Mr. BECERRA. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman for yielding.
Mr. Speaker, I hate to say it but I think it has become very obvious that our system for devising trade agreements, so very important to this country's functioning around the world, has not only broken, but it has broken completely.
Today, we have a trade regime which has led to the largest trade deficits this country has ever experienced. The latest report is that the trade deficit for the month of May was almost $64 billion. We purchased $64 billion more in goods than we were able to sell to others around the world.
We are on pace this year to have a trade deficit that is larger than $800 billion. We have never faced that before, but we continue to put forward trade agreements like these that leave us naked to competition that is neither free nor fair.
Today, Mr. Speaker, you find that for every six ships that China sends laden with goods from China into this country, only one of those six ships returns to China with American goods in it for Chinese purchase. And we continue to bring forward trade deals like these that say simply this when it comes to protecting the rights of workers, whether in this country or in the country that we are reaching an agreement with: Enforce your own laws. And even though we know in most cases many of the countries, including Oman, do not have laws that protect their workers, which means that our workers will suffer as well, we continue to move forward with these agreements.
Yet, if you are not convinced that these trade agreements and the regime itself now that we use is broken, look at the provision that was included in the agreement that allows a company that has substantial business in Oman to operate our ports. We dealt with this issue with the Dubai Ports World issue. We rejected that opportunity for a Dubai company to come in and run our ports. Yet in this agreement we have something that would allow that to happen.
I know many of my friends on the Republican side say that will never happen, we have got the national security, essential security interests protection exemption. Then why is it in the agreement in the first place? What you do is you set us up to go before a trade dispute resolution panel that is not ours. It is not our courts that will decide. It will be some other body.
We have now today a system that has led to these large trade deficits, and they continue to come forward. It is time for a change. We need a new direction when it comes to our trade policy. It is broken in this Congress the way we deal with our trade. Not only for our workers, but also for the health of our American companies that have to compete in this world, where artificially other companies in other countries are gaining advantage over us because they are not following the rules.
This is another example of why we should reject trade agreements that do not protect America's interests, whether security-wise or otherwise. Vote against this trade deal.
