Watch: Nancy Pelosi in 1996 Assails U.S. Free Tr…

In 1996, on the House floor, Rep. Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) assailed a then-bipartisan plan to give Most Favored Nation (MFN) trade status to China, arguing that while the U.S. has low tariffs on China-made goods, China has high tariffs on American goods.

While debating opening U.S. free trade with China by giving the communist country MFN status, Pelosi made clear she opposed the plan, noting the growing trade deficit and how it was leading to economic devastation for Americans.

WATCH:

“Today, members of Congress will be asked to set down a marker: How far does China have to go? How much more repression, how big a trade deficit and loss of jobs for the American worker, and how much more dangerous proliferation has to exist before members of this House of Representatives will say, ‘I will not endorse the status quo?’” Pelosi said:

If we just want to take up this issue on the basis of economics alone, indeed, China should not receive Most Favored Nation status for several reasons that I’d like to go into now. I’d like to call the attention of our colleagues to this chart on the status quo that the business community is asking each and every one of you to endorse today. Right now, we have a $34 billion trade deficit with China … it will be over $40 billion for 1996. Since the Tiananmen Square massacre, this figure has increased 1,000 percent, from $3.5 billion then to about $34 billion now. In terms of tariffs, it’s think it’s interesting to note that the average U.S. MFN tariff on Chinese goods coming into the United States is 2 percent whereas the average MFN tariff on U.S. goods going into China is 35 percent. Is that reciprocal? On exports, China only allows certain U.S. industries into China and therefore only 2 percent of U.S. exports are allowed into China. On the other hand, the U.S. allows China to flood our markets with a third of their exports and that will probably go to over 40 percent and it’s limitless because we have not placed any restrictions. [Emphasis added]

Similarly, Pelosi noted that the job loss as a result of U.S. free trade with China was a massive “job loser,” as she called it:

In terms of jobs, this is the biggest and cruelest hoax of all, not only do we not have market access, not only do they have prohibitive tariffs, not only our exports not let in very specifically, but China benefits with at least, at least, 10 million jobs from U.S.-China trade. The president in his statement, requesting the special waiver said that China trade supports 170,000 jobs in the United States whereas our imports from China support a 10 million jobs at least … the fact is that U.S.-China trade is a job loser. [Emphasis added]

Now if you take a country the size of China with the slave labor, the lack of market access, that rips off our intellectual property, the transfer of technology, a country that is not willing to play by the rules in any respect to trade relationship, you have a serious threat … to the industrialized world. [Emphasis added]

Pelosi also called out members of Congress for supporting MFN status for China.

“And if there is one message that I want our colleagues to understand today and our constituents is that on this day your member of Congress could have drawn the line to say to the president of the United States do something about this U.S.-China trade relationship that is a job loser for the United States,” Pelosi said.

“And this brings us to the point that others have said, ‘Well we can’t isolate China.’ Do you think for one minute that with 10 million jobs at least and $35 billion and over $40 billion this year in a trade surplus — all those billions of dollars in surplus — that the Chinese are going to walk away?” Pelosi continued. “Where are they going to take 35 to 40 percent of their exports? Who’s going to buy them? This is what sustains the regime — the funding and the jobs. They can’t have those people out of work. They have to be worth exporting to the United States.”

Pelosi was an early and courageous critic of China’s human rights violations. In 1991, for example, she and two other members of Congress unfurled a banner in Tiananmen Square denouncing the Chinese Communist Party’s brutal crackdown of the student democracy protesters during the 1989 Tiananmen Square Massacre. During her House floor speech in 1996, Pelosi coupled her economic arguments against granting China MFN status with a moral argument about the danger that U.S. trade policy would enrich the Chinese communist regime and enable its human rights violations.

Fast-forward to today, Pelosi is attacking Trump’s reciprocal tariffs set to end the nation’s decades-long free trade policy that eliminated millions of American jobs.

“Donald Trump’s reckless tariffs will cause chaos in our economy, raise prices for consumers, and hurt hardworking American families. This is not a strategy — it’s the largest tax hike on the American people in history,” Pelosi wrote on X this week.

However, Pelosi’s dire warnings in 1996 about the coming devastation to American workers and American communities turned out to be all too true.

For example, a 2018 report by the Economic Policy Institute (EPI) found that the United States’ trade deficit with China eliminated American jobs in all 50 states and in every single congressional district across the country between 2001 and 2017, resulting in the loss of 3.4 million American jobs. The vast majority of those jobs lost to China were in the U.S. manufacturing sector, making up 74.4 percent of all jobs lost and amounting to 2.5 million U.S. manufacturing jobs lost. This total also includes the 1.3 million American jobs lost since 2008.

(Economic Policy Institute)

According to the EPI study, states that saw the largest amount of job loss from free trade with China include Pelosi’s home state of California, where more than 560,000 U.S. jobs have been lost; as well as Texas, where 314,000 U.S. jobs were eliminated; and New York, which saw 183,500 U.S. jobs lost in the state.

States like Oregon, New Hampshire, Minnesota, North Carolina, Vermont, Wisconsin, Massachusetts, and Rhode Island were among the 10 “hardest-hit states, when looking at job loss as a share of total state employment,” the EPI researchers note.

But by far the worst devastation from these free trade policies were felt by America’s Rust Belt and Heartland, which saw its communities hallowed out and destroyed as the factories closed and the jobs left.

A 2022 report by the U.S. International Trade Commission (USITC) revealed the utter devastation inflicted on America’s manufacturing communities due to the free trade policies Pelosi rightly warned about in her 1996 House speech.

Among other findings, the report found that U.S. free trade policy has allowed companies to more readily move American jobs overseas and keep wages low for jobs that remain in the U.S.

“Participants identified trade policy as the cause of job losses. One union representative noted that trade policies often have loopholes or are manipulated by China and other countries so that the policies are not operating as intended,” the USITC report states:

Another union representative stated that current trade agreements allow for more capital mobility than the agreements prior to the 1980s, enabling auto, electronics, and steel manufacturers to move overseas for any number of reasons. Various union representatives explained that companies are able to use the threat of moving jobs overseas for various reasons — such as better tax implications and lower wages — to limit the power of labor unions and keep domestic wages down. [Emphasis added]

When U.S. free trade policy enables companies to offshore production, the report states, American employees are not the only ones directly impacted by such moves. Towns and communities as a whole, along with Americans in supporting industries, feel the devastating impact as well.

“Participants noted that, when jobs are lost, local businesses — such as gas stations and restaurants — that rely on affected workers as customers and clients, as well as other businesses in the industry’s supply chain, suffer as a result,” the report states. “A retired steelworker also noted that company bankruptcies can have effects beyond job loss, such as lost pensions.”

Societal impacts as a result of companies offshoring U.S. production, the report finds, include rising mental health issues, suicide, lower life expectancy, divorce, domestic violence, higher crime rates, and worse off public schools.

In particular, when a plant closed in Beaver County, Pennsylvania, the report states, because of U.S. free trade policy, neighboring mom-and-pop shops, local businesses, and grocery stores suffered tremendously to stay afloat. Many ended up closing as well.

“Another union representative noted that, when General Motors Company shut down production in Lansing, Michigan, jobs throughout the local community suffered as a result,” the report states:

Two other union representatives spoke about the impact of plant closures and production cutbacks on employees. An academic and a business owner reported that plant closures can lead to the loss of opportunity for upward career mobility and a shift to services jobs that tend to have lower wages and fewer benefits. Other union representatives, including one who is retired, said that the closure of the General Motors plant in Lordstown, Ohio, in 2019, and the threat of offshoring has been used to suppress worker wages and benefits. Another union representative spoke about Cooper Tire in Finley, Ohio, which reportedly faced competition from dumped imports from China in 2007. Employees at this facility were reportedly scheduled for shifts that were two days on and two days off and could not file for unemployment. [Emphasis added]

In the northeast Ohio district that was formerly represented by Democrat Congressman Tim Ryan (who lost his 2022 U.S. Senate race to now-Vice President JD Vance), nearly 25,000 manufacturing jobs were lost in the two decades since China was granted MFN status. At the same time, drug overdose deaths in the area skyrocketed by 400 percent in some communities.

“A retired union representative said that families and neighborhoods in the Mahoning Valley and Youngstown, Ohio, are still being affected by manufacturing job losses that occurred over 40 years ago, as well as more recent plant closures,” the report states. “She described a cycle of decline, decay, and blight, as the population has dropped to one-third of its previous size and homes lay vacant as children and grandchildren move away.”

John Binder is a reporter for Breitbart News. Email him at jbinder@breitbart.com. Follow him on Twitter here.