They can build. Watch our coverage of the 2017 baltimore book festival saturday starting at noon eastern on cspan2s book tv. We are joined by representative marsz i cap tore democrat from ohio serving the 9th district, also a member of the Appropriations Committee and here it talk about amongst other things the state of renegotiation of nafta. Good morning to you. Pleasure to be on your program. Thank your listeners for listening. Talk about the state of nafta, renegotiations. Whats the purpose of the federal government at this time and what do you see happening with that . Well, the president during his campaign talked about the renegotiation of nafta and it is under way. For our region of the country, this is a very prime issue. I have a map here showing how many of our great lake states have lost jobs and how many jobs ohio since 1993 has lost over 34,900. 35,000 jobs to outsourcing and to low wage platforms and michigan, pennsylvania, wisconsin, indiana, i mean this whole region was dealt a real blow when nafta originally passed in the early 90s. This negotiation is now in its third round between canada, mexico and the United States. We hope to change the framework of nafta in order that it work for all people on the continent. Specifically, how do you make that working to have work for all people, as you say . Lets take a look an the Automotive Industry which is really in the crosshairs here. Back in 1993, if you look at the twoway trade between canada, United States and mexico youll see that there were more canadian imports coming into the United States than we were exporting there and a small amount coming in from being sent from canada to mexico. Whats happened since 1993 is mexico has become this low wage manufacturing platform affecting both canada and the United States with a mammoth 68 billion trade deficit just in auto and auto parts with the United States and mexico. That is astounding. That is the major category of deficit with mexico and what was going on, if you step back and look at an even bigger frame, the United States said back then, gosh, americas got to compete with japan. Its got a closed market in autos till today it has a closed market. China was coming on board. China manipulates trade, stateowned companies and so forth. So how are we going to compete . You know, weve got to create this low wage manufacturing platform, edeuce wages, reduce benefits and this is the way were going to do it. And there was no protection for workers and what happened in my part of the country where the rug was completely pulled out from under them, they lost their jobs. They lost their futures. Some have had two and three jobs since then if they repotted and went into another company. Many had to leave the region. But whats happening today is theyre losing their pensions because a lot of the companies have closed so who is going to guarantee the pension. I have a bill to keep our pension promises act to try to deal with that. They lost their Health Benefits. The company used to provide that. And their ability to accepted their children on to school after high school. So it was very up ending to millions of people. So what specifically has to be changed in the lauchk not only in the Auto Industry but on other fronts to make sure theres enough balance going on . First of all, i think we have to look at the workers that were affected. There have to be labor provisions ins renegotiated nafta to help make them whole. In other words, their pensions have to be protected. It isnt their fault that the company closed. There are ways to do that. I think looking forward, we have to have a labor secretariat over the continent and a very independent powerful organization to enforce labor standards and environmental standards, as well over these three countries because otherwise what you have is you have outsourcing to a country that is struggling, the drug trade and other issues have really impacted our continental releases now. And those the wage rates are very low. We have to come into a common contract across north america or were going to continue to have outsourcing to the lowest wage most environmentally deg gra dated partner in the americas. Discussion on nafta and its current renegotiation with representative marcy kaptur of ohio. Republicans 202748,01 and independents 20274802. You can post on twitter when it comes to the Auto Industry. Wilbur ross said this. Two major objectives for nafta are raising the total nafta content requirement, raising the u. S. Share. If we dont fix the rules of origin, negotiations on the rest of the agreement will fail meaningfully to shift the balance. This is a big issue. And its more than the parts. Its the people making the parts. We have to make sure that theyre under the same standards so that theyre not competing against one another but that were part of a north American Family if we are going to be part of this nafta. He understands that you know, if youre making wiring harnesses in mexico and being paid two bucks an hour and you dont have Health Benefits and dont have Retirement Benefits and working in toledo or detroit, avon lake ohio, that the incentive to move that production elsewhere senior enormous. So rules of origin need to be a part of this. But go to the worker. Lets not just talk about parts. Lets talk about people. And the way workers people who want to work, how theyre treated in this deal. Let me just say this also. That there are a lot of companies that now say were looking for workers but people dont want to come and work here. And whats been eroded since naftas initial passage is actually the value of work itself. Why should you work if you lose your pension, you lose your Health Benefits. Your job gets taken out from underneath you and youre treated like a piece of chattel. Weve got to deal not just with the parts but the people that make the parts and we have to make them part of a north american continental compact for production. That is a much more difficult place to go, but then, you uplift Living Standards rather than drive them down across this continent. And i have been into. Plants in mexico and i have seen the conditions under which those workers work. It is abominable. You would not treat a human being that way. A viewer says when a law program or treaty does not produce the benefits anticipated, why doesnt Congress Repeal it before its entrenched . Because we didnt have the votes. We tried to defeat nafta. The lady who wrote that in are correct. Nafta is a treaty but they didnt want to call it a treaty because that has to have very careful review by the senate under the constitution of the United States. So they called it an agreement and they slid it twlup no ability to amend or debate its various provisions. So theyve used a legislative sleight of hand, the executive branch, in order to enact nafta. It was drafted by the george bushcration back in the 80s and then bill clinton when he became president rammed through the congress. Lets go to our first call for you from new york. This is paul. Port edward new york. Youre on with marcy kaptur. Hello, im from upstate new york retired now. Back in the mid 90s, nafta was signed. Bill clinton promoted that deal. And i was very lucky. I retrained. I lost my job. It went down to juarez, mexico, it was a General Electric plant. I retrained, i became a teacher. I finished my career. Im hoping thats something that with any future trade agreements we might have incorporated into the bill. Im so glad you mentioned that. I used to be a democrat. And bill clinton introduced nafta and signed nafta. And corporate democrats that we have today like nancy pelosi i kind of down the that they would go along with any kind of legislation that you might be promoting. Id like to hear what you have to say. Ill tell you, many members disappointed me in that original vote. The vast majority of democrats voted no on nafta, the vast majority of republicans voted yes on nafta when it was originally introduced. And i think what you said about yourself about the retraining and about first of all, you have to be very strong to do what you did. You didnt lose selfconfidence and you were able to be reposition. You should be congratulated for that, but nafta didnt make it easy to do that. One of the major provisions that should be in any new nafta is that if you lose your job because of trade, there should be a way for you to gain new skills and not have to go through the very weak program that was enacted as part of nafta for trade adjustment assistance they called it. And over half the people never got it, right . We need a north American Development bank if an entire industry is upended like the Automotive Industry. We were promised an ad bank that would help communities that bottomed out. It never happened. Votes were cast for nafta. I could mention one gentleman from southern california, ill never forget him. He was going to vote no on nafta. He goes i helped negotiate ad bank so we can can invest and retool and create new jobs, maybe in the Tech Industry or whatever. It never happened. The water and sewer bills of communities where you have to take a site thats a brownfield site you from the an Industrial Production and clean it up, the money never came to clean it up. Ad bank didnt do any of it. We need an Investment Fund as part of the renegotiate the nafta where entire communities, not just entitleds are impacted. We have the ability to reposition those places for instance, amazon is now looking to invest. Wouldnt it be great if there were an ad bank that could help greater detroit that was so heavily impacted by nafta in a negative way. Eddie is in North Carolina. Hi. How you doing . Hey, eddie. Go ahead, eddie. Hello. Okay. Im a 70yearold white disabled vietnam veteran. My wife worked in a textile industry for years and years. And virginia, North Carolina and South Carolina had all moved out. I mean, there was no knitting jobs, no weaving jobs, no textile jobs at all. And it really hurt the committee in those Southern States or eastern states. And another thing is, you know, weve got a president now that dont seem to care about nothing but his fan base. As long as hes got people clapping for him, you know, hes out of the world. Hes never done anything for the United States. He fraudulently had a university that took money from the government. Anybody else would have done that theyd have went to prison. Okay, caller, thanks. Thank you for your service to our country in vietnam. Theres a series thats been on pbs by ken burns talking about vietnam era. And what happened, and i just am very grateful for you and your patriotism. Let me just say on textiles and also furniture, are you correct. I traveled to South Carolina to North Carolina prior to naftas passage. And i talked to some of my colleagues down there. And after naftas passage, it was just shocking to see all these closed textile plants. I was in i think it was greenville, South Carolina, going through empty plants. It looked like the region i represent with close the automotive plants. It looked like a neutron bomb had gone through these communities and the workers were just hung out to dry. And i couldnt believe this was happening in america in the modern age. It was so it was a heartbreaker, i have to tell you. It remains a heartbreaker. We have an opportunity to try to fix it for the future because japans market still remains closed. Quhooin still remains a state governed economy. Europe still controls percents of imports. We have to fix these trade ingredients so that American Workers and American Communities and the future of our people are protected. We need buy american provision that are embedded in this. We need to undergird american manufacturing. And american production. And we need to protect the pensions and the futures and the Health Benefits of these individuals who lost their jobs. I can tell you there are many trucking jobs that were lost. And i represent many of those workers. Because of what happened at the federal level, once their jobs were lost, some of them are losing 75 of their pension. Some of them have committed suicide. This is reality. And we have to recognize that and fix this in this renegotiated nafta. Well hear next from elizabeths in South Carolina, republican line. Yes. I wanted to speak about the unions. South carolina has is a right to work state. And under nikki hails guidance as governor, our state has grown so much. Has the industry has come to us. And i do think that the unions overplayed their card. They had so much power that they were absolutely the cause of the diminishing union control. Also, i was an educator. And education even though a right to work state, you had to document a poor performing teacher for three and sometimes five years before anything could be done about that ineffective teacher. And. Okay, caller. Well let our guest respond. Thank you very much for calling in. And there are rules that are associated with when you have a contract with a company for the provision of labor, there is representative opinion. There are opportunities for grievances to be brought and so forth. But i think its really important when youre dealing with third world countries that labor have a place at the table because just you to have people exploited doesnt make for a very good continent on which to live. And here in the United States, one of the issues we face obviously is certain people coming to our country without proper documentation and working for very low wages. And i think that has to be brought out of the shadows. I think that if people come to work in this country, there ought to be a contract. Everybody ought to know what the rules are and maam, im sorry in some plays maybe in South Carolina, it didnt work. But my heart goes out to all the people in South Carolina who worked so hard in the textile and in the Furniture Industry and others if their jobs disappeared and went south of the border. That truly if they worked hard for a living, should not have happened. They should have had the ability to produce in this country. And many times by taking labor out of the shadows, you actually help to elevate the country. I could go into a long story about that, some Educational Programs that are occurring in the workplace and where workers are able to gain additional skills and so forth. And even get College Degrees and College Credit and thats the america that i want where theres an aspiring working class. Not one thats exploited. One of the people defending nafta is the chamber of commerces tom donahue had a recent oped on this. This is some of the argument. He says currently thanks to nafta virtually all of north american trade is tariff free. Tariffs would snap backing to an average of 3. 5 for the u. S. , 67. 5 for mexico. He says thats a terrible deal for all three countries also saying the increased tariffs would hit consumers and exporters. Nafta was never about tariffs. I beg to differ with mr mr. Donahue. Most of the tariffs had already been lpted. Nafta was about investment about creating a continent on which investment could be moved and it was. Billions and billions of dollars to mexico in particular. And removing most of the rules of the game. And so if wages remained low. Wages in mexico have not increased. Theyve actually decreased since 1993 when the ingredient was developed and signed. And the problems of individuals coming to our country who lost their jobs in mexico because over 2 Million People lost their farms, their little tiny production sites, and they fled. You would have done it, too. People listening to this program, if you had your ability to grow white corn pulled out from under you with no adjust the provisions and you were desperate, what would you do . Its interesting to me in the immigration issue that this is not even talked about. Trying to have agricultural adjustment in mexico today for the sins and crimes that were committed back in the early 90s when nafta was passed and treated those people like they didnt even exist. It was morally wrong and it should be legally wrong to do that. We need adjustment on the mexican side in the corn sector. I know our corn is selling for 3 a bushel. I know weve got problems here. That needs to be on the table. This is not insignificant. We have to deal with that issue. And i might say for Agricultural Labor coming to this country, we also need toe have people under contract. I know the agcultural community sometimes is afraid of that. Why should we operate in a system where people are treated like chattel, have to pay a bounty to be brought across the border illegally and then work under those conditions. How ugly is that as a system. That doesnt work. And we need to put that on the table, not under the table and not be afraid to deal with it. What makes you think for the concerns that you list for nafta that countries like mexico and canada are going to change their systems to accommodate our concerns . I think that canada is very open. I think in mexico, it will be a little bit harder, but i think we really need to talk about the people of this continent and to uplift the standard of living. That is has not occurred in mexico we know that its a nation run by very wealthy oligarchs. We understand that. Its harming us so much. If you look at the illegal drug trade that is killing americans every day, right . Why did that locking in . Theres a book called dream land if people are looking for a book to read, read it. It locked in in ohio, in portsmith ohio as this is black tar was being tracked because the people in that region lost their ability to survive. They lost their corn market. Part of the drug trade that is plaguing this country goes right back to terrible Economic Conditions that resulted because no one cared. Those of us that tried were not able to get a majority of votes in the congress 0 protect they individuals and to give them a platform rather than just being cast to the winds to be able to have a chance to earn a living and to find a decent job in agriculture on continent but they were spit out. We are paying the price for tr. From youre democrats line from florida, joseph, go ahead. Good morning, congresswoman. Good morning. Okay. So the thing that caught my attention was your use of the term pieces of chattel, quote unquote. And im going to stretch this a bit. I am a vietnam era veteran. And thank you for your service. I also counseled veterans as they returned from vietnam and im currently an adjunct professor in state college. When i talk to my students about Puerto Ricans, i emphasize three things. Number one, Puerto Ricans are american citizens which many people dont know. Number two, Puerto Ricans of in the military and they are subject to the draft. And number three and this is a mind boggling statistic i know, in vietnam, proportionately speaking, more Puerto Ricans died than any other ethnic group. So i think we are treating them like chattel right now as being dem mon strayed by our lack of response 0 this crisis. Well leave it there and let our guest respond. Thank you for calling in. Thank you for your service and for being a professor. And teaching the next generation. In terms of puerto rico, i represent the largest puerto rican population west of new york city in lorraine, ohio. And many, many of the individuals who came from puerto rico worked in the steel industry. They worked very hard. And that was not an easy job in the era in which they initially came. So as american citizens, we have a major responsibility in puerto rico. We have not yet in the house voted on a recovery package but i know its coming. Im not in the leadership of the majority party. And im not quite sure when theyre going to bring that bill to the floor. The devastation was so huge, that it takes awhile for the federal Emergency Management agency, the department of defense and others that are involved in Recovery Efforts to organize the approach there. And you dont want chaos on the ground. Theres enough chaos already. But remember that we were doing the same in texas and in florida. Im not making any excuses but they have been really pressed to mobilize the resources of this country. I know from my own area, for example, we have a unit that was mobilized to help in florida. And one in the virgin islands, as well. So theyre working but they have been under tremendous pressure to organize and approach and its important to do it in an organized way because you dont want people falling over and creating more chaos in a situation that is just as you said, just devastating to the people there. But i have no doubt that we will be responding as we have in the other locations that have endured such devastation. Well hear representative mossy, good to talk to you. I just wanted to remind you that when bill clinton got elected back in the 90s, i voted for him and at that particular time bill clinton and the Democratic Party represented the working class of the United States. And in the 90s i was in shanghai with a driver and interpreter and my driver had on the horn to move all the bicycles. There were no cars. Thats how far ahead we were of the rest of the world. The following year i went to russia. The russian people could only buy food on monday, this on tuesday, that on thursday. They were treated like garbage. We were 1 million and the we were so far ahead of the rest of the world and a lot of jobs are shipped out of the United States and youre not addressing this subject at all. Its a major subject that people who ship these jobs out do not have to pay health care because theyre shipping them over to europe. We looked at a Major Company and theyre saving billions and billions of dollars because they dont have to pay health care and they have to pay health care in the United States. Okay, caller. Thanks. The gentleman make as very good point about the well, he didnt call it the vat tax but certain costs of doing business. Were the only Major Industrial country that doesnt participate in that back tax system. It would require some changes in our tax law. As ive listened to those on the ways and Means Committee talking about tax reform, i dont hear anything about that. But you do raise a very good point and that is how do you have some sort of border equalization regime so that if europe forgives taxes on export or japan does, that we acknowledge that. I was always within some band adding some of those on when they come across our border in a way that wouldnt cause retaliation on the other side but mathematically you can work it out and youve raised a very, very good point. This is mike ohio. Yes. Good morning, miss representative. Thank you for being a friend of the operating engineers in the state of ohio. Thank you for the great work you do. Thats a dangerous job. And being retired, im reaping the benefits. My question is this. Isnt it true that canada said if you want to renegotiate nafta the United States must get rid of their right to work for less laws. Answer. That is my understanding. And i think that would be important and once again i thank you so much for your help. Unfortunately im just outside your district. But youre from ohio. Caller im east of your district. And but i want to thank you very much for thougnot only bei friend of unions but of obviously labors. Do you think the trumped administration and people at nafta will have the ability to make changes . I hope they will keep their shoaled thoorz wheel and produces a trade agreement that will provide for rising standards of living and a better way of life for all people. Not gut, workers. On this continent in a way that nafta did. There were certain interests that made a lot of money from that. But you dont build a great society. You dont build the greatest democratic republic in the world by treating workers that way and for third world countries like mexico, why wouldnt we want the mexican people to have a better way of life . Why do we want all this squaller at our border . All this drug trade . The answer is you have to have rising standards of living and that can be negotiated in trade agreement and thats the path we ought to be on. The ninth district of ohio. Thank you for your time. Thank you. My name is larry roper from harrisburg. Im concerned about the libraries. I feel theyre the hubs of small communities, the Research Centers to large cities and the Knowledge Base to the state. And i am here to make sure theyre able to get the funding they need and the keystone grant is not taken away from them. State legislator for the 104th legislative district here in pennsylvania. And as i go door to door, the number one issue is property tax elim nations. They just cant afford to pay those property taxes anymore. However, lately ive been getting a lot of talk about our Opioid Crisis in pennsylvania, which is something we definitely have to correct and look into. And we will do that. Were working on legislation, putting more money into it. The most important things to me in the commonwealth of pennsylvania is continued support and increased support for in our educational institutions and thats from early age preschool throughout college and also support for the arts. And museums and libraries. Most important issue facing pennsylvania in my opinion is the responsible Energy Production that is taking place across pennsylvania. Not only because of the direct jobs impact that we have seen. We have 200,000 people working today in the oil and gas industry in pennsylvania, but if we maximize our opportunity, we remain competitive, we can bring manufacturing back to pennsylvania and brand new industries and help make energy secure. Voices from the states on cspan