•HRES 132 IH 
address the very real problems of price volatility for pro-
ducers and consumers alike, while damaging livelihoods 
in rural communities at home and abroad; 
Whereas by failing to condition trade benefits on countries 
enforcing strong labor and environmental standards, 
NAFTA incentivized corporations’ offshoring of jobs and 
exploiting of workers across North America in a race to 
the bottom, and firms that remained in the United States 
faced unfair competition from imports subsidized through 
social dumping; 
Whereas NAFTA’s labor and environmental terms were in-
cluded in unenforceable side agreements, but even more 
recent agreements’ labor and environmental terms in-
cluded in core texts have also failed to change actual 
practice because they have not been sufficiently enforced; 
Whereas NAFTA was also the first United States trade 
agreement to include special privileges for investors and 
the Investor-State Dispute Settlement (ISDS) process 
that make it less risky for employers to relocate jobs off-
shore, while simultaneously threatening democratic pol-
icymaking at home and abroad; 
Whereas corporations have used NAFTA’s ISDS process to 
challenge bans on toxic chemicals, the decisions of envi-
ronmental review panels, court rulings that support ac-
cess to affordable medicines, and protections for the cli-
mate, and corporations have extracted more than 
$370,000,000 from governments in NAFTA ISDS cases, 
while 
pending 
NAFTA 
claims 
total 
more 
than 
$50,000,000,000; 
Whereas NAFTA was negotiated in an opaque process in 
which corporations were granted undue influence while 
VerDate Sep 11 2014 
02:56 Feb 17, 2017
Jkt 069200
PO 00000
Frm 00003
Fmt 6652
Sfmt 6300
E:\BILLS\HR132.IH
HR132
emcdonald on DSK9F6TC42PROD with BILLS
•HRES 132 IH 
the United States public was prevented from providing 
input; and 
Whereas President Donald Trump campaigned on the prom-
ise of initiating negotiations for a NAFTA replacement 
agreement within the first 100 days of taking office, and 
pledged to withdraw the United States from NAFTA if 
he could not make it ‘‘much better’’ for working people: 
Now, therefore, be it 
Resolved, That it is the sense of the House of Rep-
resentatives that— 
(1) the North American Free Trade Agreement 
(NAFTA) should be replaced with a new trade 
agreement that— 
(A) includes strong, binding, and enforce-
able labor and environmental standards in the 
agreement’s core text with requirements that 
are enforced; 
(B) creates a fair playing field by requiring 
that the agreement will take effect only upon 
each participating country adopting, maintain-
ing, implementing, and enforcing domestic laws 
that provide the labor rights and protections 
that are included in the International Labor 
Organization’s Core Conventions and policies 
that fulfill the Paris climate agreement and 
other core multilateral environmental agree-
ments; 
VerDate Sep 11 2014 
02:56 Feb 17, 2017
Jkt 069200
PO 00000
Frm 00004
Fmt 6652
Sfmt 6201
E:\BILLS\HR132.IH
HR132
emcdonald on DSK9F6TC42PROD with BILLS
•HRES 132 IH 
(C) ensures these commitments are en-
forceable through an independent dispute settle-
ment process and subject to the same sanctions 
used to enforce the commercial provisions of 
NAFTA; 
(D) ensures market access is conditioned 
on confirmation that labor and environmental 
commitments are enforced, which means there 
is sustained evidence that conditions on the 
ground have improved and an assurance trade 
benefits will be withdrawn if conditions on the 
ground deteriorate; and 
(E) includes provisions to tax imported 
products that are made under highly climate- 
polluting conditions; 
(2) such a new trade agreement— 
(A) should guard against employer-domi-
nated unions by requiring that each partici-
pating country have laws in place that— 
(i) require unions to provide members 
with timely access to union bylaws and to 
collective bargaining agreements and ten-
tative collective bargaining agreements 
prior to ratification votes; 
VerDate Sep 11 2014 
02:56 Feb 17, 2017
Jkt 069200
PO 00000
Frm 00005
Fmt 6652
Sfmt 6201
E:\BILLS\HR132.IH
HR132
emcdonald on DSK9F6TC42PROD with BILLS
•HRES 132 IH 
(ii) 
require 
collective 
bargaining 
agreements to be ratified by a free and se-
cret ballot vote of the workers covered 
under the collective bargaining agreement; 
and 
(iii) require management to permit 
union representation in investigatory inter-
views; 
(B) should not include protections for for-
eign investors, including an Investor-State Dis-
pute Settlement (ISDS) process, so to avoid ex-
posure of the United States Government and 
taxpayers to financial losses, threats to United 
States and other parties’ laws and sovereignty, 
the undermining of environmental and health 
protections in extra-judicial tribunals, or new 
incentives to offshore jobs; 
(C) should not include provisions that un-
dermine Buy America, Buy Local, or any other 
domestic procurement preferences or labor, en-
vironmental, or other standards for procure-
ment contracts; 
(D) should require all imported products 
and services and foreign service sector compa-
nies operating in the United States to comply 
VerDate Sep 11 2014 
02:56 Feb 17, 2017
Jkt 069200
PO 00000
Frm 00006
Fmt 6652
Sfmt 6201
E:\BILLS\HR132.IH
HR132
emcdonald on DSK9F6TC42PROD with BILLS
•HRES 132 IH 
with United States environmental, land use, 
safety, privacy, transparency, professional quali-
fication, and consumer access laws; 
(E) should not include any provisions simi-
lar to NAFTA’s ‘‘Chapter Nineteen: Review 
and Dispute Settlement in Antidumping and 
Countervailing Duty Matters’’ or any extra-ju-
dicial review tribunal empowered to invalidate 
the decisions of the United States Government 
or judicial courts relating to anti-dumping, sub-
sidies, or countervailing duties; 
(F) should include binding rules that will 
prevent foreign governments from using cur-
rency manipulation to undercut United States 
exports or subsidize their exports meaning 
strong, binding, and enforceable disciplines 
against currency manipulation that trigger 
automatic corrective action against currency 
manipulators, rather than simply triggering re-
ports or dialogue must be included in a replace-
ment trade agreements’ core text; 
(G) should strengthen NAFTA’s ‘‘rules of 
origin’’— 
(i) by raising the auto rule of origin 
to require that 90 percent of a product’s 
VerDate Sep 11 2014 
02:56 Feb 17, 2017
Jkt 069200
PO 00000
Frm 00007
Fmt 6652
Sfmt 6201
E:\BILLS\HR132.IH
HR132
emcdonald on DSK9F6TC42PROD with BILLS