Free Trade Agreement With Peru And Panama

Floor Speech

FREE TRADE AGREEMENTS WITH PERU AND PANAMA -- (House of Representatives - June 11, 2007)

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

Ms. KAPTUR. Madam Speaker, soon President Bush's administration will force upon this Congress consideration of free trade agreements with Peru and Panama under the fast-track process. That means no amendments allowed here in the Congress.

The bills they will bring before us are modeled on the flawed NAFTA model that have yielded growing trade deficits every year the Bush administration has been in office. We have seen how NAFTA sucked good jobs away from Americans, how it ravaged the Mexican countryside and triggered a flow of illegal immigrants, drugs and violence across our southern border.

Our staggering trade deficit with Mexico continues to grow. This year, we already have a $21.6 billion deficit with Mexico, and it will continue to swell as communities across the continent face job washout.

If we do not construct a new trade model that takes people into consideration and advocates free trade among free people, then it does not matter how many environmental provisions we may add to trade agreements or how unique the administration claims its labor provisions are.

We are simply extending NAFTA to the rain forest and to more sweat shops because there will be no reliable enforcement.

We have seen the NAFTA model fail in Mexico. We have seen it fail in CAFTA countries. Why should we assume it will be any less disastrous in Peru or Panama?

We cannot fall for empty promises again. When we were told that NAFTA would result in a trade surplus, when we were told that NADBANC would help communities that were faced with job loss with reinvestment, when we were told NAFTA would be beneficial for Mexicans, Canadians, and the legislation passed this Congress, what did we see? Billions and billions of trade deficit dollars racked up.

We have never had a positive trade balance with the NAFTA countries or the CAFTA countries. We saw a washout of jobs in our middle-class communities, and we saw huge and growing protests across Mexico. It's a mistake to pass NAFTA, and it will be a mistake to extend it to other countries without comprehensive and effective reform.

This time Congress must be smarter. We must realize the administration is feeding us empty promises without enforceability and clear benefits. We should have no reason to be fooled again.

Even if we succeed with some changes to the core text of these agreements, do we trust President Bush to enforce them? We are still waiting for him to enforce the flagrant violations in the Jordanian agreement, where such language was included in the core of the trade agreement.

It is bad enough that his administration has the power to avoid any meaningful congressional amendment or any amendment at all. We cannot trust President Bush with fairly negotiating trade agreements, and we certainly cannot trust him to fairly enforce them.

If Congress passes these agreements with Peru and Panama, we only stand to perpetuate the race to the bottom cycle of lowered wages, reduced benefits worldwide, by taking these steps under the slippery slope of the Bush trade agreement that rewards Wall Street and its investors, but penalizes main streets across our Nation.

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