Providing for Consideration of the Senate Amendment to H.R. 2146, Defending Public Safety Employees' Retirement Act
Floor Speech
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Mr. SHERMAN. I thank the gentleman for yielding.
Mr. Speaker, if we vote for trade promotion authority, fast track, without Trade Adjustment Assistance, if that is how we vote today, that is what we will get.
The Republican chair of the Rules Committee has made it clear. He has already used his precious time to start blaming Democratic leadership for the fact that Trade Adjustment Assistance will not become law.
The fact is that if Trade Adjustment Assistance ever comes before this House, it will, no doubt, be loaded up by the Republican leadership with a host of poison pills, making sure that Democrats cannot vote for it. I can't vote for Trade Adjustment Assistance if you terminate the Affordable Care Act as part of the bill, for example.
Now the proponents of trade promotion authority have had to misstate the actual economic facts, the figures on our trade surpluses and deficits, in order to make their case. They have come again and again and said, we have a trade surplus with our free trade agreement partners.
Completely false. I will put into the Record the chart listing each of our free trade agreement partners, and we are running a $177 billion deficit in goods. Including services, you are now down to a little over a $100 billion deficit.
Now, how is it that Member after Member has come here and said something demonstrably false? They have been fooled by slippery charlatans who feed them the following line: Since NAFTA, we have a surplus with those countries that have a free trade agreement.
``Since NAFTA'' implies since the early 1990s. No, they mean those agreements we entered into after NAFTA. So they look at our free trade agreements while ignoring NAFTA. That is like looking at the Cavs and ignoring LeBron. You can't do that.
Mr. Speaker, if you look at the success and failure of our free trade agreements, number one is NAFTA. If you include all of our free trade agreements, including NAFTA, we have a $177 billion goods deficit. And then if you look at MFN for China, most favored nation status for China, well, then you are talking $400 billion of deficit. That was not a free trade agreement. That was an even worse agreement.
This TPP is a gift to China. First, it enshrines the idea that currency manipulation will be allowed, even encouraged. It sets Chinese rules for trade in Asia, preserving for them their number one tactic in running such a huge trade surplus with the United States. It hollows out American manufacturing, thus endangering our national security. And the rules of origin provision available for review in the basement will show you that goods that are 50 and 60 percent made in China, admitted to be made in China, which means actually 70 or 80 percent really made in China, come fast-tracked into the United States. China gets the benefit and doesn't have to make a single concession.
Vote ``no.''
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