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“CENTRAL AMERICA FREE TRADE AGREEMENT” mentioning the U.S. Dept. of Commerce was published in the House of Representatives section on pages H4554 on June 15, 2005.
The publication is reproduced in full below:
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CENTRAL AMERICA FREE TRADE AGREEMENT
The SPEAKER pro tempore (Mr. Marchant). Under a previous order of the House, the gentleman from Oregon (Mr. DeFazio) is recognized for 5 minutes.
Mr. DeFAZIO. Mr. Speaker, it has been a little over a year since the Bush administration secretly negotiated a trade agreement called CAFTA, and we had heard that they were going to bring it before the Congress before the Memorial Day break. Of course, that did not happen, and now it appears it will not happen before the Independence Day break because they simply have not been able to twist enough arms to get enough Members of Congress to vote against the interest of the American economy, the American workers and their own constituents.
This is potentially a turning point in trade policy for the United States. The statistics are staggering. Last month we recorded a $56.96 billion trade deficit; that is, that we borrowed almost $2 billion a day from foreign interests, foreign governments, in the case of China, to finance consumption of goods produced overseas often with U.S. capital, often by jobs that were formerly filled by Americans here in the United States of America.
Now, if you use the broadest measure of the Department of Commerce, that means that is about 7 million jobs; that sort of a trade deficit on an annual basis means a loss of 7 million jobs. It means the undermining of our industrial base. And increasingly, it means the loss of some of our most sophisticated, highest-technology jobs and manufacturing in the United States of America.
This is simply not a sustainable policy, but the reaction of this administration is this is working exactly as planned. It is making a few multinational corporations and a few others very wealthy. So what if we have lost millions of jobs? So what if the United States of America is going in hock to China and Japan and other countries? They think it is working just fine, exactly as intended, so-called free trade.
So they want to extend our failed NAFTA agreement, which has contributed mightily to this deficit, the agreement with Mexico and Canada which promised to bring 800,000 jobs to the United States and instead caused us to lose a million jobs, mostly to Mexico. They want to extend that throughout Central America so that some companies might not have to go as far as China to find exploitable labor who will work for $0.25 an hour or less, oppressed by the governments, not allowed to organize, working in unsafe conditions. But until now, Congress is holding firm, and that is good news. And the American people should be contacting their Representatives and their Senators.
I was very disappointed to see both Senators from my State, a State which has lost a lot of jobs because of NAFTA and these free trade policies, vote to endorse a continuation or acceleration of these failed policies in committee in the Senate just yesterday. But they are not listening to the people of Oregon and the people of America. I am, and a majority of House is today.
So let us make them continue to listen, let us continue to speak out, and let us break the cycle of failed trade policies and begin to work for trade policy that brings and keeps quality jobs, manufacturing jobs, high-technology jobs, high-paying jobs, jobs with good benefits home here in the United States of America.
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