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“TRADE DEFICIT” mentioning the U.S. Dept. of Commerce was published in the House of Representatives section on pages H1684-H1685 on March 24, 1999.
The publication is reproduced in full below:
TRADE DEFICIT
The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under a previous order of the House, the gentlewoman from Ohio (Ms. Kaptur) is recognized for 5 minutes.
Ms. KAPTUR. Mr. Speaker, our scientists have just discovered a new fault line that exists underneath downtown Los Angeles. This fault line, called Puente Hills, is 25 miles long and 10 miles wide and it was invisible until recently. The 1987 Whittier Narrows quake, which caused eight deaths and $358 million worth of damage, was the result of a rupture of just 10 percent of the Puente Hills fault line. Obviously, this fault line has the potential to do a great deal of harm to the good people in Los Angeles and we would be foolish to ignore it.
But, Mr. Speaker, there is another fault line in America that is invisible to our eyes, the American economy. And the American workers are sitting on a fault line that is shifting below us; and, like many in Los Angeles, we are ignoring it, hoping it will go away. The fault line is our trade deficit. And as it grows, America is at greater risk of our very economic foundation being rocked.
We recently learned that the trade deficit grew to its highest level in the last decade, projected again this year at over $250 billion. According to the Commerce Department just this past month, $93.76 billion worth more of imports landed on our shores while our exports again fell. These are not just numbers. They are part of the shifting ground underneath America's economic feet. And for some, they could not escape the cracks in the ground.
I am talking about workers like the 6,000 at the Levi's plants, most of them women, that recently packed up and closed to ship manufacturing to undemocratic nations overseas. I am talking about the workers at Huffy Bicycle in Ohio who lost their jobs to Mexico's exploited workforce, or the thousands of workers at Anchor Glass or General Electric or Henry I. Siegel or VF Knitwear or Zenith Television or Dole Food, and the list goes on. They have seen the ground shift and they felt the earthquake. They have just seen some of the consequences of a growing trade deficit.
According to the Economic Policy Institute, between 1979 and 1994 nearly 2.5 million jobs in our country were lost to America's backward trade policy, which says to America's workers the solution for them is to work for shrinking wages and benefits and net worth in order to buy more imported products from places where workers have absolutely no rights.
The second consequence of the trade deficit is its crippling effect on wages here at home. Workers who lose their manufacturing jobs still have to find some way to feed, clothe, and educate their families; and usually that is in the form of a service job with a substantial pay and benefit cut.
The Economic Policy Institute points out that increasing imports from low-wage, undemocratic countries are contributing to decreasing wages of our workers. Our U.S. firms and workers are forced to cut their standards of living to compete. They cut wages or cut hours or cut benefits to reduce costs. And as a result, our workers are finding that their real buying power of their wages has been declining for almost 15 years. In fact, the growing gigantic trade deficit literally lops off a whopping 25 percent of the economic bang that would occur inside this economy if in fact our trade ledger was balanced.
Probably the biggest consequence of this deficit is what it does to our long-term competitiveness, as America writes off one industry after another: televisions, electronics, clothing, recently steel. We have seen how many parts of this economy have been savagely hit.
Mr. Speaker, this fault line in America cannot be ignored. We can see the consequences getting worse every year. But the people being hurt cannot afford high-powered lobbyists in this city. If we want American workers to be able to increase their net worth, save for their futures, invest in the stock market, start their own small businesses, we need to make sure our economic foundation is rock solid.
Mr. Speaker, we ignore this trade deficit, this fault line, at our own peril.
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