CAFTA
CAFTA -- (House of Representatives - June 22, 2005)
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Ms. WATERS. Mr. Speaker, I want to thank the gentleman from Ohio (Mr. Brown) for the time, and I applaud him for his efforts to expose what is wrong with CAFTA, the U.S. Central American Free Trade Agreement.
I must say he has put many hours into helping to organize us around this issue and to present the real facts about what CAFTA is and what it is not.
CAFTA is yet another unfair trade deal that will hurt working families in both Central America and the United States. CAFTA is not only the latest unfair trade deal in a decade of failed trade policies. Over the last 12 years, the U.S. trade deficit has exploded from $39 billion in 1992, to over $617 billion in 2004.
As a matter of fact, I think the most interesting thing about what is happening in the Congress of the United States is this tremendous trade deficit under what is supposed to be a conservative President.
And aside from the trade deficit, the United States deficit that we have here in America under this administration. I think people should take note of that. In my home State of California, over 353,000 manufacturing jobs have been lost since 1998.
Nationwide, almost 2.8 million manufacturing jobs have been lost since President Bush took office in 2001. CAFTA is modeled on NAFTA, the North American Free Trade Agreement. And let me say I did not support NAFTA, as I do not support CAFTA.
The North American Free Trade Agreement had a devastating impact on many American workers. When NAFTA was passed in 1994, the United States had a $2 billion trade surplus with Mexico. In 2004, we had a $45 billion trade deficit with Mexico.
NAFTA caused almost 1 million American manufacturing jobs to be exported to Mexico. CAFTA will cause even more manufacturing jobs to be lost to American workers. I do not care whether it is a Democrat President or a Republican President, I do not support these unfair trade agreements that cause us to have such huge trade deficits and who displace American workers.
Mr. Speaker, I want to thank the gentleman from Ohio (Mr. Brown) for the press conference he organized where he had several business people who came to Washington, to explain how small- and medium-sized businesses will be unable to compete with cheap labor in Central America.
What I loved about that press conference was the fact that we had these representatives from small and medium-sized businesses coming to Washington, D.C. to tell the truth about how they have not been represented here in Washington. Many people think when the Chamber of Commerce speaks, they are speaking for all businesses. They made sure that everybody knew that this was not true.
They also made sure that everybody understands that the National Manufacturers Association was not speaking for everybody. These are small and medium-sized businesses that represent the heart and soul of America: Mr. Alan Tonelson with the U.S. Business and Industry Council, Mr. Jim Schollaert with the American Manufacturing Trade Action Coalition, Mr. Fred Tedesco with the PA-Ted Spring Company of Connecticut, Mr. Jock Nash with Milliken & Company of South Carolina and the National Textile Association, Mr. Mike Retzer with the W.W. Strohwig Tool & Die of Wisconsin, and Mr. Dave Frengel with Pen United Technologies of Pennsylvania and Manufacturers for Fair Trade.
These business persons are the kind of business people that we talk about all the time. Members of Congress on both sides of the aisle talk about how we support small and middle-sized businesses, how they are the heart and soul of America. And how they really are responsible for creating more jobs than even the big conglomerates and the international corporate businesses. We talk about how we want to give support to them. Well, this is how we can support them. Enough of the rhetoric. Let us get down to business.
If we want to support our small and medium-sized businesses in this country, we will not support CAFTA. We will not support what they have come to Washington to tell us undermines their ability to stay in business.
I think we could not have had a more clear representation of what is wrong with CAFTA than to watch these American business persons talk about what is wrong with CAFTA. When American workers lose good jobs in manufacturing, they often have no choice but to take jobs with low wages and no benefits.
The countries of Central America that are included in this agreement are some of the world's poorest countries. The average Nicaraguan worker earns only $2,300 per year, or $191 per month. Forty percent of Central American workers earn less than $2 per day. Central American governments do not enforce fair labor standards, and thousands of Central American workers work in sweatshops with dreadful working conditions.
CAFTA will do nothing to improve wages and working conditions in these impoverished countries. Opposition to CAFTA is wide spread, not only in the United States but in Central America as well. CAFTA will increase agricultural imports into Central America by large corporate agri-businesses. These imports will put an estimated 1.2 million farmers out of work, displacing families and causing an increase in world poverty. When poor Central American farmers lose their jobs, they will be forced to move into overcrowded cities and seek work in sweatshops producing manufactured goods that are currently made in America.
CAFTA will cause American workers to lose good manufacturing jobs and again seek jobs with lower wages and no benefits. At the same time, CAFTA will cause Central American workers to lose their farms and seek jobs in sweatshop with meager wages and no benefits.
CAFTA is not a free trade agreement at all. It is an outsourcing agreement. I say it again: this is not free trade; this is about outsourcing American jobs to third world countries for cheap labor. That is what it is. Let us call it what it is.
It allows profit-hungry corporations to ship American jobs to impoverished countries where workers can be forced to work long hours for little pay and no benefits. It is a bad deal for Central American workers, and it is an equally bad deal for workers here in the United States.
So I would urge this President, Mr. Conservative President, Mr. President who claims to have concern about American businesses, Mr. President who should not be the President, presiding over a big trade deficit, a huge deficit in the United States, I would urge him to withdraw this CAFTA agreement and negotiate a trade agreement that will create good jobs and provide real benefits to the impoverished people of Central America as well as the working people of the United States.
Mr. Speaker, it is awfully ironic that I am, who is considered a progressive and a liberal, even more conservative than the President of the United States when it comes to preserving American jobs and getting rid of a trade deficit that we do not deserve to have.
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Ms. WATERS. I think you are so right, and I thank you so very much for the leadership you have provided on these issues. I thank you for opening up opportunities for women to go down to Mexico and take a look at what is going on there. It is because of you that a lot of people in this Congress have become interested in this issue, and I appreciate the work you have done.
Ms. KAPTUR. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentlewoman for saying that. Also, 60 percent of those people who are employed in these Central American countries are women. They are working in banana companies trying to pack these crates, 40, 50, 60 crates an hour. They are being forced to make men's trousers, 400 to 600 pairs an hour, and they have to work 2 weeks to afford 2 pairs of slacks down there, which costs $39.40, and yet, they are making 400 to 600 pairs of trousers an hour.
What kind of a continent, what kind of a world are we creating when we pay so little heed to those who work so hard for so little and then we put our workers out, largely women workers in the textile industry in this country, where we farmed out those jobs in places like North Carolina, South Carolina, are hollowing out of this production? At least they were in the middle class. They had finally made it to the middle class. What are we doing in this country?
Ms. WATERS. It could not have been better stated.
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