Marcy Kaptur: “the red ink continues to pile up, both in our budget deficit and in America's trade deficit. The Commerce Department…”

“the red ink continues to pile up, both in our budget deficit and in America's trade deficit. The Commerce Department reported on Friday that the trade deficit is rising again, pushed up by oil prices and a flood of more imports from China. With oil imports over $70 a barrel, we know this trade deficit is going to swell as the year proceeds. The Commerce Department reported that the gap between what the United States sells abroad and what it imports rose to $63.4 billion in April, 2.5 percent higher than the March imbalance of $61.9 billion. We know that the trade deficit in both February and March just fell a tad, but it had hit an all-time high this January of $66.2 billion. And while economists noted that the April deficit was smaller than the $65 billion that had been expected, it is still the sixth largest trade deficit on record. {time} 2230 This is a chart that takes a look at what has been happening ever since this Congress unfortunately passed NAFTA back in the early 1990s, followed by permanent normal trade relations with China, and what could be normal about that? Every single year the red ink gets deeper. Through the first 4 months of this year, the trade deficit is running 1.9 percent above the same period a year ago putting our country on track to run up a record deficit again for a fifth straight year. Last year's deficit, as this chart indicates, was three-quarters of $1 trillion, three-quarters of $1 trillion.…”