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Updated 2 hours ago
In one of few issues where they appear to find some common ground, U.S. Sen. Bob Casey called Monday for President Donald Trump to make good on his campaign promise to renegotiate the North American Free Trade Agreement.
“For too long, American trade policies have left American workers, including many in my home state of Pennsylvania, behind. … I strongly urge you to fulfill the promises you made to workers in Pennsylvania and states across the country as you move forward with your trade agenda,” Casey, D-Scranton, said in a letter to Trump dated Monday.
The future of NAFTA, as the trade deal is known, was in the spotlight Monday as Trump met with Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau. More than 75 percent of Canada's exports go to the United States, so Canadians have paid close attention to Trump's aggressive talk about redoing NAFTA.
Casey didn't mention Canada in his letter but noted that the United States has a $63 billion trade deficit with Mexico. In 1993, before NAFTA began taking effect, the United States had a $1.7 billion trade surplus with its southern neighbor, according to the Council on Foreign Relations.
Casey also noted that since the advent of NAFTA, more than 3 million workers have been certified for the Labor Department's Trade Adjustment Assistance program, which helps retrain workers who lose jobs, hours of work or wages because of trade with or a shift of production to Canada or Mexico.
“Since NAFTA went into effect, the economy of the commonwealth and the livelihoods of the workers who reside there have been hit hard by trade,” Casey said.
A 2011 study by the liberal Economic Policy Institute found that 26,300 Pennsylvania jobs had been displaced because of trade with Mexico — about half of 1 percent of the state's overall employment, according to the group's study.
However, the Council on Foreign Relations notes that “many economists also assert that the recent troubles of U.S. manufacturing have little to do with NAFTA (because that sector) was under stress decades before the treaty,” and China's entry into the World Trade Organization has had a bigger impact on job losses since 2001.
Casey's letter to Trump also cited his longstanding concerns about Chinese trade and economic espionage.
“I look forward to advancing our mutual goal of bringing home better trade agreements that benefit all Americans,” Casey wrote.
Tom Fontaine is a Tribune-Review staff writer. Reach him at tfontaine@tribweb.com.
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