This article was originally posted at Chamber Post.

As the 112th Congress begins today, it’s important to remind lawmakers--notably the large freshmen class--that international trade and investment are critical to America’s prosperity. But don’t just take our word for it, look at the numbers. Here, with apologies to Letterman, are the top ten reasons why pro-growth trade and investment policies and agreements are good for America:

1. The United States is the number one manufacturing nation in the world, and that success depends on exports.
2. The United States is the world’s number one services exporter and has been since services trade data have been tracked.
3. U.S. agricultural exports support nearly a million jobs in the United States.
4. 95 percent of the world’s consumers lives outside the United States.
5. FTA countries purchased more than 40 percent of U.S. exports in 2009.
6. Since the creation of the WTO in 1994, U.S. exports of goods and services have doubled to more than $1.5 trillion.
7. Imports support millions of U.S. jobs in retail, research, design, sourcing, transportation, warehousing, marketing and sales.
8. U.S. exports to China have quadrupled over the past 15 years, and China is now the 3rd largest market for U.S. exports.
9. U.S. companies with overseas investments account for 45 percent of all U.S. exports.
10. Trade supports 38 million jobs in the United States--more than one in five American jobs.

The bottom line is that the United States remains an economic phenomenon, with annual output exceeding $14 trillion--greater than the total output of the next five most productive economies combined! This unprecedented economic success is not due to the size of the U.S. population or its natural resources (other countries have more of both), but to the free-market principles and policies around which our economy is organized. Free trade is a critical ingredient in that recipe.

So what can we do to keep trade moving? A great first step would be for Congress to approve the three big pending free trade agreements with Korea, Colombia, and Panama. These are actions that the new 112th Congress can take quickly, in a bipartisan way, to protect our fragile recovery and keep us on the road to prosperity.

We said as much (and more) in a recent letter to Congress -- which had over 1,600 other organizations signed onto it. For more detail on the top ten list, and why trade is crucial to our economy, you can read the letter on uschamber.com.