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Had I been able to change a word of the United States-Canada Free Trade
[Page: S7770] GPO's PDF
Trade promotion authority is a euphemism for what used to be known as fast track . It is Congress handcuffing itself, saying: Whatever you negotiate, wherever you negotiate it, we promise not to offer one amendment to change one word of the trade agreement.
There are people who will sign up for almost anything. I saw in the paper a while back that the Oscar Meyer Weinermobile was advertising for a driver. The Oscar Meyer Weinermobile, which we have seen in clips, needed a driver, and 900 college graduates applied. I thought to myself, people will sign up for almost anything, won't they? Nine hundred college graduates aspire to drive the Weinermobile.
Then I see people signing up for the proposition that the Congress ought to handcuff itself, in advance, before a trade agreement is negotiated in secret in some location we do not yet know, and I see people say: Sign me up, I think that is a good deal.
Let me describe the circumstances in which we find ourselves after a barrelful of this trade strategy. This chart represents red ink, trade deficits. Today is Thursday. Today, the American people and our Government, our country, will incur a $1.4 billion deficit--just in this one day. Today, every day, 7 days a week, our trade deficit is relentless, and it increases at a relentless pace. The deficit for this year will go off the chart, by the way. That is a trade deficit we owe not to ourselves, as we do with the budget deficit, it is a trade deficit we owe to other countries.
We have people who think this strategy works. Would this be malpractice in medicine if a doctor prescribed medicine and it did not work, and he prescribed it again and it did not work, and he said, let's keep prescribing the same medicine that does not work? How about a football team that calls the same plays despite the fact it does not work?
That is exactly what we are doing in international trade . The same people made the same promises then that they are making now: If we can just do more of the same, our country will be better off. Total nonsense.
The last big debate we had was NAFTA--United States, Canada and Mexico. Prior to that debate, we had a very small trade surplus with Mexico. We had a surplus with Mexico and a reasonably modest trade deficit with Canada. We had people promising the Moon: If we just do this, if we sign up for the NAFTA agreement, if you let us negotiate it in secret--if you allow us to do that, we will add 300,000 new jobs in the United States of America. Total nonsense.
Here is what happened after NAFTA: A trade surplus with Mexico turned into a very large deficit; a modest trade deficit with Canada turned into a huge trade deficit with Canada. People said: Well, if you just sign up to this, we will import the skills of low-skill labor from Mexico; that is what we intend to have happen. Do you know what the three largest imports from Mexico are? Electronics, automobiles, and automobile parts--all the product of high-skill labor. So the deficit explodes. Now we have a very large combined deficit with our two trading partners on the south and north of us, and we have people in the Senate who said: Boy, this is really working. What a great deal for our country.
I graduated from a small school, a high school class of nine in my senior class. I know we did not have all the advanced mathematics some other people had, but this surely must be the only venue in America where grown men and women add 2 and 2 and get 5 and compliment each other on their math skills.
In this morning's newspaper, there are reports about anemic economic growth, and worries about a double dip recession. According to economists, the trade deficit has done a lot to reduce our economic growth to just 1.8 percent.
The fact is, this trade deficit matters, and we are getting clobbered by it. It ties an anvil to the neck of this country's economy. And we have people coming to the floor of the Senate saying: let's do more of the same; let's do much more of what is not working. I, for the life of me, cannot understand that.
Postcloture, I am going to give a speech that describes the details of all of this and ask the question: Why are we all so interested in having the next treaty negotiated, or the next trade agreement negotiated, before even one problem is fixed? Let me give you some examples of problems, even if I do not describe them all now.
How about eggs to Europe, high-fructose corn syrup to Mexico, automobiles to China, automobiles to Korea, potato flakes to Korea, unfairly subsidized grain from Canada, beef to Japan, flour to Europe? I can go on, and I will go, on at some length about each of those. How about stuffed molasses from Canada? That is an interesting one, stuffed molasses. Brazilian sugar is sent to Canada and then mixed with liquid molasses, put in a container, and shipped into this country in contravention of our trade laws. They take the sugar out of the molasses, send the molasses back to Canada, and everything is as it was before, except we now have Brazilian sugar in our market in contravention of our trade laws and you cannot do a blessed thing about it. When the trade bill left the Senate, it contained a provision that fixed this problem. The bill that came back out of conference essentially dropped this provision. But that is typical of virtually everything in this bill that left the Senate with some decent provisions and came back here washed clean of those provisions.
There is a company in Canada. It is called Methanex. It is a company that makes MTBE, a fuel additive. California has decided it is going to discontinue the use of MTBE in fuel because it ends up in the ground water. The fact is, it poisons people. You have to get it out of the ground water, so you have to stop using it in fuel. So when California decides on behalf of the safety of its citizens to stop using MTBE, a fuel additive that is now showing up in their water supply, guess what. The Canadian manufacturer of that product takes action in the WTO against the United States for violating trade laws. So a State that tries to protect its citizens from a poison going into the water supply is now being sued, under our trade agreement, by a Canadian company.
Guess what. The NAFTA dispute tribunal is secret. They are going to shut the door, lock the door, and in a closed room somewhere--where we will not be told--they make a decision about whether we have the right to protect our citizens.
I offered an amendment on this bill here in the Senate. A wide bipartisan majority of Senators voted for it. It said: Those dispute resolutions must be opened to the public. America needs to see them. Let's have the disinfectant of sunlight on those trade disputes.
That makes sense, doesn't it? Except the trade bill came back from conference with that stripped out.
The bill also came back from conference without the Dayton-Craig amendment, which I cosponsored. The Dayton-Craig amendment said if you are going to negotiate a trade treaty and weaken the laws that protect us against unfair trade , then we deserve to have a separate vote on it. Do you know what they did? They stripped that out and they said: What you can do is you can have a sense-of-the-Senate resolution.
We can have a sense-of-the-Senate resolution right now. That doesn't mean anything. To offer this kind of placebo is an
insult. You are either going to stand up for this country's interests or you are not. If you decide you are not going to stand up for this country's interests, just say so. Don't play a game with it.
The Dayton-Craig amendment ought to be in this piece of legislation. The amendment I offered on transparency ought to be in this piece of legislation. Amendments dealing with child protection and child labor issues ought to be in this legislation--and it is not, despite the fact that at its roots it is bad legislation.
We ought not handcuff ourselves. We should not preclude ourselves from offering one amendment to a treaty that has not yet been negotiated at a time and place not yet described; a treaty in which the negotiations are not open to the public. We in the Senate agree we will not offer one amendment; in fact, we will prohibit it. Has anybody read the Constitution lately? That is not what the Constitution says.
[Page: S7771] GPO's PDF
People refuse to stand up on the floor of the Senate and say: On behalf of our producers we demand fair trade . On behalf of farmers, steelworkers, textile workers, we are willing to compete. Yes, we want competition, absolutely. Bring them on. We are willing to compete. But we demand fair competition. If it is not fair, we say to those who want to ship their trousers and shirts and shoes and trinkets to us, ship them to Nigeria or Zambia and see how fast they sell. Say to Korea, that sent 630,000 cars into our marketplace and we are allowed only 2,800 cars into Korea: Korea, ship your cars to Zambia. See how many you sell. If you want to keep shipping Hyundais and Daewoos to the American marketplace, then open your market to American automobiles. It is very simple.
I am going to talk more about this during the postcloture period. But my question is very simple: When will the House and Senate stand up for American producers? No, not for an advantage for them, just to demand basic fairness for workers and producers in this country. Just to demand basic fairness. When will we take action?
I said before, maybe if there is a fast track urge around here, maybe if deep in the breasts of people around here they have some urge to do something on fast track , we should pass a piece of legislation that says the only fast track you have, Mr. Ambassador, is to put on fast track the solution to our trade problems. Fix a few problems before you negotiate a new trade agreement, just fix a few problems, then come back here and tell us you have fixed a few, and then we will work with you.
Understand what is going to happen today. We will have a debate that is never at the center of the issue. We will have a vote. We will vote cloture. Then tomorrow, after the bill is passed, the President will talk about how wonderful it is that he has this trade promotion authority , which is fast track . People in Congress will talk about how wonderful it is because they understand the global economy and how important this is. It is all sheer nonsense, and they know it.
I hope tomorrow morning someone will address this question: Why is it when things are not working, you want to do more of it? Why is it you want to do more of that which does not work? Just describe for one moment why you think something that hurts this country is something that we ought to continue.
Let me finish as I started. My speech, especially the speech I will give later where I will go into a lot of specifics, will be misinterpreted, because it always is, as someone who is a xenophobe isolationist who doesn't believe in free trade . I believe in expanded trade . I believe trade promotes opportunity for our country and for others. But I, by God, insist on fair trade for American workers and producers, and I do not believe that after fighting for 100 years in this country for the right to organize, for people dying in the streets for the right to organize in a labor force, for the right to have a safe workplace, for the right not to employ children, 10- and 12-year-old children in coal mines and in factories, for the right to a decent wage--after fighting for those things for a century, I do not believe we ought to construct an economic system where companies can pole-vault over all of that in just a nanosecond and say, ``I renounce my American citizenship, let me become a citizen of Bermuda and put my jobs in Sri Lanka and Bangladesh,'' and not have to worry about all the things we fought about for a century.
Fair is fair. There is a price for admission to the American marketplace. You cannot have a 12-year-old kid, pay him 12 cents an hour, work 12 him hours a day, and ship the product to Pittsburgh or Fargo or Los Angeles and call that fair trade . It not fair to America's workers and or producers. This fast -track trade authority for a trade agreement that has not yet been negotiated is, in my judgment, an aberration.
It ignores the precepts of the consultation about international trade . In my judgment, because of what has happened in recent years, the evidence is clear that it also hurts our country.
I reserve the remainder of my time.
The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr. EDWARDS). The Senator from Iowa.
Mr. GRASSLEY. Mr. President, I yield myself such time as I might consume, but I would like to be informed if I have reached the 7-minute mark.
Mr. President, I hope people on the other side of the aisle will take into consideration the statements of the previous President of the United States, President Clinton, on the importance of trade . President Clinton rightly bragged about one-third of the new jobs during his administration being directly related to trade emphasizing the importance of trade . John Deere, Waterloo, IA--one-fifth of the jobs there are related to trade : 3M in Oakville, IA--40 percent of production is related to trade .
We want to remember that trade creates jobs. It creates jobs that pay 15 percent above the national average. According to President Clinton, and according to the economic facts of life, trade is good for American workers--creation of jobs, and creation of good jobs.
I would also like to say that those who have been criticizing President Bush saying he does not have a strong economic team must, in fact, have their heads in the sand.
Compare that criticism to what I just said about the importance of trade as emphasized by President Clinton. Then you will see the strong economic leadership of Ambassador Zoellick and Secretary Evans as they have worked on trade issues generally, and particularly their leadership on trade promotion authority .
Two things about the economic policy of this administration: They have strong leaders in place to talk about the importance of the economy and to carry out policy important to the economy. And particularly they are considering continuing the trend that President Clinton
emphasized--the importance of trade to creating jobs, and good jobs.
I think it is bunk that this administration has no strong economic voice, particularly if you look at the strong leadership of Ambassador Zoellick and Secretary Evans on promoting good trade policy, and their very successful work on bringing this legislation to where it is now.
Make no doubt in anybody's mind that I rise in strong support of the conference report accompanying H.R. 3009, the Trade Act of 2002, and urge my colleagues to support cloture and final passage.
This bill is the product of over a year and a half of intense negotiations, discussion, and debate from both Republicans and Democrats in both Houses of Congress--and particularly strong bipartisan support here in the Senate.
Because of these efforts, the Trade Act strikes a solid and balanced compromise among a number of key issues and competing priorities in the tradition of bipartisanship in the Senate. It is a product that should receive broad support here in the Senate today.
The Trade Act of 2002 renews trade promotion authority for the President for the first time in almost a decade.
Through a spirit of compromise, Democrats and Republicans were able to break the deadlock on trade promotion authority that was the environment during the last term of President Clinton, and we were able to reach a balanced compromise on a number of key issues.
At the same time, we were able to provide the President with the flexibility that he needs to negotiate strong international trade agreements while maintaining Congress's constitutional role over U.S. trade policy.
It represents a thoughtful approach to addressing the complex relationships between international trade , workers' rights, and the environment. And it does so without undermining the fundamental purpose and proven effectiveness of this process now called trade promotion authority .
It is an extremely solid bill . The Trade Act also reauthorizes and improves trade adjustment assistance for America's workers whose jobs may be displaced by trade . I think the trade adjustment provisions in the act are a vast improvement over the legislation that passed the Senate.
Our provisions--which I voted for but wasn't entirely in tune with--would have completely rewritten existing law of trade adjustment assistance.
In doing so, the Senate bill added a number of new, costly definitions, time lines, and ambiguous administrative obligations.
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This conference report removes these burdensome and ill-advised changes. Unlike the Senate bill , the conference report simply amends and builds upon existing trade adjustment assistance law.
It adds new provisions which help to actually improve trade adjustment assistance while maintaining a linkage to trade .
In short, the Trade Act improves the Senate-passed trade adjustment bill and represents a balanced approach to ensuring that workers displaced by trade will get the necessary assistance in trading to reenter the workplace.
I also mention the good provisions of the Andean pact because this will help create new employment opportunities in the countries of Bolivia, Ecuador, Colombia, and Peru. It will help us, too, in our efforts there to fight drug trafficking.
I will be the first to admit that this bill is not a
perfect piece of legislation. But, all in all, it is fair and balanced. It deserves strong support.
International trade has long been one of our most important foreign policy and economic tools. It was a key component for the last 50 years for enhancing international economic strategy. This bill will make a difference.
Nations around the world are waiting for our call and the usual U.S. leadership of the last 50 years. Trade ministers and cabinets all over the world are looking to the Senate now for the United States to reestablish its leadership that we haven't had for 9 years. I hope we will not let them down.
I urge support for the conference report, vote for cloture and passage of the bill .
I yield the floor.
Mr. BAUCUS. Mr. President, before the Senator from Idaho speaks, I want to thank him for all his hard work on trade remedies. And I thank him, too, for the support and for being a very strong advocate of checking American trade laws. I thank him for all that he has done.
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