Correcting America's Imbalanced Trading Relationships

CORRECTING AMERICA'S IMBALANCED TRADING RELATIONSHIPS -- (House of Representatives - November 08, 2005)

The SPEAKER pro tempore (Mr. Fitzpatrick of Pennsylvania). Under a previous order of the House, the gentlewoman from Ohio (Ms. Kaptur) is recognized for 5 minutes.

Ms. KAPTUR. Mr. Speaker, I rise today on the heels of President Bush's failed trade trip to Latin America to discuss our Nation's trade policy, a policy that continues to ship out American jobs, a policy that opens our doors to imports while other markets remain closed to us. Markets like Japan, markets like China, they keep their doors shut tight.

This is a policy that is hurting our country, not just today, but for tomorrow. It hurts our workers. It hurts our farmers; and, indeed, it truly hurts our future.

Our latest trade deficit numbers released last month for the month of August show yet another increase in America's trade deficit. The trade deficit for the month of August alone was $59 billion. For every billion dollars of deficit, we incur another 20,000 lost jobs. In a year, the loss to us is over three-quarters of a trillion dollars of more imports coming in than exports going out.

Last year our trade deficit was $668 billion; and in the first half of this year, this number clearly was increasing. This chart summarizes what has been happening with the rise in imports over exports over the last 20 years. Every single year, after every single one of these trade agreements gets signed, the red ink gets deeper and deeper. It will not take long to reach a trillion dollars, which lops real economic growth off our gross domestic product.

According to one report, the higher price of oil this year alone could add an estimated 60 to $90 billion more to the trade deficit of 2006. The deficit represents jobs lost in our communities, lives changed forever, as well as a very real threat to the economic security of our country.

Trade agreements like, and Members know the names, NAFTA, CAFTA, PNTR, normal trade relations with China. I do not know what is normal about having hundreds of billions of dollars of deficit with any country where our jobs have been shipped elsewhere. We can see the cashing out of America.

The latest company that tells us they are ready to leave is Delphi, based in Flint, Michigan, a corporation that employs over 50,000 people nationwide, telling workers they have to take a two-thirds cut in wages, pensions gone, health benefit gone. And what they are basically doing, they are following their major customer, which is General Motors, which has cashed out to Mexico, and now the suppliers are following suit.

Here is how the trade model works: half of Delphi's sales go to General Motors. Therefore, if General Motors outsources, so will Delphi. If General Motors goes to Mexico, which is has, it is the largest employer in Mexico after the government of Mexico and the oil industry, so will Delphi go. How destructive this trend is to our future as we see our workers work for lower wages and our families shopping now at Wal-Mart to get bargain prices. Imagine, Wal-Mart, the largest employer in the United States of America. We are becoming a distributor not a manufacturer, and our people are not earning enough to shop at the department stores that they used to. Many of those have closed in the major metropolitan areas of our country.

What we find are the Wall Street investors, who have a global reach and love to get richer than any of us could ever imagine, are taking production around the world. Franklin Roosevelt had it right: he called them the malefactors of great wealth. They do great damage in their path.

Today I do not want to just draw attention to what has been happening to our economy and working people, but I want to draw attention to what we can do. Sadly, President Bush appears to be trying to expand NAFTA with his recent trip down to Latin America, and the people down there have awakened to what these trade agreements really mean to them. The Free Trade Agreement of the Americas appears to be dying a slow death.

But I have a different idea, and so do some of my colleagues. This week we are introducing a bill, the Balancing Trade Act of 2005, which will require action on the part of the President when America faces deficits like we see today. It would require the President to take action to correct these imbalanced trading relationships with any nation where our deficit with them would equal $10 billion in any 3-year period, in other words, where that $10 billion would exist for 3 consecutive years.

Our trade balance, for example, with both of our NAFTA trading partners has been more than $10 billion in deficit for the last 3 years. NAFTA has basically been a great sucking sound of jobs out of this country.

Our trade deficit with China has been greater than $100 billion this year and over the last 3 years, and rising every single year. It is more lost jobs, and this bill says it is time to stop the music; it is time to start doing something about this.

In order to correct accounts that are seriously in the red, someone has to go back and look at the books. It is a responsible approach, one that the executive branch should be taking and one that is long overdue. I ask my colleagues to look at the Balancing Trade Act of 2005 and join us as cosponsors to right America's very imbalanced trading relations with the world.

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