Offshoring Jobs and Our Productive Wealth
Floor Speech
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Ms. KAPTUR. Mr. Speaker, why does our country have a budget deficit? Answer: Because America over the last three decades has been offshoring jobs and our productive wealth.
The people of Ohio and the industrial Midwest overwhelmingly oppose ill-conceived foreign trade deals that have harmed millions of them.
The harm began in 1993 when NAFTA was enacted. It deepened in 1994 when we joined the World Trade Organization, and the bottom dropped out in 2000 when the U.S. helped China get WTO benefits without trade reciprocity. Math tells the rest.
Our trade deficit with the world racked up to $15 trillion since 1994, as our real wealth drained out. American manufacturing plunged by a third from 370,000 facilities in 1992 to 250,000 in 2017. From 1993 to 2024, we lost 5.6 million manufacturing jobs.
NAFTA, moreover, hurt our neighbors just as much. It stimulated massive undocumented immigration from Mexico and Latin America. The pact pitted millions of unsubsidized Mexican white corn farmers against subsidized U.S. yellow corn.
What America makes and grows, makes and grows America. Our challenge is to stay the course of small business creation and investment right here in the USA.
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