Wendy Sherman: “If you vote for this bill, you get fast track without Trade Adjustment Assistance. There is no assurance Trade…”

“If you vote for this bill, you get fast track without Trade Adjustment Assistance. There is no assurance Trade Adjustment Assistance will come to this floor or that it will come to this floor in a form that either Republicans or Democrats will support. The supporters of this deal can't make their case without repeating demonstrably false statistics. The fact is we won a $177 billion trade deficit in goods with the countries with which we have free trade agreements. The $75 billion surplus in services brings the net to over a $100 billion deficit. How have so many Members been misled by charlatan lobbyists into coming to this floor and giving false statistics? They are given this slippery phrase: Go down to the floor and talk about what has happened since NAFTA. Now, ``since NAFTA'' usually sounds like, well, since the early 1990s. What they mean is excluding NAFTA. Excluding NAFTA when we review free trade agreements is like excluding LeBron James when you evaluate the Cavaliers. This bill is catastrophic for our national security. It hollows out our manufacturing base, and it is the greatest gift to China that we could possibly make because it enshrines the sacrosanct nature of currency manipulation. It says, in the future, countries can manipulate their currency all they want and there will be no accounting for it.…”