Kaptur: Denounces Fast Track Authority for Trans Pacific Partnership
The Capitol, Washington, DC -- Congresswoman Marcy Kaptur (D-OH) joined House colleagues, worker and environmental activists, business leaders, and consumer advocates to show the breadth of opposition to the Fast Track Trade Authority. A proposal to grant these powers to the Administration, which would allow trade agreements such as the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) to be railroaded through Congress with little debate or transparency, is expected to be unveiled early this year. Congresswoman Kaptur gave the following statement:
“I am thrilled to join all of my wonderful colleagues most of whom are junior to me in this institution and did not live through the NAFTA fight.
“We said on that consequential evening here in the Capitol as it rained outside and John Sweeney walked up the stairs while the largest global corporations commanded a central command room in the base of the Capitol itself, ‘America will remember this night.’
“And we remember. And the people we represent remember.
“We know this is a big struggle and we know this is our moment to stop fast track and the outsourcing of millions of more jobs from this country. Since NAFTA passed -- this is an incredible figure -- the United States has racked up $9.5 trillion in trade deficits, and a loss of 47,500,000 out sourced jobs.
“The workers in Northern Ohio have seen the loss of over 5 million manufacturing jobs, and wages have dropped for the average family some $7000 a year. I have stood in places along with my colleagues, like Ohio and Michigan Avenues at the maquiladora in Northern Mexico where Trico, out of Buffalo, relocated windshield wiper manufacturing. Then then we visited the homes of the Mexican workers who worked for penny wage jobs and lived in squalor. What kind of a gift is that to the world?
“I have stood in Vietnam, watching children, little boys, under age and standing with bare feet, on the rim of bowls that they were sanding and spraying with lacquer and breathing in all of those fumes. Hurting their own health in the name of future exports to the United States. And today as I stand here, as an Ohioan, two plants, U.S. Steel in Lorain, Ohio has announced over 700 layoffs and a company called Hugo Boss, which is a German company which has an outlet in Brooklyn, Ohio, has given pink slips to over 170 workers. If you go into a Hugo Boss outlet in your community, you can buy suits that cost $1200. The workers in my district have taken a 17% pay cut and that wasn’t good enough.
“So I am here to say, this is a day of reckoning. I am so proud to be with my colleagues, all those who have been elected and are fighting to add justice, economic justice, to the way this nation conducts its business. I am proud to oppose fast track and to support fair trade. We must correct the wrongs that this free trade regiment exacts on the American people and our dear friends around the globe.”