The American People are Asking for a New Trade Model

Floor Speech

Mr. Speaker, the American people are being kept in the dark by the Obama administration regarding the Trans-Pacific Partnership.

So much secrecy forces us to ask an important question: Have any of our past free trade agreements really been net positive for our Nation and helped our workers? The answer is ``no.''

Whether you look at the NAFTA accord with Mexico and Canada, where we are in huge deficit, if you look at the Korean agreement, if you look at basic trade with nations like Japan, which remains a closed market, every single agreement is all negative.

Since 1976, our country has lost 47.5 million jobs due to trade deficits resulting from free trade agreements. During that time, we have accumulated a trade deficit of more than $9.5 trillion. What a drag that is on GDP. These growing trade deficits that outsource our wealth and weaken our economy devastate communities. Carrying a massive trade deficit has hindered economic growth and has limited our economic recovery by nearly 16 percent just in this past year alone. More and more people are slipping away from the middle class as a result, with inequality at the highest levels since the 1920s. Millions of Americans are losing faith in the possibility of upward mobility.

Let's ask ourselves: What have past trade deals brought Americans?

Just since NAFTA, Americans have lost in the manufacturing sector 5 million jobs, and that is just since the early 1990s--one of every four. More than 57,000 manufacturing facilities have closed--57,000. Washing machines that used to be made in Newton, Iowa--Maytag--now are imported from Monterrey, Mexico. Hoppy bicycles that used to be made in Celina, Ohio, are now imported from Asia. Ohio knows well the cost of fast-track trade agreements that ship out good jobs and ``Made in the USA'' brands.

Since NAFTA, our trade balance with Mexico and Canada has gone from a $5 billion annual surplus, creating jobs here in 1993, to a deficit of $177 billion today. That translates into three-quarters of a million more lost jobs--750,000 more lost jobs--just with Canada and Mexico.

The quality of life for Americans has been declining under these agreements. Middle class America is shrinking as businesses have closed production and have moved overseas. Three out of every five displaced U.S. manufacturing workers have been forced to take a pay cut in order to secure any kind of job, and one out of three workers experiences a pay cut of more than 20 percent. These are among the luckiest workers, as frequently laid off workers over the age of 40 can't even find replacement work.

This is not just a problem for America. Workers in other countries are caught too, as one worker described to me, ``like a lobster in a cage, crawling over one another just to survive,'' contributing to unspeakable poverty and waves of desperate immigration to the United States from countries south of our border and elsewhere.

Clearly, NAFTA was a failure for America's workers. If we look at the Korean trade deal, which they said would be the salvation, it has worked exactly in reverse. We have already lost 75,000 more jobs to imports coming into our country from Korea. The exports going out have been just a trickle. In fact, our exports to Korea have gone down by 7.5 percent. The Korean agreement was hailed as a wonderful opportunity for the American economy, something we just could not pass up. Well, take a look at what has happened. We imported 1,288,546 vehicles from Korea in 2014 and only exported 34,186. There are 40 times more imports coming into our country than exports going out. The Korean free trade agreement has been a failure for American workers too.

With these Trans-Pacific Partnership negotiations continuing to advance, America should ask: Could it possibly be a good deal for American workers?

We already have colossal trade deficits with some of the countries with which the negotiations are occurring--with Malaysia, with Vietnam, and, obviously, with Japan. The prospective TPP partners use protectionism and currency manipulation to gain unfair advantage, and, in some cases, they fail to regulate appalling labor conditions. These nations will not deliver on the promises made in support of TPP.

History should teach us that we need a new trade model. America doesn't need more job-outsourcing trade deals. The executive branch and, specifically, the National Security Council better start paying attention to the harm it causes when it forgets its global strategies have created undue harm here in the homeland. The people in the United States are asking for a new trade model that creates jobs and economic growth in our country again--I might say robust economic growth--for which the American people have been waiting for almost three decades.

Source