Sherrod Brown: “here we go again. The Department of Commerce released yesterday more bad news on trade figures and more bad news for…”

“here we go again. The Department of Commerce released yesterday more bad news on trade figures and more bad news for American workers. Trade figures show that this past month we had a trade deficit of $12.7 billion; setting records, again breaking records, bad news records month after month after month after month. Again, Mr. Speaker, with the countries that we have had the most problems with in terms of our trade numbers, in terms of loss of jobs, the countries where most of our trade policy has been directed, Mexico and China were where the worst news came from. The trade deficit with Mexico went up 50 percent from 12 months ago this month, with those trade figures costing, again, thousands of American jobs that have gone south. The trade figures with China, the trade deficit has gone up a billion dollars over 1 year ago in the same month. Mr. Speaker, we are continuing to go down the path of free trade with larger and larger trade deficits, with a situation that is clearly costing us thousands and thousands of American jobs. At the same time, we are seeing a push from the administration and from Republican leadership in this House asking for fast track for Chile so that we can negotiate another trade agreement, another trade agreement that will not work, another trade agreement that will cost us jobs. We are seeing the administration push for negotiating for Chinese admittance to the World Trade Organization.”