Providing for Consideration of H.R. 3688, United States-Peru Trade Promotion Agreement Implementation Act
PROVIDING FOR CONSIDERATION OF H.R. 3688, UNITED STATES-PERU TRADE PROMOTION AGREEMENT IMPLEMENTATION ACT -- (House of Representatives - November 07, 2007)
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Ms. KAPTUR. I thank the gentlelady for yielding and rise in opposition to the rule, which should be open.
Every time we sign a free trade agreement with a developing country, we end up outsourcing more wealth and middle-class jobs. If these agreements were working, America wouldn't have an $800 billion trade deficit, with 20,000 jobs lost for every billion dollars of that deficit. What an unprecedented wipe out of jobs and productive wealth in this country. The sliding value of the dollar proves it, our staggering debt levels prove it, and the growing stock market instability proves it.
Let me give you some history. When they said we had to pass NAFTA back in the 1990s, we had a trade surplus with Mexico. Since NAFTA's unfortunate passage, every single year we have fallen into greater and greater debt with Mexico. A million of our jobs are outsourced. We didn't create a million jobs. And 2 million Mexicans were thrown off their farms and created an unending flow of illegal immigration to this country.
Then they told us, well, sign China PNTR; that will make a big difference. We were already in debt with China when PNTR was signed, and guess what? It only got worse. We have an historic trade deficit with China now, and we're getting from them contaminated dog food and toys with lead and all of the rest. And now they tell us, well, Peru is next. We've already got a trade deficit with Peru. Del Monte and Green Giant have opened up production facilities in Peru to absorb some of the 2 million Peruvian farmers that are going to be upended by this agreement, just as what happened with Mexico's campesinos under NAFTA.
Jordan, they said, was a breakthrough agreement, had environmental provisions, labor provisions; So, what's happened, even the Jordanians admit, it's not enforced.
You know, in considering another free trade agreement today, this New Direction Congress offers up more of the same, again, out of step with the American people.
The environmental and labor provisions are nonbinding; they're in the general preamble. This is like saying you support the preamble to our Constitution but not the Bill of Rights and all the case law that supports it. That's why no labor unions are supporting this in the United States or Peru. In fact, a major Peru miners' union is on strike right now, and they were told by the Government of Peru today that the strike was illegal and said if the workers don't return to work, they will be terminated in 3 days.
So I ask, why are no U.S. or Peruvian trade unions supporting the agreement?
Could it be because the agreement does not require the Parties to comply with core labor ``rights'', but rather with vague and unenforceable labor ``principles, which are then cleverly placed in the Preamble or Declaration of the agreement, not in the enforceable and binding core standards as do the International Labor Organization Convention?
Oh, let us grow up.
So, I have a better idea. Rather than pass another so called ``free trade'' agreement with another foreign country, that has weak rule of law and masses of poor people, let's negotiate a free trade agreement with ourselves! That would be a first. For Congress to pay some attention to the American people.
A free trade agreement with the U.S. might result in jobs from other places being returned here to workers who have fallen out of the middle class.
It might mean we would again be a nation that produced something rather than just traded in foreign goods.
Can you imagine--America might again make televisions, electronics, shoes, clothing, washing machines and irons, windshield wipers, electric wiring harnesses, toys, crayons, dishes, forks and spoons, well, the list is endless. Imagine if we had a trade agreement that put our workers and communities first. Now there's a novel thought.
Imagine, if the diminishing middle class believed this Congress actually represented them.
I urge my colleagues to vote ``no'' on this Peru agreement and finally begin to develop a new trade model that results in job creation in America and balanced global trade accounts. When that happens, America's middle class will again begin to grow.
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Ms. KAPTUR. I would just say to the gentleman, Peru's chief export to us is gold, gold from the second largest gold mine in the world, and those Whirlpool jobs and Maytag jobs are half of what they used to be in this country because they shut them down in Galesburg, Illinois and in Newton, Iowa. Don't talk to me about washing machine jobs.
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