By Congressman Peter DeFazio, 4th District, Oregon

  It is almost impossible these days to find a product proudly stamped "Made in the USA."

  I voted against NAFTA, preferential trading status for China, and creation of the World Trade Organization-plans that promised endless riches for workers, farmers, and American business. The reality has been very different.

  The U.S. trade deficit is on target to hit a record $550 billion this year - that means the loss of $1.5 billion a day - $1 million per minute - in U.S. wealth. The U.S. must attract $2 billion from foreign investors everyday to finance this deficit. Trade deficits undermine our economy, costing more than three million jobs since 1994.

  We lost more than 700,000 manufacturing jobs in 2002; now computer and high-skilled jobs are shifting overseas.

  Around 400,000 service jobs, including 27,000 technology jobs, were siphoned off to China, India, and elsewhere just last year.

  Yet the Bush Administration is negotiating trade agreements to allow thousands of high-skilled foreign workers to enter the U.S. each year and take American jobs. To add insult to injury, American workers are being forced to train foreign workers who are then sent back to their home countries to work for a fraction of U.S. wages.

  We need a major overhaul of U.S. trade policies. Congress should block the President's effort to expand NAFTA to the entire Western Hemisphere, repeal special trading status for China, and crack down on visa programs that allow corporations to ship workers into the U.S. to displace Americans from their jobs.

  The U.S. economy will never be on sound footing, and workers will never enjoy job security, as long as Congress and the Administration perpetuate discredited trade pacts that are neither fair nor "free."