Nafta 2.0/Usmca

Floor Speech

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Ms. KAPTUR. Madam Speaker, the original NAFTA has been one of the most destructive economic forces to jobs in America. There hasn't been a single year of trade balance since its passage.

I fought NAFTA tooth and nail when it was considered back in the 1990s. And as the Representative for working class communities from Toledo to Cleveland, I have since joined every one of my constituents in bearing witness to the devastating effects of what some call ``free trade.''

On the campaign trail, President Trump repeatedly boasted he would scrap NAFTA and renegotiate a better deal. But his proposal lacks commonsense labor enforcement provisions, falls short of pressuring companies to reshore American jobs, and it provides massive carveouts for Big Pharma that will cause the price of prescription drugs to skyrocket even more.

I have always been an advocate for fair trade among free people, but NAFTA crashed the largest economy in the world--the United States--into that of a developing nation--Mexico--without any plan to deal with the human and economic consequences.

Madam Speaker, as currently written, the USMCA, NAFTA 2.0, continues this failed legacy of NAFTA 1.0, and remains a failure for the American worker. The USMCA is just NAFTA 2.0. It should be defeated.

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