tigress when it comes to making sure that the working people in her 
community are represented--that their interests, their families, and 
their economic security are represented--and who fights on a daily 
basis to make sure that our families have the economic wherewithal with 
which to succeed.
  The gentlewoman from Ohio is someone who really knows that the 
biggest problem that we face today in this Nation is that people are in 
jobs that just don't pay them enough; and that they can't make it, that 
they are struggling.
  When you lay on top of that the direction that our trade agreements 
have taken us, it reinforces the fact of their lack of wages and of 
income inequality. And you can't have a discussion about income 
inequality in this Nation today without starting with wages.
  I am struck by those people who tell us that all of this wage 
stagnation and income inequality is the fault of globalization and 
technology. No, that is not the case. You just listen to Nobel Laureate 
Joseph Stiglitz, who said that this inequality and the depression of 
wages has come from public policy choices. And we have made the wrong 
public policy choices, as has been evidenced by my colleague's 
comments.
  We support a trade policy that puts American workers before corporate 
interests. And although President Trump made trade a central focus of 
his campaign and he promised to fight for working men and women, the 
broken promises are piling up.
  I am deeply disturbed--I know my colleague is--that President Trump's 
Commerce Secretary, Wilbur Ross, has suggested that the Trans-Pacific 
Partnership Agreement is a good place to start for the NAFTA 
renegotiations. Working men and women deserve a new North American Free 
Trade Agreement, not more of the same corporate-driven trade policies 
of the failed Trans-Pacific Partnership--an agreement, as I said, that, 
as a candidate, President Trump opposed. He spoke all over the country 
and told people that it had to go, that he was going to renegotiate 
NAFTA.
  This is not the only about-face that this administration has taken on 
trade. If you listen to the Economic Policy Institute, China's past 
cheating to manipulate the value of their money has left over 5 million 
Americans without good-paying jobs. Yet, President Trump has failed to 
deliver on declaring China a currency manipulator. He said he was going 
to do that on day one. And he has yet to act on countering our massive 
$347 billion trade deficit with China.
  He missed his promised deadline to start NAFTA renegotiation in his 
first 100 days. He has already reneged on his Buy American promise that 
American steel would be required for the Keystone XL pipeline. They 
have waived that requirement, and my colleague knows deeply what has 
happened to steel workers.
  Ms. KAPTUR. Mr. Speaker, I wanted to mention that hundreds and 
hundreds of steel workers in my district are getting laid off right 
now, as the gentlewoman from Connecticut speaks.
  We are facing complete closure of two plants. One has already been 
idled, Republic Steel; and the other, the U.S. Steel plant in Lorain, 
Ohio, will be by early June.
  If the President really wanted to do something to make a statement, 
what he would do is put an embargo on the products that are being 
dumped by China and Korea on our market that are forcing this to happen 
at our steel companies.
  There is a glut in the steel market globally. We have about 800 
million metric tons of steel that are out there.
  What China has been doing is building a steel company in every 
province to put people to work. Then, what do they do with the steel? 
They have been storing it because there is so much that the global 
market can't absorb 800 million more metric tons.
  So companies like those I represent get hurt because they are trying 
to play by the rules; but the rules aren't being enforced properly, so 
they end up with the short end of the deal that is absolutely 
backwards. So what the gentlewoman says about steel is right on.
  I yield to the gentlewoman from Connecticut.
  Ms. DeLAURO. Mr. Speaker, this has been happening all along in so 
many sectors. When you talk about the various agreements and NAFTA--and 
actually with regard to currency--what we fought for in the Trans-
Pacific Partnership Agreement was to do something about currency 
manipulation because everything that may have been negotiated in the 
NAFTA agreement with tariffs and lowering them and all of that, all of 
that was for naught when Mexico devalued the peso. Once you do that, 
then your goods are cheaper than our goods and we suffer. It is the 
same thing that has happened in Korea, and this is what we were looking 
at in the Trans-Pacific Partnership Agreement.
  Despite the Oval Office fanfare last Friday, President Trump's recent 
executive orders are, frankly, nothing but window dressing. While 
initiating a new Federal report--a new Federal report, God, there must 
be unbelievable cavernous institutions and places where we have Federal 
reports which go nowhere--what they are about is a common way to avoid 
fixing any problems that we have. The real test is going to be whether 
or not the Trump administration takes action to create jobs and to 
reduce the trade deficit.
  Improving our trade policy requires new rules, not more of the status 
quo. And it was Mr. Ross who, I believe, said that: My gosh, you can't 
throw out the Trans-Pacific Partnership Agreement. You have to fiddle 
around the edges with it.
  That is where they are going. Again, they are betraying the promises 
that were made to those workers in your district, those workers in my 
district, and workers all across the country.
  Ms. KAPTUR. Mr. Speaker, what the gentlewoman from Connecticut is 
saying is very important because certain States hung in the balance in 
this past election. Ohio was one of them. Michigan, Pennsylvania, 
obviously Indiana next door was constant. If you look at each one of 
those States, those were the ones that actually carried for President 
Trump in the end because of the jobs and trade issue.
  I yield to the gentlewoman from Connecticut.
  Ms. DeLAURO. Mr. Speaker, that is absolutely right. That was a 
central part of the election last November.
  Improving our trade policy requires new rules, as I said, not more 
status quo. We have to push a trade agenda that will create good-paying 
jobs and that is going to raise wages here at home. And our coalition 
is going to continue to hold this administration accountable. What we 
need to do is to try to reshape the trajectory of modern globalization, 
one that doesn't exacerbate that economic problem that I spoke about 
people being in jobs that just don't pay them enough money. The NAFTA 
agreement put people at such grave risk.
  I know that the gentlewoman can recall this as well: we both stood on 
this House floor all those years ago and we said we were going to lose 
jobs, that we were going to increase the trade deficit, and that this 
was not an agreement that would benefit the working men and women of 
this country.
  At that time, quite frankly, we were told by the then-Clinton 
administration that we were thugs, that we did

[[Page 5334]]

not understand what was happening, that we were protectionist, all 
kinds of labels against the thinking that we said that this was not 
going to benefit us.
  Ms. KAPTUR. Mr. Speaker, does the gentlewoman from Connecticut 
remember when Gary Hufbauer said we would have trade surpluses? In 
other words, this is upside down. It should actually be like this. We 
would have surpluses then. Well, it is exactly the opposite he 
testified back then. I will never forget that.
  The Peterson Institute said we would have jobs, we would have rising 
incomes, we would have more benefits for workers. Wrong, wrong, wrong.
  I yield to the gentlewoman from Connecticut.
  Ms. DeLAURO. Mr. Speaker, we said it then.
  What we didn't have at that time was the data, which is now right 
here on this floor of the House, which is why we were able to defeat 
the Trans-Pacific Partnership Agreement, because they couldn't fool us 
again. They could not fool us again. Not us. They couldn't fool the 
American people again.
  We are not going down that road, not with a reheated Trans-Pacific 
Partnership Agreement or a tweaked North American Free Trade Agreement.
  I said we have to reshape that trajectory of modern globalization. It 
is a trajectory that needs to benefit American workers. It has to 
foster inclusive growth.
  This is not just about large corporations and special interests that 
will be the beneficiaries of trade agreements. It is about trade 
agreements that grow our economy, that grow the economic security of 
the people of this country.
  Implementing a new model is not going to be easy. It isn't going to 
be easy; we know that. But with so much on the line, we understand that 
it is our obligation to put the American people first, to set those new 
rules for a 21st century economy and give it our all.
  We are going to be absolutely vigilant with where the discussions and 
the negotiations go on a renegotiated NAFTA agreement and future trade 
agreements that we may embark on.
  We are not afraid of trade. We just want it to work for the people of 
this country, and we don't want to do what has happened to the folks in 
Mexico and to other countries as well.
  First and foremost, I will just say that we have to be cognizant of 
the repercussions on the standard of living and the quality of life 
that our people in the United States have. These trade agreements have 
worked against that, and it is not going to happen again.
  Ms. KAPTUR. Mr. Speaker, I want to thank Congresswoman DeLauro for 
her stellar leadership on the trade task force and the work that it has 
done. The hours and hours of effort on defeating the Trans-Pacific 
Partnership, the great assemblage that she gathered and the persistence 
with which she approached that, seeking to defeat that trade model, 
which has now been done, and to go back to the drawing board and to fix 
what is wrong with these, Representative DeLauro has been 
extraordinary.
  I yield to the gentlewoman from Connecticut.
  Ms. DeLAURO. Mr. Speaker, it has been a remarkable coalition, and it 
is standing strong. It stands strong.
  I thank the gentlewoman from Ohio for being a central and integral 
part of this effort. I appreciate that.
  Ms. KAPTUR. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentlewoman from Connecticut for 
coming down this evening.
  As we complete our work here this evening, I wanted to reissue our 
invitation to Secretary of Commerce Wilbur Ross to travel to Ohio to 
come to U.S. Steel in Lorain to really see what is happening there to 
the workers; and not just Lorain--we are not selfish--but all over this 
country where steel companies are being harmed because of imports and 
the fact that China, Korea, and Russia are dumping on the international 
market.
  We need to have an embargo. We need to let our industry survive and 
get over this hump of overcapacity.
  We are going to need that production in the years ahead, for example, 
in the natural gas industry for piping and so forth. These are modern 
plants. America should not lose them. We have lost so many steel 
plants. We can't afford to lose many more for the sake of the Nation's 
defense.
  I also wanted to invite the President to Ohio. I hope that somebody 
is listening. He campaigned a great deal in Ohio. I know he likes 
meeting people, and it certainly would be a good way to see the 
immediate challenge on the trade front where real lives and livelihoods 
are at stake in this country.

                              {time}  1815

  I also just wanted to end by saying this: When you create a system of 
trade where people are exploited in our country, or in other countries, 
that really isn't the best face that America can put forward. And 
unfortunately, what happens too often in our country now, for example, 
in trade with Mexico, when you have undocumented workers who come here, 
many in desperation, many of them are being trafficked across the 
continent. You say: Oh, Congresswoman, what do you mean trafficked? I 
mean, some of them come here because they are desperate, and they end 
up paying sometimes as much as $8,000 to come here and work at a very 
low-wage job. They never get out of debt.
  We have to take that system and move it into the sunlight out of the 
doldrums, because we can't treat people like chattel. There are 
millions of agricultural workers, for example, who come to this country 
with no contract. They are completely indentured to whatever coyote 
brings them across the border. That is not the system I want for this 
country. That is not fair to those families. It is not fair to their 
children. It is not fair to the places to which they come in our 
country.
  They always feel uncomfortable. What kind of a system, what kind of a 
trade system would subject them to that? We are a different kind of 
country. We aspire to higher values. We aspire to treating people and 
elevating their worth, not diminishing their worth as human beings.
  We have a lot to fix in these trade agreements, and I hope that 
President Trump will join us. I would like to tell him about what 
coyotes do. I would like to tell him how they behave, how some of them 
have been involved in murder of individuals from my district who fight 
for labor rights so that no one is afraid, that people feel that they 
have a legal system that will defend them.
  We need to get to that world. Our Constitution intends it for all of 
the people of our country. We should behave no differently 
internationally.
  So in closing tonight, I agree with the President. We need good jobs. 
We need real jobs. They have to come back to this country, and we have 
to treat people in other countries with worth, with their worth as 
human beings. We need to get back to trade balances, not trade 
deficits.
  Mr. Speaker, I yield back the balance of my time.

                          ____________________