United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement

Floor Speech

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Mr. SCHWEIKERT. Mr. Speaker, I thank my friend from Kansas who represents my wife's family.

Hopefully, I won't take a couple of minutes, but there were a couple of things as we were doing some economic numbers before.

The modeling right now says if USMCA passes, it is another half a point on GDP growth. In a $21 trillion economy, that is real money, but it is also hundreds and hundreds of thousands of jobs.

But there is even another complexity that I am going to ask for folks to think about. Think of the issues we have, particularly with China. So many of us would love to have a healthy relationship with China, but we don't believe they are playing by the WTO rules. They are breaking the rules.

So we are seeing a world right now where lots of manufacturers are thinking about moving parts of their supply chain. Wouldn't it be an amazing thing that we do our job here, we get this trade agreement passed, and those components, those issues, parts of those supply chains are back here in North America? Our ability to say our continent, our trading block, our ability to not only have robust economies for ourselves, but these labor provisions.

And this is the last thing I really wanted to hit on. The gentleman and I are on the whip team for passing this. We have had a number of visits with our brothers and sisters on the left. With a lot of them, I will get this: Well, David, I am concerned about the enforcement of the new labor standards that the Mexican Government has passed.

Remember, their legislature has passed this. Their President has signed it. There are dramatic changes in their labor rules. I will bring them a copy and say: But you don't understand, it is not the 1940s and 1950s anymore. You don't send in a team of union representatives to go inspect one of the 70,000-some facilities and inspect and then write up a report saying we don't think you are--in today's world, we have that thing called the internet.

The law the Mexican Congress passed actually has provisions in there for privacy and secrecy and the ability to use technology that if you believe your labor rights are being abused in a Mexican factory, you can actually document it. You can actually put it on a blog and those things.

So how do we drag our brothers and sisters from the left to actually walk away from the excuse of the labor improvement enforcement, and get them to understand that it is not the 1950s anymore; that now we are going to use technology and the ability to have these new labor standards in Mexico which can be enforced on a very large scale using technology?

This is incredibly important to our economic growth, and our entire regions. Let's get this done.

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