Bill Pascrell: “We have already a trade deficit with Chile. That deficit has tripled from 2001. It is now $1.2 billion. This is not the…”

“We have already a trade deficit with Chile. That deficit has tripled from 2001. It is now $1.2 billion. This is not the way to have reciprocal trade agreements. These agreements set precedent. Again, we export jobs, we import workers. It is our workers that are out of jobs. We understand that this is at the very basis of the downturn in the economy. We will not recover this economy. These folks are out of work not 2 weeks or 3 weeks, this is permanent unemployment; and the jobs that they finally do get pay half of what the jobs paid that they lost. This is a fact of life. The trade deficit that we have with Chile and the rest of the world equates to a loss of $1 million per minute in United States' wealth. It makes no sense. We need to stop the hemorrhaging of jobs. We need to stop trying to communicate to the American people that we care about their jobs. We know that these trade agreements are precipitated by the big folks, the big corporations, the big farmers to the detriment of the average American worker, and we cannot accept that any longer.”