HLS 19RS-3430 ORIGINAL
2019 Regular Session
HOUSE RESOLUTION NO. 261
BY REPRESENTATIVE GAROFALO
CONGRESS: Memorializes congress to approve the United States-Mexico-Canada
Agreement
1 A RESOLUTION
2To memorialize the United States Congress to take such actions as are necessary to approve
3 the United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement in order to ensure continuity in trade
4 among the three North American economic partners.
5 WHEREAS, the imposition of artificial barriers to free and open trade are harmful
6to American economic interests; and
7 WHEREAS, together, the United States, Canada, and Mexico promote a shared belief
8in freedom, representative democracy, and market principles as recognized in the
9Constitution of United States; and
10 WHEREAS, a longstanding, close, trilateral relationship, codified in the North
11American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), has existed between the United States, Canada,
12and Mexico for more than twenty years and has proven economically, culturally, and
13strategically important for all parties; and
14 WHEREAS, the United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement is a renegotiation of
15NAFTA and will extend the benefits enjoyed as a result of NAFTA; and
16 WHEREAS, since NAFTA was instituted in 1994, trade with Canada and Mexico
17has nearly quadrupled to one trillion three hundred billion dollars; and
18 WHEREAS, Mexico and Canada buy more than one-third of the United States'
19merchandise exports; and
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HR NO. 261
1 WHEREAS, Canada and Mexico represent either the first or second largest export
2market in forty-three states; and all but one state count our neighbors as a top-three trading
3partner; and
4 WHEREAS, NAFTA has contributed to a three hundred fifty percent increase in
5United States agricultural exports to Canada and Mexico; and
6 WHEREAS, the United States ran a cumulative trade surplus in manufactured goods
7with Canada and Mexico of more than seventy-nine billion dollars over the six-year period
8from 2008 to 2014 with a surplus in services of over forty-one billion dollars in 2014 alone;
9and
10 WHEREAS, NAFTA has been a boon to competitiveness for United States
11manufacturers, which added more than eight hundred thousand jobs in the four years after
12the institution of NAFTA, with Canadian and Mexican consumers purchasing four hundred
13eighty-seven billion dollars of United States manufactured goods in 2014, generating nearly
14forty thousand dollars in export revenue per every American factory worker; and
15 WHEREAS, United States service exports to Canada and Mexico have tripled, rising
16from twenty-seven billion dollars in 1993 to ninety-two billion dollars in 2014, thanks to
17new market access and clearer rules afforded by NAFTA and which will be continued by the
18United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement; and
19 WHEREAS, Canada and Mexico are the top two export destinations for United
20States small and medium-sized enterprises; more than one hundred twenty-five thousand of
21which sold their goods and services in Canada and Mexico in 2014; and
22 WHEREAS, trade among our North American trading partners is made up
23predominantly of intellectual property-intensive goods and services that employ millions of
24Americans in high paying jobs and which generate billions of dollars in economic output;
25and
26 WHEREAS, trade agreements are the most appropriate mechanism to harmonize and
27strengthen intellectual property rights protections ensuring that domestic and foreign
28businesses are on the same equal footing as before the law; and
29 WHEREAS, many of the intellectual property-intensive goods, services, and
30exchanges through which trade is facilitated in the NAFTA bloc did not exist when the
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HR NO. 261
1agreement was drafted, which has resulted in uneven and weak intellectual property
2enforcement; and
3 WHEREAS, stringent enforcement of intellectual property rights has been found to
4correlate closely with greater household income, foreign direct investment, and gross
5domestic product; and
6 WHEREAS the intellectual property provisions found in the United States-Mexico-
7Canada Agreement are the most comprehensive of any multilateral United States trade
8agreement and are vastly superior to those included in NAFTA.
9 THEREFORE, BE IT RESOLVED that the Legislature of Louisiana does hereby
10memorialize the United States Congress to take such actions as are necessary to approve the
11United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement in order to ensure continuity in trade among the
12three North American economic partners.
13 BE IT FURTHER RESOLVED that a copy of this Resolution be transmitted to the
14President of the United States, the members of the United States Senate Committee on
15Finance, the members of the United States House Committee on Ways and Means, the
16members of the Senate and House Advisory Groups on Negotiations, the presiding officers
17of the Senate and the House of Representatives of the Congress of the United States of
18America, each member of the Louisiana congressional delegation, the United States Trade
19Representative, the United States secretaries of Commere, State, and Labor, the director of
20the Office of Management and Budget, and the United States Intellectual Property
21Enforcement coordinator.
DIGEST
The digest printed below was prepared by House Legislative Services. It constitutes no part
of the legislative instrument. The keyword, one-liner, abstract, and digest do not constitute
part of the law or proof or indicia of legislative intent. [R.S. 1:13(B) and 24:177(E)]
HR 261 Original 2019 Regular Session Garofalo
Memorializes congress to approve the United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement.
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