Free Trade Agreements

FREE TRADE AGREEMENTS -- (House of Representatives - November 07, 2007)

(Ms. KAPTUR asked and was given permission to address the House for 1 minute.)

Ms. KAPTUR. Mr. Speaker, every time the United States signs a free trade agreement with a developing country, this time the Bush Peru agreement, we end up outsourcing more wealth and more middle-class jobs. We're already in deficit with Peru under existing conditions. And just like Mexico, when we signed that agreement, we went from a surplus to a gigantic deficit.

If labor provisions in the agreement are so good, why are no trade unions in our country or Peru supporting the agreement? Could it be because the agreement does not require the Peruvians to comply with core labor ``rights'', but rather, with vague and unenforceable labor ``principles'' which are then cleverly placed in the preamble or the declaration of the agreement and not in the enforceable and binding core standards, as do the International Labor Organization conventions?

You know, this week the Peruvian miners are talking to us. They are on strike; 6,300 miners who mine gold and silver and zinc and copper and molybdenum in that country. They're on strike but the Peru Labor Ministry has ordered them back to work or they will lose their jobs in 3 days. Isn't it time for us to hear the voices of the people of Peru as well as the voices of the people of our own country who have lost so many jobs due to these unfair trade agreements?

Peru doesn't intend to enforce international labor rights.

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