Thank you, Mr. Chairman, and I want to thank you for holding this hearing about the continuing decline in working-age men in the labor force.

I see every day the structure barriers to work that face low-income men in Chicago, especially African American men.

In 2014, nearly half of African American men between the age of 20 and 24 in Chicago were disconnected from both school and work.

In Chicago, the unemployment rate for African American men was 21.7 percent in 2015, more than triple the national average.

I said this is un-American.

My heart breaks for the people in Texas and Louisiana struggling to recover from Hurricane Harvey, and I look forward to working with you on ways our subcommittee can help in the recovery as well.

I agree that NAFTA has been good to agriculture.

I certainly agree that globalization is a fact of life. And we must be strategically prepared to market successfully whatever products, whatever businesses that we have to other countries.

The U.S. agriculture sector, including food manufacturers, is deeply concerned about the potential erosion of benefits under NAFTA.

Our Members are expressing serious concern about the continuing domestic rise in sugar price.

Any time we continue to lose jobs that we can't replace, that becomes for me a trade issue.