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“THE UNITED STATES TRADE DEFICIT” mentioning the U.S. Dept. of Commerce was published in the House of Representatives section on pages H1872 on April 12, 2005.
The publication is reproduced in full below:
THE UNITED STATES 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, I would like to agree with the gentleman from Ohio (Mr. Brown). The Commerce Department just announced another record trade deficit for our country. As an avalanche of imports comes in here and a whimper of our exports go out, we do not have free trade. We have a free fall in trade.
This month the Commerce Department sent out a press release saying this past month had a record-breaking trade deficit. The U.S. trade deficit soared to an all time monthly high of $61 billion negative. The Commerce Department said that, in fact, the February imbalance was up 4.3 percent from the record gap in January of $58.5 billion.
It looks like the executive branch's promises are faltering again. When it was proposed, free trade for China was promoted as a boon to America's exporters. But if we look at what is happening here, every single year the trade deficit gets deeper and deeper and deeper. And this year it is going through the bottom of the chart.
Once again, month after month, we see our manufacturers taking a hit. America truly is losing its economic prowess and our economic independence. In fact, under President Bush's watch, America has lost another three million manufacturing jobs.
One of the hardest hit sectors is textiles. For February, imports of textiles and clothing from China rose by nearly 10 percent. One can honestly ask, Is anything made in America anymore, other than debt?
The Bush administration's so-called free trade agenda is on course to bankrupt our economy. For the first 2 months of this year, just the first 2 months, the annualized trade deficit is 3 quarters of a trillion dollars, a full 100 billion more than last year. And we are watching oil prices going up over $50 a barrel, and that is adding to this growing deficit.
Combined with our faltering dollar, soaring fuel costs and an expanding Federal deficit, America is anything but independent. We are in hock to foreign countries that hold nearly half of our public debt, and we are paying them hundreds of billions of dollars annually now in interest.
The President talks about his risky plans to try to overhaul Social Security by borrowing trillions more dollars. Have they got a printing machine for money over there at the back room of the White House?
This is not the American Dream. It is the American Nightmare. Tonight Congress should be taking a stand against this irresponsible fiscal policy. The golden rule of trade should be trade balances, not trade deficits; and we should operate by the golden rule, free trade among free people.
We should reject CAFTA and any other trade bills that keep pushing American jobs offshore and pushing the trade deficit further into red ink. We should only support trade that is responsible and creates a level playing field and, at a minimum, trade balances and hopefully trade surpluses like we used to have.
Until this President can give us a plan for a healthy economy based on security and economic independence, we should say no thank you. No more NAFTAs, no CAFTAs, no more trade agreements that do not produce a balance and a surplus.
In fact, for every agreement that is currently on the books that is in the red, we ought to go back and require renegotiation if it has been in the red for 3 years or more, because it is not operating in America's interest. It might be operating in some global corporation's interest; but we should be worried about the American people and jobs here at home, both in manufacturing and agriculture, in resource and mining, in the real muscle of this country.
We should be here to fight for America's future. It is time the President and the entire Congress did the same.
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