Marcy Kaptur: “I can only imagine. We have so many unmet needs in my own community that spans a river called the Maumee River, the…”

“I can only imagine. We have so many unmet needs in my own community that spans a river called the Maumee River, the largest river that flows into the Great Lakes. We built a new bridge, but the challenge there today is with the weather. Ice is forming on the tensile spans, and they have had to close the bridge for 3 or 4 days at a time, for fear that these ice plates will fall on trucks and cars. We have to fix this problem. All these issues are all over the country, so the transportation and infrastructure bill is essential. I thought in discussing this tonight that I would put a couple of really important figures on the Record. Congresswoman Hahn talked about ports and her championing the PORTS Caucus here and how much gets imported into our country and what gets exported. Well, here is a chart that gives you a sense of how many more imports come in here than exports go out. Since the mid-1970s and then the passage of NAFTA here, this represents the growing share of imports over exports into our country. Since about 1975, our country has amassed $9.5 trillion in red ink with the world. That is hard to imagine for most people, but that translates into 47.5 million lost jobs in our country just due to trade--not technology, but more imports coming in than exports going out. We have lost two-thirds of our manufacturing jobs.…”