Press Room

The longest-serving woman in the 114th U.S. House of Representatives is worried. Congress had just 60 days to review a trade agreement that took the White House six years to hammer out with lawyers and lobbyists from 600 transnational companies.

Appearing on The Costa Report, 17-term Ohio Democrat Marcy Kaptur said the short time frame given to read and digest the 1,000-plus-page Trans Pacific Trade Partnership (TPP) was only part of the story.

"This is a document that can only be read by members of Congress who have special clearance — and it must be read in a special room," Kaptur said.

What's more, Congress has no authority to provide input or amend  the agreement. 

"(TPP) heavily favors those who operate as transnationals in global realm, such as the financial-service giants who want to open world markets to derivatives and other financial instruments that brought the world economy to its knees back in 2008-09 because they have so much power," Kaptur explained.

"They're able to sit in these private meetings, meet with trade representatives from other countries and from our country, and actually help write the language — when Congress can't. You are really talking about significant power being removed from the elected representatives of the American people — putting these instrumentalities beyond the reach of the average small business, the average citizen, and the members of Congress."

Compounding Kaptur's worries is the fact that only four of the 29 Chapters in the agreement directly relate to trade.  Kaptur says the agreement is extremely broad and far reaching — including environmental, tax and other stipulations.

"Many of the other chapters cover items like investment that allow corporations to sue our country, to sue various states, or to sue local governments for practices they believe are preventing them from maximizing their return,"  the senior stateswoman said. "These trade agreements often go way beyond tariffs — which is what they used to be about — and they have resulted overall in a tremendous amount of job outsourcing from our country. Every single instance where a trade agreement has been signed has resulted in a trade deficit for the U.S., rather than a trade balance or surplus with these countries."

How much of a deficit? The Wall Street Journal reported the U.S. has accumulated a $10 trillion trade deficit since 1975. And U.S. News & World Report estimates that 3.2 million U.S. jobs have been outsourced since 2001 to China alone. "We've been exporting jobs rather than exporting more products than we are importing," Kaptur said.

Kaptur says one way to turn the trade deficit around is to approve a bill she has introduced in Congress (HR1403), which would require the President to renegotiate agreements with countries with whom the U.S. has incurred a deficit of more than $10 billion for the consecutive years.

To hear the full interview with Ohio Congresswoman Marcy Kaptur, visit www.rebeccacosta.com