[Congressional Record Volume 143, Number 74 (Tuesday, June 3, 1997)]
[House]
[Pages H3256-H3263]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                        MFN FOR CHINA AND NAFTA

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under the Speaker's announced policy of 
January 7, 1997, the gentleman from Michigan [Mr. Bonior] is recognized 
for 60 minutes as the designee of the minority leader.
  Mr. BONIOR. Mr. Speaker, in the coming weeks and months we will be 
considering two major questions in the House that will reveal a lot 
about how we, as a Nation, value human rights and the well-being of our 
workers in America.
  The first question that we will answer is whether or not to extend 
most-

[[Page H3257]]

favored-nation status to China, to give China low tariffs on their 
exports into our market. But let us be clear, this is not just a simple 
decision about trade rights. This is a decision that will affect the 
lives and the jobs and the paychecks of every single American worker 
for decades to come.
  The second question we will answer, probably later this year, is 
whether or not to provide what is called fast track trade negotiation 
authority in order to expand NAFTA to new countries. Now, NAFTA, the 
North American Free Trade Agreement, is no longer a question of theory. 
It has had more than 40 months to prove itself.
  We have seen the effects that NAFTA has had on our families, on our 
jobs, our wages, and on our country, and I regret to say that the news 
is not good. NAFTA, by any reasonable measure, has failed to live up to 
its billing. Many of us believe that before we expand NAFTA, we have 
got to fix it, and there are a lot of things to fix.

                              {time}  2015

  If a house is on fire, if a basement is flooded, if a roof is caving 
in, it is fixed before adding a new addition. We need to fix NAFTA. In 
many respects these issues of most-favored-nation trade status with 
China and NAFTA are connected. They are both about extending trade 
rights. They are both about wages. They are both about jobs. They are 
both about human rights.
  The problems with our economic relationships with China and Mexico 
are much more serious than some people are willing to acknowledge. Let 
us just draw a quick comparison with our pursuit of the balanced budget 
which has become an obsession in our Government, and some might say in 
certain circles, in our country.
  Our budget deficit is expected to be a little over $60 billion this 
year. It has come down dramatically over the past 4 years because of a 
tough economic plan that we passed on this side of the aisle in 1993. 
It brought the annual deficit down from $300 billion a year to 
approximately $60, $65 billion by the end of this fiscal year. We have 
a plan that is moving through the Congress now to take us the rest of 
the way.
  But listen to this. Our trade deficit with Mexico and China combined 
could be $60 billion this year. We have a deficit, an annual deficit of 
about $60 billion, domestic deficit. Our trade deficit could equal that 
with two countries. Last year was a record $40 billion with China and 
$16 billion with Mexico. This year it could be bigger, as much as our 
budget deficit. But are we doing anything about it? Is there any 
attention to address this problem?
  We cannot simply cover our eyes and pretend that all is OK and the 
status quo is working. It is not working. But if we simply pass MFN 
unconditionally and extend NAFTA, we are going to make this problem 
much, much worse.
  While the trade deficit is important as a statistic, it represents a 
much more serious trend in America today that is taking our Nation in 
the wrong direction. It is driving down the wages of workers and it is 
also reducing our moral authority to speak seriously about human 
rights, which both issues, the wages of workers which are being driven 
down and the human rights issue, are kind of the hallmark of what 
America has been about these past 100 years.
  They do not call it the American century for nothing. It is the 
American century because people stood up and they fought against 
tyranny and repression. It is the American century because workers in 
this country banded together for a decent wage, better working 
conditions, a sense of dignity, the ability to collectively come 
together and bargain for their sweat. That is why it is the American 
century.
  And here we have a situation in which those rights, those human 
rights and those worker rights, are being gobbled up, are being eroded, 
are being steamrolled by this globalization, free-market, unfettered 
movement that has nothing in its way. Indifferent government, weak 
labor, except for America where it is on the rise and a few other 
places in Europe. Nothing in its way. Multinationals moving forward, 
looking for the lowest common denominator, the lowest wage nations to 
move their jobs to maximize their profits.
  A study done earlier this year shows that China and Mexico attracted 
more foreign investment in manufacturing plants than any other 
developing nations, investment that is taking advantage of favorable 
trade rules that are provided to China through MFN and Mexico through 
NAFTA. And instead of creating consumer markets where the workers in 
those countries earn a decent wage so they can buy the products that 
they make, or building democracy which is fundamental to a free 
country, our proponents would lead us to believe that the policy that 
they have is working and that if we just let it work, these things will 
happen, democracy and better wages. That is what manufacturing 
investment means to them. They are taking root in low-cost labor 
markets.
  In Mexico, it is 70 cents an hour. I just came back from Mexico a 
couple of months ago. I was down to the maquiladoras, the area along 
the border. I had been there before. Before we were doing NAFTA, about 
40 months ago, workers were making $1 an hour there. Now they are 
making 70 cents an hour. I saw it with my own eyes, I talked to the 
workers. They make $5 and $6 a day. In China, it is lower than 70 cents 
an hour, or it is even prison labor.
  The most important impact this investment has on American workers is 
on their wages. People say to me, what does this have to do with my 
wages here in America, if they are making less than 70 cents an hour in 
China and 70 cents an hour in Mexico. What does it have to do with me?
  What it has to do with Mr. and Mrs. America is that corporations are 
moving jobs to low-wage developing nations, and they are saying to 
bargaining units, or those people who are talking for wages or worker 
rights or safety rights in the workplace, If you do not take a wage 
that is frozen, or if you do not diminish your wages somewhat or if you 
do not relax some of the standards that you are demanding on safety, we 
are out of here, we are gone. This is not just me making this up. There 
have been studies done and studies recently that I am going to talk 
about in a few minutes, that indicate this is happening all over 
America.
  It is a drive to the bottom, to the lowest wage, something the 
economists call downward pressure on wages. It is pitting our workers 
against the low-wage workers in developing nations. It puts pressure on 
their paychecks. If workers ask for a pay raise, companies say, ``We'll 
just move our jobs overseas.''
  They can do that because under MFN for China, they get favorable 
access to our markets if they relocate in China, and they get a 
government that does not tolerate workers who stand up for their 
rights. Under NAFTA, corporations get investment guarantees in Mexico, 
what is essentially free access to our market, and a system in which 
the government, the business community, and union officials conspire to 
hold down wages.
  There is nobody who speaks for the worker in Mexico. The government 
does not. They attract corporations based upon the fact that they can 
guarantee their investment and guarantee low wages. The union there is 
corrupt. It is in cahoots with the government and the corporations. 
When people try to speak out independently, they get thrown in jail.
  Some would suggest that the alternative for our current failed policy 
is protectionism, high tariffs, put walls around our country. We reject 
that. There is nobody here that wants to go back to those days. That is 
not where we should go. We do not want to go back to the walls of 
protection. We want to go forward.
  We want a trade policy that values the workers who make trade 
possible, not just trade itself and the multinationals and the 
corporate heads, the workers who make it possible not only here but in 
the developing countries and other countries we trade with. Because it 
is only when the workers are strong that they have the ability to earn 
a decent living, that they can purchase the products that are being 
made. It is a simple lesson that Henry Ford taught us many, many years 
ago in this country, that if you pay the workers on the line a decent 
wage, they will be able to buy the car, and he instituted $5 a day. By 
the way, the wage that Mexican workers make today, he instituted that 
70 years ago.

  We will only move forward if we deal honestly with China and Mexico. 
We

[[Page H3258]]

have waited 8 years now since the Tiananmen Square massacre for 
engagement and MFN to change China. The argument of the supporters from 
MFN for China goes something like this: ``If you just let us into 
China, just let us go there and trade with them, the economy will grow, 
human rights will get better and everyone will benefit.'' But the list 
of human rights abuses grows longer and uglier every day.
  Let me quote something that was in the New York Times today. It was 
an op-ed piece by A.M. Rosenthal. He, in turn, is quoting from the 
State Department's human rights report on China. I quote:

       All public dissent against the party and the government was 
     effectively silenced by intimidation, exile, the imposition 
     of prison terms, administrative detention, or house arrest. 
     No dissidents were known to be active at year's end.

       I want to repeat that.

       No dissidents were known to be active at year's end. Even 
     those released from prison were kept under tight surveillance 
     and often prevented from taking employment or otherwise 
     resuming a normal life.

  They do not tolerate dissent. They do not tolerate another opinion. 
They do not tolerate free speech. It is not a free country. Yet we in 
this body, in our government, have sanctioned a most-favored-nation 
policy of trade with China. A most. Not a good, not a better, a most. 
The best. The best terms.
  Clearly things are not getting better in China. They are getting 
worse. But the corporate lobby, and, boy, they are all over this town. 
One cannot breathe without running into the large corporate lobby in 
this city working for the passage of most-favored-nation treatment for 
China. The corporate lobby and all the establishment tells us that 
unless we extend MFN and unless we engage, we will get left behind and 
we will anger China. But by my count, we are already behind. We have 
got a $40 billion trade deficit. We have got to engage in a different 
way, because our current policy is not fostering human rights, it is 
not helping us economically, we are on the short end of a bad trade 
deal. The fact is that we have the leverage on this issue. We are the 
most powerful nation, we have got the biggest megaphone, the highest 
pulpit and the greatest leverage in the world. Our consumer market is 
what China wants. It is what everybody wants. They want the American 
consumer market. More than one-third of China's exports go to the 
United States. We are one-third of their export markets. Of all the 
things they make in China and ship it out, one-third of it comes here. 
China represents only 2 percent of our export market. Two percent. It 
is not hard to see who has the leverage. We do. They want us. We can 
barely get in there. Workers who are being forced to compete against 
prison labor and slave wages and dissidents in China who are struggling 
to have their voices heard, they deserve better. They deserve to be 
heard. The past 8 years since the Tiananmen Square massacre have shown 
us that extending MFN has not amplified those voices. It has muffled 
them. If we reject MFN and honestly deal with China, those voices can 
be heard, democracy can begin to sprout some roots and we can move 
forward. We can have a dialoge. We can have an understanding. If we do 
not, we can expect more of the status quo. That is not a winning 
proposition for any of us. Except for the multinational, transnational 
corporations who are doing just fine with the current system. They have 
a record of profits, they have lower labor costs, and they have bigger 
paychecks for the bigwigs.
  I said earlier, it is not just China. If we take a close look at the 
results of NAFTA after 41 months, we can tell that the ultimate aim of 
this trade policy is for corporations. It is to maximize their profits, 
to guarantee their investments overseas and to use these trade 
agreements to reverse the gains that workers have made. NAFTA is being 
used as a weapon to dampen the efforts of American workers to earn a 
decent wage and to seek the right to organize and to collectively 
bargain.

                              {time}  2030

  It has given corporations a license to pursue a race to the bottom 
strategy to drive down wages, to bust unions, to take away all those 
rights that your parents and your grandparents worked for, were beaten 
up for, some even died for. They fought too long and too hard for these 
rights: the rights to organize, the rights to collectively bargain, the 
right to earn a decent wage, to be safe in the workplace and the many 
other things that I could go on and mention here this evening. 
Corporations are now using NAFTA to erode these rights by pitting 
workers against each other and by threatening to move jobs to the 
lowest cost labor markets. NAFTA gives them a license to do that. It 
does not require them to raise Mexican standards. It gives them an 
incentive to lower U.S. standards. It practically guarantees them that 
they will not be caught because NAFTA does not give workers a real 
voice in that decision making process.
  Got a chart here: United States puts downward pressure on wages. 
Sixty-two percent of U.S. employers threaten to close plants rather 
than negotiate with or recognize the union, implying or explicitly 
threatening to move jobs to Mexico.
  Now not long ago Cornell University did a study for the Labor 
Department, a study, by the way, that the Labor Department refused to 
release. They found that 62 percent of the companies, as this chart 
shows, are now using Mexico and other low wage nations as a bargaining 
chip to drive down wages. Sixty-two percent of American companies say 
to their workers, you all take a pay cut, if you do not hold back on 
those pension benefits or those health benefits, if you do not take a 
cut in them because, you know, we cannot compete here, we got to cut 
corners, and if you got--we got to take some back, some of those 
benefits in health and pensions. If you do not do that, we have no 
choice, we got to go, we got to go to Mexico.
  And it is happening every day, and yet when workers, as I said 
earlier, in Mexico try to organize, try to form unions, try to fight 
for better pay to take away that bargaining chip, what happens? Well, 
they get arrested.
  I was in Tijuana about 3 months ago, and I saw with my very eyes. I 
talked to a leader of a colonia village, to a man who went out and 
stopped the production at a facility located near the village where 
they were paying 70 cents an hour, $5 and $6 a day. They stopped 
production, got all the people together to stop for 2 hours because 
they did not have proper safety standards in the plant and people were 
losing their fingers and their hands. And as a result of that he got 
fired, and when he tried to form an independent union, he was arrested, 
and he had very little recourse to the judicial system because the 
judicial system does not work for average working people there.
  So you get thrown into jail, you get thrown into jail when you stand 
up for this, and 4 years ago on this floor in this body we as a nation 
put a stamp of approval on all of that by passing the North American 
Free Trade Agreement, that North American Free Trade Agreement.
  Let me cite a passage from this Cornell study because it will show 
our colleagues exactly how this is working. This passage discusses why 
companies after an effort by workers to organize in the United States 
have fled to Mexico at double the rate since NAFTA took effect. 
Remember NAFTA took effect about 41 months ago, and here is what the 
study said.
  The fact that the post-election plant closing rate has more than 
doubled since NAFTA was ratified suggests that NAFTA has both increased 
the credibility and effectiveness of the plant closing threat for 
employers and emboldened increasing numbers of employers to act upon 
that threat. In fact, it goes on to say in several campaigns the 
employer used the media coverage of the NAFTA debate to threaten the 
workers that it was fully within their power to move the plant to 
Mexico if workers were to organize.
  Now the study's author, Kate Bronfenbrenner, Cornell, concludes, she 
concludes that plant closing threats have tripled since NAFTA took 
effect in 1993 and shifts to Mexico have doubled.
  Let me now turn to a few examples of how corporations have used NAFTA 
to drive down wages in the United States or to shift their production 
to Mexico to do exactly what this Cornell study has suggested, and then 
I would like to yield to a couple of my colleagues who are always here 
and are always fighting for working people, the gentleman

[[Page H3259]]

from Vermont [Mr. Sanders] and my friend, the gentleman from Cleveland, 
OH [Mr. Kucinich].
  A couple of examples: Guess Jeans; you know those are the jeans that 
you see, little tag on the back. They used to be made in Los Angeles. 
They are now being made in Mexico and elsewhere because workers in Los 
Aangeles asked for decent wages and a safe place to work. The company 
knew it could exploit workers in Mexico, where the government and 
businesses and union officials, as I said, conspire to keep wages low. 
So it shifts thousands of jobs to Mexico instead of trying to work out 
a solution with the workers in Los Angeles.
  In El Paso, TX, even workers making as little as $4.75 an hour, which 
is the minimum wage, are having their jobs shipped across the border to 
Mexico to multinational corporations in search of the lowest wages 
possible. Workers making the minimum wage are not even safe because 
NAFTA has created, as I said, a race to the bottom in search of the 
lowest wages possible.
  In 1994, workers were attempting to organize an ITT automotive plant 
in my home State of Michigan, and the company was resisting. The 
company used the threat of moving to Mexico in a very blatant fashion. 
During the organizing campaign the management took apart an assembly 
line in the plant; you know, they shrink wrapped it in packaging, and 
then they took it outside the plant, and they had 13 flatbed trucks. 
They loaded it all up on the trucks, and on the side of those trucks 
there was this big bright pink sign that read ``Mexico transfer jobs.''
  Same company flew employees from their Mexican facility to videotape 
Michigan workers on the production line which the supervisor claimed 
they were considering moving to Mexico. So you know they bring people 
in, they intimidate them right in the factory, and needless to say, the 
union lost the election in that plant, and this type of thing goes on, 
and on, and on and on.
  Let me just show you this one other chart. Companies use NAFTA to 
drive down wages for American workers. This is a poster that was put up 
just 2 months ago, a company called NTN Bower used a very provocative 
flyer right here to try to undermine an organizing drive in a Macomb, 
IL, plant. The flyer makes a threat. It says if the workers decide to 
join the UAW, their jobs may go south for more than just the winter. 
The leaflet notes there are Mexicans willing to do your job for $3 and 
$4 an hour; the free trade treaty allows this.
  Well, people do not make $3 and $4 an hour down there; I can tell you 
that. They make 70 cents an hour, and you get a great job if you can 
find someone who makes $2, $2.50 an hour. But the point is 
these threats are being used against American workers and driving down 
American wages.

  Now, this is perhaps one of the most blatant examples of how 
companies are using NAFTA to stop efforts by workers to improve their 
wages and benefits, but as I said, it is happening every day, and 62 
percent of employers are doing the same thing. The author of the study, 
Kate Bronfenbrenner, made the following conclusion. This is what she 
concluded after doing her study:
  NAFTA has created a climate that emboldened employers and terrified 
workers. That is what we did here. We emboldened the employer and we 
terrified the workers, not knowing whether they would be secure in 
their jobs, whether they would lose their jobs, whether they would have 
decent pensions or health care benefits or how far their wages would be 
driven down before their jobs finally left and went to Mexico.
  Now, these same companies that promised to create jobs under NAFTA, 
but who are instead using it as a threat to drive down wages in this 
country, now want to expand it to other countries without any 
prediction for workers. This problem is only going to get worse because 
it is not only Mexico that is being used as a bargaining chip. NAFTA 
supporters would like next to go to Chile, but the nation of Chile is 
being used as a bargaining chip as well, and I am not going to go into 
a long debate about Chile today, but I can cite some examples about the 
Goodyear Tire & Rubber Co. and some other folks who are using the Chile 
export strategy as a way to drive down wages and other benefits of 
workers in Ohio.
  So this trend will continue on and on unless we seriously address the 
issues of wages and workers' rights in our trade agreements and unless 
we honestly deal with China.
  The current system is tragic for working people in this country and 
Mexico and China and does not have to be permanent, though, does not 
have to be this way. We need to remember this is not just about 
markets, trade barriers. This is about jobs and living standards, about 
human rights, and most importantly it is about human dignity. These 
struggles are about people, and the struggles we are about to engage in 
have been fought, as I said, in this country and around the world by an 
earlier generation of workers.
  Turn of the century, the Industrial Revolution brought about massive 
changes like the changes we are undergoing today, much as the global 
economy and the technology and information are changing the landscape 
of today, and the giant corporations then sought to control the 
process. They exploited the workers, they exploited the land, but 
people got fed up. They decided they are going to fight back, and they 
banded together, and together they made a difference. They elected 
people to office who wanted to break the trust. They elected people to 
office who wanted to provide a decent wage and decent health 
conditions. They formed their own unions so they could bargain for 
their sweat.
  That struggle led to the creation of a system of labor and social and 
health rules which increased our standard of living beyond which any 
other nation has been unable to exceed. Hence the American century. But 
it is that very system that is under attack today, the very system that 
they created, and we cannot afford to go backward before these 
protections were in place. And that is where we are going.
  Mr. Speaker, we are going back, we are not going forward. The 
President talks about the bridge to the 21st century. It has got a 
curlicue at the top because it is going back to the 19th century. The 
President needs to straighten it out, move forward with the workers, 
not with the presidents and the CEO's and the multinationals and the 
transnationals. This debate is about our economic future and whether we 
want to take our Nation forward or go back to an era in this Nation in 
which worker rights were not guaranteed and in which a few wealthy 
corporations controlled the economy and in which people were unable to 
speak out as they are unable to speak out in China today.
  We do not want to see our Nation go back to where we were 100 years 
ago. We want a trade policy that will move us forward, and that is what 
we will keep impressing upon our colleagues in the weeks and months to 
come.
  I want to thank my colleagues for their patience, and again I am just 
very honored to be joined today by the gentleman from Ohio [Mr. 
Kucinich] and the gentleman from Vermont [Mr. Sanders], and the 
gentleman from New York [Mr. Owens] has joined us. I would be happy to 
yield to any of my friends.
  Mr. SANDERS. Thank you very much, and I want to congratulate you on 
the leadership you have shown in fighting for a fair trade policy in 
this country over the last many years and for the rights of working 
people.
  I think the proof basically is in the pudding. If our current trade 
policy in terms of NAFTA, in terms of GATT, in terms of MFN with China 
was a success, then we would see it. We would see it, and how would we 
see it? Well, we would see that wages for middle class and for working 
people would have gone up. That is what we would have seen. That is 
what a success is. People would be making more money.
  But what is the reality? The reality is that in 1973 the average 
American worker earned $445 a week. Twenty years later, taking 
inflation into account, that same worker was making $373 a week. Real 
wages have declined precipitously.
  Now if this trade policy was working so well, then the working men 
and women of this country would be working fewer hours, they would have 
more time to spend with their kids and with their families.
  Family values; we all remember that expression. But I will tell you 
something going on in Vermont that I expect all over this country is 
that the

[[Page H3260]]

working families in my State are working longer hours. In the State of 
Vermont we have many workers who do not have one job, who do not have 
two jobs; they have three jobs, and many women who would prefer to stay 
home with the kids are now forced to go out and work because the family 
needs two breadwinners.
  So where is the success of this trade policy? Is it working well? 
Well, we have to acknowledge, yes, it is working well for some. We were 
all delighted to read several weeks ago that the CEO's of major 
American corporations last year saw a 54-percent increase in their 
compensation. Hey, that is not too bad; a 54-percent increase. The 
average worker barely kept up with inflation, and some workers went 
below inflation, continue to see a decline in their standards of 
living.

                              {time}  2045

  The average CEO is now making over 200 times what the workers in the 
company are earning, which gives us by far the most unfair distribution 
of wealth and income in the entire industrialized world.
  So I think there is a little bit of confusion when our friends in the 
corporate media tell us how good our trade policy is doing. They hang 
out at the country clubs with their other rich friends and they all 
talk to each other and say, ``Hey, how are things going, Joe?'' 
``Pretty good. Made 60 percent more this year than last year.'' Write 
an editorial, things are going really good.
  But they forget to go into the small business community and they 
forget to go into the factories and into the plants. Talk to workers 
there and what do the workers say? They say, ``They cut back on our 
health care benefits, they lowered our wages, they are forcing us to 
work more hours for less pay.'' But that is the part of America that we 
do not see reflected here in this Congress very often, we do not see 
reflected in the editorial pages of America's newspapers.
  The whole issue of so-called free trade is not very complicated. Just 
imagine any community in America, any normal community, and just 
suddenly see the size of that community double and that the people who 
came in were prepared and forced to work for 20 cents an hour or 40 
cents an hour.
  Now, what do we think would happen to wages and benefits in that 
community? It does not take a Ph.D. in economics to figure it out. 
Employers would much prefer to pay people 20 cents an hour or 40 cents 
an hour. I think in Vietnam now they have gone down to 6 cents, that 
Nike has finally reached the lowest of the low, that in Vietnam they 
can hire people at 6 cents an hour. So what do you think happens in a 
community with wages? They go down and benefits go down.
  So-called free trade that exists right now, whether it is MFN with 
China or NAFTA, is an effort by corporate America to take decent-paying 
jobs in this country to desperate Third World countries, exploit the 
people there, rather than pay American workers a decent wage.
  It seems to me that our challenge is not only to end the exploitation 
of Third World workers, but to develop trade policy and tax policies 
that say to the Nikes and the other major corporations in this country, 
``Hey, come back to this country. If you want Americans to consume your 
products, how about giving them a chance to manufacture those 
products?''
  I think this is the crux of the entire economic crisis that we are 
facing. We have to get a handle on this trade crisis, or else we are 
going to see the middle class continuing to decline and the standard of 
living of working people go down and down.
  Mr. BONIOR. Mr. Speaker, I thank my colleague for his comments.
  I said a little earlier, before the gentleman arrived, that our trade 
deficit with Mexico and with China together is approximately what our 
annual deficit in this country is in our Federal budget. The real focus 
ought to be on our trade deficit, because pretty soon people are not 
going to have the money to buy the products. Who will buy the products?
  If we keep competing to the bottom as we are forced to under this 
non-system, this unfettered free market process that we are engaged in, 
we are going to have a hollow shell. The top 20 percent will be there, 
they will be fine, they will be okay, but the folks underneath will not 
have the wherewithal to purchase and then we will start to see a decay 
in our economy slowly.
  I yield to my friend from Ohio [Mr. Kucinich] who has been here, and 
I thank him for staying this evening and for his contribution to this 
debate which has been substantial.
  Mr. KUCINICH. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman from Michigan [Mr. 
Bonior] his leadership that he has shown for this country on this most 
significant of economic issues. The American people really owe the 
gentleman a debt of gratitude for being willing, week after week, to 
come before the people and state the case for the American people to 
look at this issue and to consider the impact it is having on their 
lives. I appreciate the chance to be here with my good friends, the 
gentleman from Vermont [Mr. Sanders], the gentleman from New York [Mr. 
Owens], and the gentlewoman from Ohio [Ms. Kaptur].
  As the gentleman just stated, we have these raising trade deficits. 
As a matter of fact, since NAFTA was passed in 1993, our combined trade 
deficit with Canada and Mexico has gone up about 400 percent, 400 
percent. When we see a trade deficit go up, that means that jobs are 
being created there but we are losing jobs here. It is very simple. We 
are not finding any way that we can make up for that. It is not 
happening.
  So in Mexico alone, I think in 1993 we had a surplus of trade with 
Mexico of about $1.7 billion. The last figures for 1996, we have a 
trade deficit. The surplus went to a deficit of $16.2 billion, and that 
is all due to NAFTA.
  Mr. BONIOR. Mr. Speaker, it is a loss of jobs, but what happens 
often, and we have talked about this before, is that these people get 
other jobs. They lose their jobs because they move to Mexico or China 
or Indonesia or elsewhere. The people get other jobs eventually, often, 
but the studies that we have seen show they get jobs at wages that pay 
about 60 percent of what they were earning originally.
  Mr. KUCINICH. And that is inevitable.
  Mr. BONIOR. That is why, as the gentleman from Vermont [Mr. Sanders] 
correctly stated, people are now working two and three jobs and they do 
not have time for their families.
  Mr. KUCINICH. Mr. Speaker, when we consider, as we just spoke of, a 
combined trade deficit increasing by 400 percent over a 3-year period 
with respect to Canada and Mexico, and now when we consider China, the 
United States trade deficit with China has grown at a faster rate than 
that of any other major United States trading partner. The level of 
imports from China more than doubled between 1992 and 1996, and the 
United States trade deficit at this point is about $40 billion. That 
was in 1996, and of course China is the fourth largest supplier of 
United States imports.
  So what are we taking in from China? I think most people would 
remember they are toys and games, footwear, clothing and apparel, and 
telecommunications equipment. That is what we are bringing from China 
to the United States, and all of those industries, which were very good 
industries in this country at one time, have been greatly affected. The 
people who worked the jobs manufacturing those goods have had to go to 
other areas where, as the gentleman from Michigan points out very 
correctly, if they are working at all they are working for a greatly 
reduced wage.
  Now get this: What are we sending to China? Because people will say 
our exports have increased. Sure. Here is what we are exporting. We are 
exporting aircraft plants and equipment. Aircraft is one of our three 
major industrial legs that this country stands on. It is like a tripod. 
We have aircraft, steel and automotive. Well, we are now slowly 
starting to damage that very significant part of our industrial 
structure by exporting plants and equipment from the aircraft industry, 
and we are also exporting automotive plants and equipment, which is the 
other, which is the second part of that three-part equation.

  Now, we wonder why that is happening. Well, as a matter of fact, 
China is actually demanding, as a term of doing business with them, 
that we export technology. In effect, we are blindly devoted to trade 
at all costs.

[[Page H3261]]

  I am not opposed to trade. I do not think there is anyone here in 
this Chamber this evening who is opposed to trade, but we should not 
let free trade mean that we trade away jobs in this country, we trade 
away the level of wages which people have worked a lifetime for, we 
trade away our basic political rights, we trade away our environment. 
That cannot be the kind of trade that we can be involved in. But we are 
blindly devoted to free trade with nations like China, which at this 
point the U.S. is involved in giving China high-tech weapons production 
equipment in order to sell some U.S. aircraft.
  My colleague from Vermont [Mr. Sanders] probably heard about that. 
According to the Wisconsin project on nuclear arms control, the United 
States sold to China machine tools which were previously used in 
Columbus Ohio to produce the B-1 bomber. The tools included high-tech 
milling and measuring machines and a giant stretch press used for 
bending large pieces of metal.
  Now the Chinese Government insisted on getting the high-tech 
equipment as an incentive so they would purchase aircraft from an 
American manufacturer. China promised that once they got the equipment, 
they would only use it to produce civilian aircraft.
  Well, guess what? Once the deal was done, the Chinese Government 
housed the tools in a missile base. Now, think of what that means in 
terms of security, let alone the economy. The Commerce Department, when 
they realized the mistake, advised sanctions on China, but they were 
overruled by people higher in the government.
  I point this out because there are implications which are political, 
economic, and human rights implications, and I certainly feel that 
discussions like this give us an opportunity to bring these facts 
before the American people, because people have a right to know what is 
going on in the name of free trade, about how their jobs are being 
traded away, about how our trade deficit increases, how we ask the 
American people to sacrifice, to sacrifice their jobs and their 
standard of living, but no one is demanding that other nations involved 
in these trade relationships shape up with respect to their 
responsibilities, both to this country as a trading partner and to 
their own people.
  At this time I would be glad to yield back to one of my colleagues, 
as we are all here to participate in this important discussion.
  Mr. BONIOR. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman for those comments, 
and they are right on target. I would like to yield now to the 
gentleman from New York [Mr. Owens], and then to my friend from Ohio 
[Ms. Kaptur].
  Mr. OWENS. Mr. Speaker, I would just like to comment briefly, because 
I think I have an hour after this where I will be continuing the 
discussion of the downgrading of the wages of American workers, but I 
want to thank the minority whip and my colleagues for continuing this 
crusade to educate the American public, to educate American workers.
  We have just seen the majority of the masses of France sweep out a 
government that wanted to take care of the economy on the backs of the 
people at the bottom. We have just seen in Canada the same kind of 
phenomenon where the people on the bottom said ``No, we're are not 
going to take it any more,'' and they swept out, they almost swept out 
a government that insisted that the only way they could make the 
economy work was by putting one more burden on the people on the 
bottom, taking away their benefits, lowering their wages, a worldwide 
movement to press down wages.
  We always favored globalization and thought of taking the American 
standard of living to the rest of the world. We were going to raise the 
standard of living of the world. We did not know that globalization 
meant that we were going to have wages brought down to the lowest 
common denominator.
  We can measure this process in the trade balance, the deficit with 
China, in terms of trade, the deficit with Mexico. We can measure the 
amount of jobs they are taking, the dollar value and the amount of jobs 
they are taking. It is not so subtle. Our folks need to begin to 
understand this, and unfortunately we evidently are never going to have 
the help of the mass media, so we have to keep the crusade to educate 
the American public going on.
  Mr. Speaker, I will stop at this point because I want to talk about a 
new factor that has entered into this process, and that is, you push 
the welfare recipient into the labor market and they are supposed to 
work at less than minimum wage. So that is a new pressure, in addition 
to telling the worker, ``If you don't shape up, if you join a union, if 
you do anything I don't like, I'm going to take your job to Mexico.'' 
These are to welfare recipients at less than minimum wage, so that is a 
double threat.
  Mr. BONIOR. Mr. Speaker, I thank my colleague for his contribution. 
That is an important theme. It is really unconscionable when we think 
about what is happening here. Yes, sure, we want people to work, but we 
will not even pay them a minimum wage to work, we will not even give 
them the dignity of a decent wage. That is what is happening.
  As I stated a little earlier in my comments, workers are not even 
safe with a minimum wage job if they live on the border near Mexico. 
People in El Paso, TX who were making $4.75 an hour are now losing 
their jobs to Mexico.
  So this effort on the part of governments, per the gentleman's 
comments with respect to people moving off welfare and not being able 
to get a decent wage for the work they do, and the international, 
multinational effort to drive wages to the bottom, I mean it is amazing 
what is going on here, and people are picking it up. I mean there is 
something happening out there. It is slow, but people are figuring it 
out when they are working two and three jobs to make ends meet; when 
they get another job after they have been laid off and only at 60 
percent of what they have been making; when we are seeing, as the 
gentleman currently points out, looking at the elections, by the way, 
last week.

                              {time}  2100

  I was sitting there. The NDP, the New Democratic Party, did very 
well. They doubled their number of seats in the Parliament last night, 
and a lot of that was based upon these faulty trade globalization 
policies. Of course, as we know, in France, the people in France were 
not willing to put up with this unfettered free market with no 
responsibility to the social cost to people. People are starting to 
understand that there needs to be some mechanism to stop this 
unfettered globalization from eating people up and eating all the gains 
we have made over the last number of years.
  I yield to the gentlewoman from Ohio [Ms. Kaptur], who has some 
charts I think she wants to share with us this.
  Ms. KAPTUR. Mr. Speaker, I want to compliment and thank the gentleman 
from Michigan [Mr. Dave Bonior] for being so vigilant and having these 
special orders to help educate our Members and the American people to 
what is happening with trade agreements, jobs and wages in this 
country.
  I am honored to join the gentleman from New York [Mr. Major Owens], 
my classmate from the class of 1988, and also the gentleman from Ohio 
[Mr. Dennis Kucinich] who we are so pleased to have here, and my good 
friend, the gentleman from Vermont [Mr. Bernie Sanders] who has been 
our partner in these efforts over the years. I think, as the gentleman 
from Michigan has said, we have made headway with the American people, 
though we still have not made sufficient headway here in Washington, 
but it is improving. We are making progress.
  I just wanted to present a couple of pictures here that I took myself 
on a trip that we took to Mexico to point out what is really at issue 
here. We are talking about the ratcheting down of wages and working 
conditions in our country.
  This is one of the companies, it is called Gigante Verde in Mexico, 
but it is Green Giant as we know it here in this country, a company 
that moved lots of jobs out of California. We are talking about the 
wage issue.
  If Members look down here, they moved to Irapuato from Watsonville, 
CA; hundreds of jobs lost in California, where the workers earn $7.61 
an hour in California. It is a State that has a pretty high-living 
standard. It is expensive. Seven dollars and 61 cents an hour is not a 
whole lot. In Irapuato, however,

[[Page H3262]]

Green Giant, which ships all that product back here, because it is 
frozen and we have freezers here, and the average homemaker in Mexico 
does not, they pay $4 a day to their workers there.
  The draw is obvious: Production moving in the agriculture sector out 
of California into Mexico, workers in the processing plants paid much 
less than in this country, and Green Giant making huge profits.
  The next chart, or it is actually a photo that I took, I had to take 
it with three pictures because it was so large, this is one of the 
companies that moved from New York. We will go to the other part of the 
United States. Trico Corp. makes windshield wiper blades.
  This is a picture of the plant relocated from Buffalo into one of the 
maquiladora areas in northern Mexico. I do not think, unless a citizen 
has traveled to Mexico and has seen the vastness of these plants, they 
have any idea of the kind of transplantation that is occurring of 
United States production down to Mexico; and it is not just the United 
States, but it is international corporations of all stripes going to 
the cheapest wage havens of the world.
  Mr. BONIOR. They are modern plants, they are huge facilities and they 
are very modern, as we can see.
  Ms. KAPTUR. Completely modern. But if you go with a worker that works 
in this plant to where they live, it is an abomination. The people who 
work in these plants do not earn sufficient wages to buy anything they 
make. Their streets are not good enough to drive cars, anyway. They are 
bused into these locations, largely women workers. Seventy to 75 
percent of the people working in this plant are women workers who earn 
maybe $1, $1.20 an hour compared to what the workers in Buffalo used to 
make.
  None of that production is used by the people of Mexico. It is sent 
back here on vehicles that are assembled down there. One of the largest 
components of the trade deficit are assembled vehicles now, cars and 
trucks that are coming back to the United States.
  The last chart, and this is sort of the frosting on the cake, but it 
makes me so angry I sometimes cannot contain myself, this is the street 
sign next to that plant. It is called Calle Ohio, Calle Michigan. They 
have actually renamed the street. You feel like you are living in a 
surreal world of Hollywood, where they just move the street signs 
around. It is the intersection of Ohio and Michigan Avenues. The 
problem is it is a maquiladora in Mexico, and the workers there have 
none of the rights of the workers in Ohio and in Michigan to earn a 
decent living, to earn decent benefits.
  Mr. KUCINICH. Mr. Speaker, I think I figured out why they call it 
Calle Ohio, anyhow, Ohio Street; because listen to the cities in Ohio 
who have lost jobs to NAFTA: Bethesda; Bucyrus; Cambridge; Canal 
Winchester; Columbus; Dayton; Delaware; Galion; Green; Greenfield; 
Greenville; Grove City; Hebron; Kent; Marion; North Baltimore; Piqua; 
Prospect; Sidney; Strongsville; Tipp City; Troy; Willard; and 
Zanesville. Calle Ohio, indeed.
  Ms. KAPTUR. We could go and find those companies down there. In fact, 
we need lots of missions by church groups and interested organizations 
around our country connecting the workers who have lost their jobs in 
this country and then going and finding those jobs. Remember the games 
we used to play as children, you would follow the string? We need to 
follow the string, whether it is Vermont, Ohio, California, Florida.
  I wanted to place another company in the Record tonight that started 
layoffs this May, just this past month, in the State of Massachusetts, 
Osram Corp. And when the gentleman from Michigan talked about global 
production and global sourcing, this company is owned by Sieman's Corp. 
out of Germany. They are laying off an initial 160 workers at this 
company in Danvers, MA, starting this past May, just last month, and 
they do not know how many more they are going to lay off, but they are 
moving the workers to Juarez, which is in one of the maquiladora areas, 
and to Mexico City.
  If I could just take 1 extra minute to read from one of the articles 
in the local weekly newspaper up in Massachusetts, it says that the 
layoffs are significant because they mark the first time NAFTA has 
impacted the labor force north of Boston. The President of the company 
said that it had a relationship to NAFTA, which was approved by 
Congress 4 years ago, but here is what he says in the article.
  He says that aggressive pushes by competitors General Electric and 
Philips BV of the Netherlands into Mexico, where labor is cheap and 
environmental laws lax, forced Sylvania to reexamine labor costs. He 
says, ``My competitors are selling products at prices lower than my 
costs.'' And at that particular plant workers earn $13 an hour, while 
workers in Mexico earn less than $2 an hour. So they can rake off a lot 
more profits, whether the multinational is based in Germany and has a 
subsidiary in Massachusetts, or whether it is located in Ohio and it 
moves down to Mexico, or to any low-wage haven. That is really what we 
are fighting for.

  Mr. BONIOR. It is not just the low wages, as the gentlewoman has just 
mentioned. They go down there, and you know, $13 up here, and they pay 
less than $2 to workers down there, and they do not have to do anything 
about the environmental standards.
  The American Medical Association, a conservative organization by I 
think anyone's standards, labeled the maquiladora area as a cesspool of 
infectious disease. That is their words. These multinational 
corporations do not have the decency to put in sewers, clean water, the 
infrastructure that is needed for people that make their products, that 
make that company work down there, to live decently. That is another 
piece of the tragedy of all of this.
  Mr. SANDERS. Mr. Speaker, if I may, the outrage, while all of this 
goes on, while they do not have enough money to clean up the 
environment, I was down in Mexico and we talked to women who were 
having miscarriages because they were working in such unhealthy 
environments. Children were being born with major birth defects.
  They do not have the money to do that, but they do have the money to 
pay their CEO's 54 percent more this year than last year. They do have 
the money to hire all kinds of lobbyists to come here to Washington to 
tell Members of Congress how good this policy is that makes the rich 
richer and everybody else poorer.
  They do have the money to put ads in newspapers all over America 
telling us how we have to cut back on Medicare and Medicaid and 
education and give tax breaks to the rich as part of a budget agreement 
several years ago. They suddenly have the money for those things, but 
when working people in this country and in Mexico ask for decent wages, 
gee, there is just no money available. I think this is the untold story 
of the last 30 years.
  What saddens me very much is the corporate media, which is owned by 
these very same people, is not going to tell the story, but what we are 
seeing is a situation of unparalleled greed in the modern history of 
this country, where the people on top are making huge amounts of money, 
pushing down the American workers, pushing down the Mexican workers, 
forcing people to compete against each other, destroying the 
environment so they can sit up with their billions and billions of 
dollars. It is an outrage, and it is an outrage that this Congress has 
not effectively dealt with that issue.
  Mr. OWENS. Mr. Speaker, the corporate greed we are seeing has 
absolutely no common sense. What history has clearly demonstrated over 
the past 50, 75 years is that the locomotive, the engine of the 
locomotive that drives the economy of America, and the American economy 
drives the economy of the whole world, is the middle-class consumer. 
Who are the middle-class consumers but the workers who earn decent 
wages in the factories?
  Henry Ford did not automatically understand it, but he got around to 
understanding that folks need to have higher wages in order to buy my 
cars. It is only a matter of time. Nobody believes that what we have in 
motion is going to kill our economy, but it is only a matter of time 
when, as the rich get richer on top and they take away the power of the 
consumers in the middle and the bottom, there will not be anybody to 
buy these products and the great engine of the locomotive will go dead, 
and we will all be in a morass in terms of the economy.

[[Page H3263]]

  The common sense of the American people has to come into this 
situation. Millionaires want to be billionaires. Billionaires want to 
be multi-billionaires. It is greed totally out of control and greed 
that is going to be self-destructive. They are going to destroy 
themselves as well as the whole American economy.
  Mr. KUCINICH. Mr. Speaker, human rights is not just an international 
issue, something we should be concerned about happening in other 
countries. Human rights is a domestic issue, too. If someone does not 
have a job, if someone does not have decent wages, if someone cannot 
have decent benefits to protect their family's health, if people cannot 
get a good education, if they do not have rights on the job, their 
human rights are undermined. That is why these trade issues, GATT, 
NAFTA, most favored nation, all have relevancy to this country, because 
it is about our human economic rights in America.
  We need to be, and it is good that we are, Congressmen and 
Congresswomen, standing up for the American people and for their 
economic rights and insisting that the human economic rights of the 
people in this country need to be protected, and we do that every time 
we raise questions, as we are doing this evening.
  Mr. SANDERS. In terms of human rights what I get a kick out of is not 
so many years ago we were told that China was a Communist authoritarian 
society where people did not have any rights, where people did not have 
religious freedom. Unless I am not hearing what is going on, not only 
have things not changed, they have gotten worse.
  The State Department last year announced that the situation in China 
in terms of human rights is worse. With over 1 billion people, they 
said there are no dissenters. In all of China, nobody, not one person, 
according to the State Department, is out on the street able to dissent 
against their authoritarian country.
  But what has changed in America? What changed in America is corporate 
America has said, gee, maybe that is not such a bad place to do 
business. Hey, why were we attacking these people? No unions, no 
freedom to stand up and fight back? Sounds like a good place to do 
business.
  So where 20 years ago we were told how terrible Red China is, 
suddenly these same corporations are now spending millions of dollars 
to convince us that it is really a very fine place and it is a 
wonderful place to do business. What better place can you have? You pay 
people 20 cents an hour. If they stand up and fight back they are 
fired, put in jail. You have slave labor over there in the prisons. 
What a good place to do business. Let us continue MFN with China, say 
our corporate friends.
  Fortunately, some of us do not agree with that.
  Mr. BONIOR. I thank my colleague. I think that is a good summation to 
end with tonight. I thank the Speaker for his patience with us this 
evening, and his indulgence in the last minute or so. I thank all of my 
colleagues for coming this evening and sharing their thoughts. We look 
forward to continuing this debate.

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