Mr. JONES. Mr. Speaker, I rise today to discuss the proposed United States-Panama Free Trade Agreement.

It is very disappointing to see that the President intends to follow the broken trade agreement of the previous administration by pushing Congress to approve the Panama Free Trade Agreement.

We've had 15 years of the ``NAFTA-based'' trade model on which the Panama agreement is based, and the results are in. We now have a $127 billion annual trade deficit with Mexico and the other 15 nations with which we have free trade agreements. Since the passage of NAFTA, the United States has lost over 4.5 million manufacturing jobs, over 364,000 in my home State of North Carolina alone.

We're in the worst recession since the Great Depression. Unemployment is rising and may soon be over 10 percent. The last thing this country needs is another free trade agreement that will cause more good-paying American jobs to be outsourced. But sadly, that's exactly what the Panama agreement will do.

Why is that the case? One of the primary reasons is because the deal fails to level the playing field for U.S. producers. Let me give you one product as an example: seafood.

One of the biggest industries in my district is commercial fishing. The sector has been hammered by a flood of imports from overseas, including Panama. Panama's number one export to the United States is fish and seafood. They export over $100 million worth of fish and seafood to the United States each year. That's more than 50 times the amount that the United States exports to Panama. Their top exports include products that compete with seafood caught by North Carolina fishermen, including shrimp and yellow fin tuna.

With the Panamanians already having a huge advantage over United States fishermen in terms of balance of trade, one would think that the least that the United States negotiators could insist upon would be a level playing field so that our fishermen could have the same ability to access the Panamanian market as their fishermen have to our markets. Sadly, that is not the case.

According to the United States International Trade Administration, ``while 100 percent of U.S. imports from Panama will receive duty-free treatment immediately upon implementation of the agreement, only 82 percent of U.S. exports to Panama will receive duty-free treatment immediately upon implementation.'' Duties on most of the remaining 18 percent of U.S. exports to Panama would not be eliminated for 10 years.

Now, how is that a level playing field? The simple answer is it is not a level playing field, and the unfortunate result of provisions like this would be the loss of even more United States jobs.

Mr. Speaker, poorly negotiated trade deals with Panama are one of the main reasons our country finds its production base shriveling, our unemployment rolls rising, and our economy in shambles.

Passing this agreement is bad for America, especially at this perilous economic time, and I would encourage this administration to rethink its position before it asks Congress to approve this Panamanian trade agreement.

Mr. Speaker, with that, before I close, I do want to ask God to continue to bless our men and women in uniform in Afghanistan and Iraq. I want to ask God to please bless the families who have given a child dying for freedom in Afghanistan and Iraq. And I close by asking God to give wisdom and strength to the President of the United States. And I ask God to continue to bless America.