United States-Panama Trade Promotion Agreement Implementation Act

Floor Speech

Ms. KAPTUR. I thank the gentleman from Maine for yielding.

Mr. Speaker, I am proud to stand here today voicing the concerns of America's workers and rise in opposition to the Panama free trade agreement, as well as the South Korean and Colombian.

Like many others, in terms of Panama, I have expressed concerns about Panama's long history of being a tax haven. Supporters of this NAFTA-style trade deal claim that the Tax Information and Exchange Agreement, or TIEA, that Panama ratified in April of this year wiped away decades of secrecy as a tax haven there. We've been told that Panama's recent removal from the OECD's gray list indicates that it's a fresh start.

Well, I ask, when have the promises made in other NAFTA-style trade deals that have brought us these trade deficits since NAFTA was first signed, when have they ever made good on their agreements?

Public Citizen notes that the 2001 Panama tax agreement, called TIEA, includes a major exception, a major exception that allows Panama to reject specific requests if it's contrary to the public policy of Panama. Now, that's an interesting concept for a country that derives a significant national income from activities related to being a tax haven.

Time has proven those who oppose these NAFTA-type trade accords correct. They have all been job losers.

Otherwise, America would have a trade balance, but we have a half a trillion dollar trade deficit. Sure we might sell a few more pork chops and a few more soybeans. But, you know what, overall America loses almost all of its GDP growth simply because the growing trade deficit just squashes down the opportunity for job creation in our country. We've seen millions and millions of jobs outsourced.

Let me say a word about the U.S.-Korea trade agreement. It's modeled after NAFTA too; and, again, it's one of these copy-cat agreements. In the last decade alone, these agreements have cost Americans over 6 million jobs, 55,000 plants have been lost, so many outsourced. I mean, what world do you live in if you don't even understand what's happening with job outsourcing to our country between our borders from Atlantic to Pacific.

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Ms. KAPTUR. I thank the gentleman.

I'm from northern Ohio. Just to clarify what this means for one of America's lodestar industries, here's a little graph that shows how many Korean cars are coming into the United States today, over half a million.

This little dot here represents what the U.S. is selling into the Korean market right now: 7,450 of our cars in that market versus over half a million of their cars sold here. This agreement basically says maybe America could sell 75,000 cars--but there's no guarantee, no guarantee--and if you go to Korea today, you see less than 5 percent of the cars on their streets are from anywhere else in the world. So, you think they're going to be reciprocal?

Theirs is a closed market. When is America going to stand up in its trade policies to state-managed capitalism in these other countries and give our workers and our companies an even break? All this deal says is we might sell--it doesn't say must sell--it says we might sell up to 75,000 cars in that economy, but they're already eating our lunch.

The Economic Policy Institute estimates this agreement will cost us another 159,000 net jobs. And you know, Mr. Speaker, I sure hope they don't come out of Ohio again. I hope they come out of the districts of every single person here who's going to vote for this agreement and cause more job hemorrhaging to this economy.

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