Marcy Kaptur: “I wish to especially thank Congressman Carter for allowing me this special privilege of appearing before he does this…”

“I wish to especially thank Congressman Carter for allowing me this special privilege of appearing before he does this evening. Mr. Speaker, the wonderful time about speaking at this time of day is we get to cover subjects that may not be on the agendas of any committee but are of importance to the American people. Tonight, I want to talk about the long-term consequences of a trade agreement called NAFTA that passed over a decade ago. We were promised, as the American people, that NAFTA would result in more jobs, trade balances with Mexico and with Canada, and a higher standard of living in all of our countries. Indeed, exactly the opposite has happened. This country has now shipped out over 880,000 jobs, nearly a million jobs and still counting, to Mexico and to Canada, and we have not amassed any trade surpluses but, indeed, have fallen into deep deficit with both countries. I have a couple of charts here that talk about this. Trade accounts with Mexico prior to NAFTA signing were positive. Every single year since NAFTA's signing, we have gone into deeper and deeper and deeper deficit, now over $50 billion a year, the largest ever, with each billion dollars representing a loss of 20,000 more jobs in this country. With Canada, the other country with which we were supposed to experience a trade surplus, we have also fallen into deficit. In fact, we have doubled the deficit that we had with Canada. And what is amazing about this is that every year it gets worse.…”