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Washington, D.C. - Congressman Dale E. Kildee (D-MI) introduced a resolution, H. Res. 510, today to protect the domestic sugar industry from being exploited during unfair trade negotiations. Kildee’s resolution discourages the Bush Administration from entering into any unfair trade agreements that would jeopardize the U.S. sugar industry. The resolution aims at preventing the loss of hundreds of thousands of U.S. jobs and family farms in sugar producing states across the country.
“The Bush Administration is jeopardizing the livelihoods of sugar producing families in Michigan and across this country by conducting harmful trade negotiations that would flood U.S. markets with foreign sugar,” said Kildee. “We need to remove the U.S. sugar industry from the negotiating table before hundreds of thousands of U.S. jobs and family farms are lost. I encourage my colleagues to reject the President’s attempt to use U.S. sugar as a bargaining chip during trade negotiations.”
In October 2003, Congressmen Kildee sent a letter to Robert Zoellick, U.S. Trade Representative, to persuade the Bush Administration to abandon plans to eliminate sugar tariffs. The Bush Administration has continually used the U.S. sugar industry in order to establish Free Trade Agreements with Central American nations and other countries around the world. In addition, the Administration failed to consult Congress before entering into Free Trade Agreements that could potentially flood U.S. sugar markets with foreign subsidized sugar.
Kildee’s resolution urges the President not to manipulate U.S. sugar during bilateral or regional free trade negotiations. The resolution encourages the President to renegotiate provisions of the Central American Free Trade Agreement to prohibit greater foreign access to the U.S. sugar market.
Congressman Kildee has been a strong opponent of NAFTA, CAFTA and other Free Trade Agreements that abandon American workers, while exploiting foreign labor and weakening environmental standards in other countries. However, Kildee does support trade agreements that protect American jobs and provide a better quality of life for workers inside the United States. |
