Marcy Kaptur: “the President appeared in Michigan yesterday but failed to address the hemorrhage of jobs that continues to plague…”

“the President appeared in Michigan yesterday but failed to address the hemorrhage of jobs that continues to plague Michigan and Ohio and indeed our entire country, good jobs in the manufacturing sector, which is where our economy has made the most productivity gains; Ohio losing over 180,000 jobs and Michigan 182,000 jobs, manufacturing jobs since he took office. Our part of the country is really hurting, and all the President can propose is an assistant secretary in the Department of Commerce. What we need, Mr. Speaker, is a trade policy that puts people first, not the profits of multinational corporations first. We need to turn the U.S. Trade Representative's office upside down and clean it out and start striking trade agreements that create jobs and income in America again and do not create enemies for America abroad. NAFTA is not working. China PNTR is not working. And now the Bush administration wants to expand NAFTA to Central America and the rest of the hemisphere calling it CAFTA and FTAA. Mr. Speaker, we need to export products, not jobs, and we need a trade policy that works for working Americans. I wish President Bush had talked about that in Monroe, Michigan yesterday.”