mr. speaker , i rise in strong support of this agreement , and i want to begin by extending my congratulations to the distinguished chairman of the trade subcommittee for his fine work on this effort and to thank him along with my friend from wisconsin and my friend from texas , both of whom are here on the floor and who worked closely with us , with our working group , to promote the issue of trade . 
my friend from florida is absolutely right , if we do not shape the global economy , we will be shaped by it . 
the world is moving dramatically towards breaking down barriers , understanding that the free flow of goods and services and products and ideas is absolutely essential , and i believe that we must do everything that we possibly can to expand that . 
now , mr. speaker , we have put into place over the past several years , under democrats and republicans as presidents , a wide range of trade agreements . 
we have , since we put trade promotion authority back into place , been able to see the expansion of the north american free trade agreement . 
and by the way , if you look at the trade relationship between mexico and the united states today , there is a third of $ 1 trillion in cross-border trade between mexico and the united states . 
the middle-class population in mexico is larger than the entire canadian population . 
and so focusing on these issues is very important if we are going to deal with questions like the one we are going to address next week , illegal immigration , to try to enhance the economies of these developing nations . 
we want people who are struggling to get on to the first rung of the economic ladder , and that is what these trade agreements are about when it comes to their relationship . 
now , let us look at what these trade agreements mean to u.s. workers . 
as my friend from florida just said , last month 215 , 000 new jobs were created . 
if we look at the last few years , at the last 4 years , we have seen 4.5 million new jobs created . 
in fact , mr. speaker , i will say that there are more people working in the united states of america today than we have ever seen working . 
