Long-Term Consequences of NAFTA

LONG-TERM CONSEQUENCES OF NAFTA

Ms. KAPTUR. Mr. Speaker, I wish to especially thank Congressman Carter for allowing me this special privilege of appearing before he does this evening.

Mr. Speaker, the wonderful time about speaking at this time of day is we get to cover subjects that may not be on the agendas of any committee but are of importance to the American people. Tonight, I want to talk about the long-term consequences of a trade agreement called NAFTA that passed over a decade ago.

We were promised, as the American people, that NAFTA would result in more jobs, trade balances with Mexico and with Canada, and a higher standard of living in all of our countries. Indeed, exactly the opposite has happened. This country has now shipped out over 880,000 jobs, nearly a million jobs and still counting, to Mexico and to Canada, and we have not amassed any trade surpluses but, indeed, have fallen into deep deficit with both countries.

I have a couple of charts here that talk about this. Trade accounts with Mexico prior to NAFTA signing were positive. Every single year since NAFTA's signing, we have gone into deeper and deeper and deeper deficit, now over $50 billion a year, the largest ever, with each billion dollars representing a loss of 20,000 more jobs in this country.

With Canada, the other country with which we were supposed to experience a trade surplus, we have also fallen into deficit. In fact, we have doubled the deficit that we had with Canada. And what is amazing about this is that every year it gets worse. The American people inherently know this because it is happening to them directly.

At the same time in this country we have increasing illegal immigration, much of it from south of our border. What is interesting, most of the debate about immigration doesn't even touch on NAFTA. Yet if you look at what NAFTA has caused inside of Mexico, over 2 million peasant farmers have been displaced and another 500,000 more are coming each year. And why is that? Because the very small farmsteads of Mexico, in the Sinaloa Valley all the way down to Xcalas and Oaxaca are being destroyed.

The agricultural provisions I tried to get into NAFTA back in 1993 were never allowed to be considered on this floor. If we had done that, we would have been able to address the tragedy that is occurring in Mexico, which is the complete elimination of their small holders and their farmers. I call it a continental sacrilege, the heartlessness that is embedded in NAFTA that is costing jobs in our country, costing jobs in Canada, costing the loss of life as people flee to try to feed themselves, as their whole way of life is being totally destroyed in Mexico.

This week something very important happened. In the city of Ottawa, Canada, the capital city of our sister state up north, a major meeting was held between parliamentarians of the United States, Canada, and Mexico to begin to push back a continental effort to reform NAFTA. Both legislators, like myself, and representatives of those two governments, along with civil society groups met in Ottawa to halt NAFTA-plus, the expansion of NAFTA, something being called the Security and Prosperity Partnership.

Instead, at a press conference in Ottawa on Monday, we announced that networks from across Canada, the United States, and Mexico are going to unveil a plan to bring an end to the kind of deep damage that NAFTA is causing in all three countries and replace it with a people-centered trade model. As I said in my remarks in Canada, trade agreements in North America must ensure rising standards of living and increase jobs in all of our countries.

We met this week in Ottawa, and that meeting followed one we held last year in this city of Washington, D.C. This was our second forum. We will have a third in Ottawa a year from now, and likely a meeting in Mexico City in August.

As one of our parliamentarians said, NAFTA has aggravated poverty across our continent. And the new Democratic Party Parliamentarian, Peter Julian of Canada said, ``There is no doubt that under NAFTA, most Canadians are poorer. We have been fighting to make adjustments,'' he said, ``and now it is clear that NAFTA has to be replaced.'' It is not working for the vast majority of the inhabitants of North America. It has failed on the bottom line.

In anticipation of a summit that will be held in Ottawa in March 2007, called the ``Three Amigos Summit,'' our group will create a North American secretariat to prepare for counter information and counterproposals and introduce simultaneous legislation in this chamber in Ottawa and in Mexico City to replace NAFTA. We will build opportunities for public engagement in civil society across this continent on the issue of proper continental integration.

Mr. Speaker, a new charter for the people of the Americas is being drafted, one that will result in more democracy, more cooperation, more development for rising standards of living, not more loss of jobs and greater trade deficits.

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