Trade Adjustment Assistance

Floor Speech

Mr. Speaker, Trade Adjustment Assistance was designed as a lifeline for hundreds of thousands of America's workers, their last line of defense when they lose their jobs through no fault of their own thanks to NAFTA and other bad trade deals that outsourced their jobs to foreign countries. Many workers never qualified even when they were eligible.

The American people need much more than just adjustment assistance for thousands more workers whose jobs will be outsourced by the Trans-Pacific Partnership. America needs trade deals, themselves, to be adjusted, so they, again, create jobs in America rather than suck them away to foreign shores.

This hasn't happened for nearly four decades. Since 1976, our Nation has lost 47.5 million jobs due to lopsided trade agreements. Last year, our economy lost 16 percent of its growth due to the overhang of the growing trade deficit.

Thousands of steel workers in Lorain, Ohio, have just been pink-slipped and laid off due to imported steel. With every lost U.S. job, our Nation's economy gets weakened. Our working families become less financially secure. Rising into the middle class becomes impossible.

What we need and must learn is the history of bad trade deals. Congress can't repeat the mistakes of the past. Our Nation needs a new trade model that creates more jobs in America, instead of outsourcing our jobs to foreign shores.

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