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Kaptur Votes No On USMCA
On Friday, Congresswoman
Marcy Kaptur (OH-09), released the following statement after
voting against the United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement (USMCA).
Rep. Kaptur's floor speech urging her colleagues to vote
against USMCA can be viewed online.
"As a life-long resident of
Toledo, and the Representative for many working-class
communities from Northern Ohio, I - along with my
constituents - have borne witness to the devastating effects
of what corporate America has sold to us as "free trade,"
said Rep. Kaptur. "Since NAFTA's passage in the early '90's,
communities across America, especially in our industrial
heartland, have endured the outsourcing of countless
middle-class jobs to Mexico, where workers are exploited to
produce goods for pennies on the dollar. Because of
disastrous trade policies such as NAFTA, our young people
have grown up in the shadows of shuttered factories they've
never seen in operation. As an outspoken opponent of the
first NAFTA, I have always said that any replacement
agreement must protect American workers from offshoring more
of their jobs, guard against Big Pharma abuses that inflate
prescription drug prices, and ensure lock-tight and
enforceable labor and environmental standards across North
America. USMCA is not the answer working people in Northern
Ohio deserve, nor is it safe to assume that USMCA will be
anything more than NAFTA 2.0 - a boon for corporations at
the expense of working families in the United States,
Mexico, and Canada."
"Just like NAFTA before it,
USMCA was rushed through Congress without so much as a true
hearing or amendment. What's more, there is no chorus of
consensus among our brothers and sisters in labor. USMCA
will not bring back the 155,000 jobs in Ohio that were lost
to outsourcing after NAFTA, it does nothing for our small
farmers suffering under President Trump's trade wars, and it
holds no true labor protections that the Mexican government
is capable of enforcing. The bottom line is that I am deeply
skeptical of USMCA's capacity to improve the lives of
working people in my district. I will not vote for a trade
deal that fails to put workers - the people - or our
environment first. I will vote against USMCA just as I voted
against its predecessor NAFTA, whose disastrous consequences
are legend across the American landscape." |
