[Congressional Record Volume 143, Number 103 (Monday, July 21, 1997)]
[Senate]
[Pages S7748-S7752]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                      FAST-TRACK TRADING AUTHORITY

  Mr. DORGAN. Mr. President, I want to visit today on the floor of the 
Senate about something that will come to the Senate, according to what 
I read in all the journals and newspaper articles, in the month of 
September. This will be a request from the Clinton administration to 
the Congress to give them something called fast-track trade authority.
  This poster behind me will tell my colleagues of course how I feel 
about fast track. There will not be any great suspense by those who 
look at this poster to understand that I think fast-track trade 
authority is the wrong track for this country. I want to spend a little 
time talking about what fast track is. I expect most people in the 
country are unfamiliar with the term. What is fast-track trading 
authority? And why are we debating it?
  Just the words ``fast track'' tell a story. We all come from towns 
that have understood what the word ``fast'' means. We have all had some 
folks come through our town with the modern-day equivalent of the old 
covered wagon and the fellow wearing silk pants and a silk shirt and a 
top hat, selling some sort of bottled medicine that cures everything 
from hiccups to the gout--the fast talker, fast-buck artist. We know 
about fast food and fast lanes.
  This is fast track. What does fast track mean? Congress under the 
U.S. Constitution has the authority on trade issues. I will put up a 
chart which shows that authority in the Constitution. Fast track means 
that Congress will take its authority and essentially subjugate its 
authority to a process by which an administration will go out and 
negotiate a trade agreement and then bring it back to Congress with an 
understanding that there shall not be any amendments on the agreement. 
Fast track means that every Member of Congress will be prevented from 
offering an amendment to the trade agreement.
  The Constitution of the United States in article 1, section 8 says, 
``The

[[Page S7749]]

Congress shall have the power . . . to regulate commerce with foreign 
nations.'' Interpreted, it means that the responsibility for the issue 
of trade resides here in the Congress. We also have an executive branch 
and a President and an office of Trade Ambassador and others who go out 
and negotiate trade agreement with other countries.
  Of course, it is a different world now than it was. We have much more 
commerce, back and forth across the oceans, country to country, and 
across national borders. So then the question is, who wins and who 
loses in this trade? Some would have us believe that everyone wins in 
every circumstance.
  I was on an interview show last Thursday in downtown Washington, DC, 
with Jack Kemp. Jack Kemp has a view about trade, and he is a good 
friend of mine. I like Jack Kemp a lot, but his view of trade is, ``All 
trade is just fine, because everybody wins. Open it up and expand it 
and everybody wins.''
  However, that is not the case in international trade. There are 
winners and there are losers. Yes, expanded, freer, and more open trade 
is good for the world. There is no question about that. But trade rules 
that are fair are required in order that one country is not winning at 
the expense of the other country that is losing. I want to talk a 
little about that today and how that fits with my concern about the 
issue of fast track.
  Now, there are a lot of things that are right in this country at the 
moment. We have a country that tends almost inevitably to insist on 
talking about what is wrong. But, there are a lot of things right in 
this country. Our economy is growing. It has been growing for some long 
while. Unemployment is down, way down. Inflation is down, way down, 5 
years in a row, and is almost nonexistent. The Federal budget deficit 
is down, and has been for 5 years in a row.
  The fact is, there is some good economic news in this country. People 
feel better about the future. Our economy rests on a cushion of 
confidence. When people are confident about the future, they make 
decisions that reflect that confidence. They will buy a car. They will 
buy a house, buy a washing machine, or buy a television set. If they 
are not confident about the future, they make the opposite choice. They 
decide not to purchase that washing machine or that car or that house. 
So our economy rests on a notion of confidence.
  Do people have confidence about the future? At this point they do 
have more confidence about the future than they had in the past. It is 
because most of the fundamentals about our economy are moving in the 
right direction with one exception, and that is the area of 
international trade.
  People look to this country and say, well, gee, in international 
trade, America is remarkably successful. It is not. Two centuries ago, 
this country was known as a country of shrewd Yankee traders. We could 
outtrade anybody anywhere any time, the shrewd Yankee traders from that 
new United States of America. What happened?
  What happened was that in the last half century, following the Second 
World War, our trade policy inevitably became our foreign policy. We 
did not have a trade policy; we had a foreign policy with other 
countries. That foreign policy drove all of the trade decisions we 
made--with Japan, with Europe, with all of our trading partners.
  Our trade policy was driven by our foreign policy. At the time, of 
course, we were bigger, stronger, and had greater capability of dealing 
in international trade. We could whip almost any of these countries 
with one arm tied behind our back. That is how strong our economy was 
compared to a Japanese economy that was wrecked by World War II, a 
European economy that was wrecked by World War II and in tatters and 
trying to rebuild. We could compete easily. We could provide 
concessions to every one of those countries, even giant concessions at 
that, and we did. Despite the fact that we did that, in the first 25 
years after the Second World War, we saw continual wage gains in this 
country up and up and up, and we did very, very well.
  But then what happened was Japan and the Western European economies 
were rebuilt and became very strong. And, they became shrewd, tough, 
international competitors. Meanwhile, our trade policy with them was 
still driven by our foreign policy.
  With Japan, we began to become accustomed to deficits in 
international trade relations every single year. In recent years these 
have amounted to $40 to $50 billion, and even $60 billion a year trade 
deficits with Japan, every single year. The same has been true with 
some of our other trading partner relationships.
  Now in recent times we have had a series of trade negotiations, some 
of them under what is called the fast-track procedure. After every 
trade negotiation we have had days of feasting and rejoicing by those 
who negotiated them. They talked about how wonderful the agreements 
were for America, but at the conclusion of it our trade deficit kept 
growing and growing and growing.
  There has been angst in this Chamber, an enormous amount of 
discussion about the other deficit, the fiscal policy budget deficit, 
and it is a very serious problem. Fortunately, we have made significant 
progress in dealing with it.
  Yet, the deficit called the trade deficit does not provoke one 
utterance in this Chamber. No one talks about it, no one thinks much 
about it, and no one appears willing to lift a finger to do anything 
about it. I will show my colleagues and those watching these 
proceedings what has happened to the trade deficit. The merchandise 
trade deficit, that is, the imbalance or the deficit between what we 
ship into this country versus what we ship out, is this year 21 years 
old. We have had 21 straight years of trade deficits growing worse and 
worse every year. It is now of legal age, since we have had 21 years of 
trade deficits.
  Last year, we had the largest merchandise trade deficit in this 
country's history. Does it matter? Some say it does not. Some say it 
just does not matter at all. It means that we are importing cheap goods 
from around the world and so someone else has the American dollars that 
we paid for those goods.
  What will they do with these dollars? They will invest them in 
America. That is what they say. I suppose that suggests it does not 
matter who owns the productive facilities of our country or the real 
estate of our country or who owns much of the assets of our country. I 
don't happen to believe that, but I suppose some probably say it does 
not matter. There are those who believe it is an international economy, 
let the chips fall where they may, and if you cannot compete, you 
cannot compete.
  The dilemma is this: The U.S. producer and the U.S. employer can 
compete with anyone in this world as long as the competition is fair. 
But no U.S. worker and no U.S. employer ought to be required to compete 
against someone who works 14 hours a day, is 14 years old, and makes 14 
cents an hour. Yet this goes on all across the world, as I speak.

  Is that fair competition? Should we expect someone in Toledo, Fargo, 
Denver, or Los Angeles to have to compete against 14-cent-an-hour 
wages? I don't think so. I don't think anyone actually believes that 
represents fair trade.
  Should we be expected to compete against a country that insists on 
shipping its goods in wholesale quantity to our country but keeps its 
market closed to the goods produced by American workers? I don't think 
so. That is not fair trade.
  Now, as a result of a number of those considerations, and others, we 
have a trade deficit that continues to grow. Fast track is a process 
that started back a couple of decades ago of negotiating trade 
agreements under a procedure called fast track so that no one could 
amend the trade agreement when it came back to Congress.
  Look what has happened under fast track. There is nothing but a sea 
of red ink. Is it because of fast track? I don't know. All I know is 
that within trade agreements there are serious problems. For example, 
the one we have with Canada results in a massive, massive problem with 
a flood of Canadian grain coming into our country unfairly and we 
cannot do a thing about it. We seem powerless to deal with it.
  I voted against the United States-Canada Free Trade Agreement because 
I thought it was negotiated in a way that was fundamentally unfair to 
our country. I thought the negotiators effectively sold out the 
interests of

[[Page S7750]]

American agriculture in negotiating that trade agreement. Now, we find 
ourselves now with a growing trade deficit with Canada, and an 
avalanche of Canadian grain flooding into our country, undercutting the 
price that farmers in our country received from an already weak grain 
market. Is that fair? I don't think it is fair.
  Let's take a look at NAFTA, the United States-Canada Free Trade 
Agreement, the Uruguay round of GATT talks, the Tokyo round, all under 
fast track. What happens under fast track is that we negotiate a Tokyo 
round, bring it to Congress, shove it through the Congress, and say you 
have no right in Congress to amend it.
  Now, Congress decided that it should have no right to amend it. That 
is what fast track is all about. There was fast track with the United 
States-Canada Free Trade Agreement. Shove it through Congress, with no 
right to amend it. None. Then there was NAFTA, the North American Free 
Trade Agreement, which includes Mexico--Congress had no right to amend 
it. I led the fight against fast track on this particular agreement 
when I was in the House of Representatives. We lost by about 30 or 40 
votes. Then the Uruguay round comes to Congress. There was no right to 
amend it because fast track means that whatever they negotiate you have 
to accept up or down, with no amendments.
  The bars on this chart represent the merchandise trade deficits that 
we have had since these trade agreements were adopted through the use 
of fast track. Can anyone in this country who has not had a fifth of 
Wild Turkey take a look at these and say that this is success? You have 
to be dead drunk to believe this is a success. This is an abysmal 
failure. Part of it, in my judgment, comes from fast track. This is a 
process that says to negotiators, go out and negotiate and do what you 
want to do and bring it back, and then we will have a procedure in 
place that prevents any Member of Congress from correcting a mistake 
you might have made. This is not success. This ocean of red ink 
represents failure.
  Let me take a closer look at one of them in particular, the NAFTA 
agreement. The NAFTA agreement is a trade agreement that we negotiated 
with Canada and Mexico together. We already had the United States-
Canada Free Trade Agreement. We rolled that into a broader agreement 
which included Mexico with NAFTA. Just prior to the time the NAFTA 
trade agreement was implemented, we had an $11 billion merchandise 
trade deficit with Canada and a $2 billion merchandise trade surplus 
with Mexico.
  Look at what has happened to this country since this agreement was 
phased in: The deficit with Canada has gone from $11 billion to $14 
billion to $18 billion to $23 billion. Success? You would have to be 
dead drunk to call that a success. That is not a success. That is a 
failure.

  With Mexico, we had a $1 billion surplus in the first year of the 
trade agreement under NAFTA. The next year, we had a $15 billion 
deficit. The next year, it was a $16 billion deficit. In other words, 
we now have a nearly $40 billion combined trade deficit with both of 
our neighbors.
  So what does it matter, some say. ``So what? Things are going fine. 
So what?'' What it means is that in the past 21 years, we have 
accumulated close to a $2 trillion account deficit that will have to be 
repaid with a lower standard of living in this country at some point in 
the future. So what? So it means that we are inevitably weakening the 
production and the manufacturing sectors of this country. No country 
will long remain a world-class economy unless it has a world-class 
manufacturing sector. If it does not have a strong manufacturing base, 
it will not retain a strong world-class economy. You cannot have a 
strong economy just selling hamburgers and insurance and so on, back 
and forth to one another; you must have a strong manufacturing base.
  Now, let me describe a bit about what has happened with the free 
trade agreement. We were told that if the Congress passed something 
called NAFTA with Canada and Mexico that we would receive products that 
came from low-skilled jobs from Mexico. We were told that as a result 
of NAFTA, we would have more American jobs because of the trade 
agreement. Do you know that now, after a few years of NAFTA, we have 
more automobiles shipped into this country, produced in Mexico, than 
are shipped from America to the rest of the world?

  Let me say that again because I bet most people don't believe that to 
be the case. Now that we have opened these borders and we have allowed 
the largest enterprises in this country to go find the cheapest labor 
they can find, we now import more automobiles from Mexico than the 
United States exports to the rest of the world combined.
  Think about that. Why does all this matter? It matters because the 
manufacturing sector in this country is critical to an economy that is 
based on good jobs with good incomes. If we are going to produce shoes, 
pencils, automobiles, electronics products, and we are going to do that 
in Mexico, in Bangladesh, in Sri Lanka, in Indonesia, because we can 
hire a worker in those areas at a fraction of the cost of what it would 
require us to pay to hire a worker in the United States, what does that 
mean? It means production moves offshore. Our production moves 
overseas. What does that mean to the core of the economy in this 
country? It is weakened.
  The central question I ask about these trade relationships is whether 
it is fair trade? Is it fair trade for a company to be able to just 
pole vault over all of the problems in this country that they have in 
producing? For example, the problem of having to overcome a prohibition 
against hiring kids. We say in this country that you can't go hire a 
12-year-old kid and work him 12 hours a day. That violates the Child 
Labor Act in this country. We say, you can't produce a product and dump 
chemicals into the air and throw chemicals into the water because we 
have environmental laws that prevent you from doing that. So that 
company can say, fine, if you say we can't hire kids, we can't dump 
chemicals and sewage into the water and air, we will go to a country 
where we can. We will produce it there and ship it back to Fargo and to 
Buffalo and we will ship it to Dallas and put it on the shelves of the 
stores to compete with products made in the United States, where you 
have had to pay higher wages and you have had to obey child labor laws 
and you have had to obey environmental laws.
  I question, is that fair trade? I don't think so. Yet, that is 
exactly what we are facing. Yes, we face it even close to our border, 
but especially in many other places around the world.
  We have a trade deficit in which 92 percent of the merchandise trade 
deficit is with six countries: Japan, with nearly $50 billion; China, 
$40 billion; Canada and Mexico with another $40 billion; and Germany.
  I was in China last November and met with the President of China and 
talked about our trade relationship. I have no idea whether I made any 
impact. He was a wonderful person. China has a terrific deal with this 
country. We talk a lot about most-favored-nation status here in this 
Chamber. We had a vote on it last week. I didn't think we should vote 
on that within an appropriations bill without any significant debate, 
so I voted against that amendment. But I specifically indicated that 
that wasn't a vote for me on the substance of the MFN issue. I think we 
ought to have a vote and a significant debate on most-favored-nation 
status for China.
  But let me say this. We talk a lot about most-favored-nation status 
and about human rights. Certainly human rights is very important. The 
week I was in China, a fellow--I believe his name was Wang Dan--was 
sentenced to 9 years in prison for criticizing the government. Those 
human rights are important.
  At the same there is something else that is also important. What 
about a country that is exponentially increasing its trade surplus with 
this country? We have become a cash cow for the hard currency needs of 
China. Again, it weakens us and strengthens them. They ship us their 
goods. In fact, almost half the Chinese exports come to the United 
States of America, and yet, we get so few goods into China.

  We ought to say to China, to Japan, to Canada, and to others, that we 
expect and demand reciprocal and fair trade treatment, and if you don't 
give it to us, the United States marketplace

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is not open to you. The U.S. marketplace is open to you if you treat us 
fairly. Yes, we are willing to compete. We should be required to 
compete. But the competition ought to be fair. If it is not, then we 
ought to have the nerve and the will to stand up to these countries and 
say it is not fair to this country. And, it is not fair to American 
workers and to American producers either.
  In September, when we have a debate on fast track, I am going to be 
on the floor fighting as hard as I know how to fight to prevent us from 
granting fast-track authority for new trade talks. Do I support the 
trade officials? Yes, I want them to succeed. I want them to negotiate 
something that they can win for a change. I am really tired of us 
losing in international trade talks.
  Let me give you some specifics. Last Saturday morning, in Minot, ND, 
I met with a group of grain producers. These are family farmers, who 
raise Durum and spring wheat. They have one problem. On the horizon of 
trade problems, is this big or significant? Probably not, on the whole 
horizon. But to them it is it big. You bet. In many cases, it is a 
question of whether they survive and do they make it.
  Here is their problem. We had a fellow named Clayton Yeutter go to 
Canada and negotiate a trade agreement with the Canadians. I didn't 
vote for that. I said at the time that I thought it was a terribly 
flawed agreement. At that time, I didn't know of the side deal that had 
not been made public. That side deal that had been made with the 
Canadians was about how to compute whether or not there was a subsidy 
for grains. When that was made public, it just destroyed my faith in 
these kinds of negotiations.
  So now we find ourselves down the road some years from the United 
States-Canadian Free Trade Agreement and here's what we have. We have a 
Northern border with wonderful people. They are good neighbors of ours. 
We share a lot and we have a lot of commerce back and forth.
  However, in the area of grain, we have had a flood of grain coming 
across, especially Durum, since this agreement. For those who don't 
know what that is, let me explain. Durum is the wheat you grind into 
something called semolina flour and that is what you use to make 
macaroni and other pasta. Eighty percent of the Durum produced in 
America is produced in North Dakota. So if you are buying some noodles 
or elbow macaroni or spaghetti, you are likely buying something, if it 
is sourced in this country, that was raised somewhere in a field, or 
grew somewhere in a field in North Dakota. The Durum market is a very 
important market to our farmers.
  Well, we passed the United States-Canada Free Trade Agreement and all 
of a sudden, a flood of Canadian Durum came into our country, a literal 
flood of Canadian Durum and, following it, other wheat and barley. But 
you can't get much grain into Canada. I have told my colleagues before 
about the time that I got in a little orange truck with Earl Jensen, 
and we took Earl's orange truck up to the Canadian border with 200 
bushels of North Dakota Durum to try to get it into Canada. They said, 
``No, you can't go across the border here.''
  We had a woman from Bowman, ND, who lived in Canada. She married a 
Canadian and went home to Bowman for Thanksgiving, and she had a desire 
to bake some whole wheat bread. So she took a sack of hard red spring 
wheat--good for baking bread--and she couldn't take that back to 
Canada. This was at a time when over 50 million bushels of Canadian 
wheat was coming into our country. Truckload after truckload that were 
clogging our roads. This lady got to the border and wanted to take in 
one grocery sack full of wheat in order to make whole wheat bread. 
Guess where it ended up? Dumped on the ground because you can't take 
one grocery sack of wheat into Canada these days.
  Are our farmers angry about this? You're darn right. Do they have a 
right to be angry? Absolutely. They have a right to be furious about a 
trade relationship that is fundamentally unfair to our side. Now, can 
we get someone to fix it? We are trying. Mickey Kantor, a former Trade 
Ambassador, took the first step. The fact is that it got better for a 
time. But once again, this flood of wheat is exceeding the limits we 
had agreed to with Canada.

  I use that illustration only to say that this example is just but one 
of the examples of problems we have with trade issues that you can't 
solve anymore, because we pass trade agreements with something called 
fast track. Under fast track you can't fix them when they are here. You 
either have to vote yes or no, up or down, and the result is that these 
flawed agreements then become law. Those treaties or agreements are 
then wedded into American law and it prevents us from providing 
remedies for the trade problems that exist--yes, with Japan, with 
China, with Canada, with Mexico, and others.
  I think it is time for us to decide to put a stop to it. I think it 
is time for us to say to negotiators in trade that you go negotiate 
just as all of the other negotiators do. When we send someone abroad to 
negotiate arms agreements, they don't do so under fast track. We didn't 
have fast-track authority to prevent any amendments on the floor of the 
House or Senate on the nuclear arms reduction treaties that we had. 
There was no fast track there. Why on earth, if we don't need fast 
track on arms control agreements, do we need it on trade agreements? 
Are our trade negotiators so weak, so inept that somehow they need fast 
track when others don't?
  Last Friday, the Commerce Department released the statistics that 
describe what happened to our trade numbers for the month of May. It 
indicated that our trade deficit in goods, the merchandise trade 
deficit for the month of May, was $17 billion, just for the month of 
may. That is up from $15.5 billion in the month of April. The big news 
was that China's trade deficit exceeded Japan's trade deficit for the 
month, for the third time in history.
  These monthly statistics demonstrate another failure in trade. 
Unfortunately, it is greeted with a series of yawns here in the 
Congress and in this town. Were someone to try to put an op-ed piece 
in, for example, the Washington Post about this issue, they would say, 
no, thank you, they don't do those kinds of pieces. You can't have a 
debate about trade issues in this town, because too many believe there 
are only two sides of this issue. On one side there are those who say 
we are for free trade, free, expanded, and open trade, and that is good 
for the world. And they say everyone who doesn't subscribe to that is 
somehow an uninformed xenophobic stooge who wants to put walls around 
America. Those are the two camps that you are put into. You are either 
for free trade, period, or you are some sort of xenophobic, 
isolationist stooge. That is just a thoughtless way to deal with what I 
think is a significant problem for this country.
  This country needs to understand that our trade policy ought to 
disconnect from our foreign policy. Our trade policy in dealing with 
trade competitors who are savvy, tough, and shrewd, ought to be a 
policy that cares about the well-being of this country. I believe in 
open and expanded and more trade. I also demand that it be fair. If it 
is not fair, we ought to say to other countries, you either get it fair 
and allow entry to our products on a fair basis, or we are not going to 
continue this one-way relationship.
  This is not going back to some Smoot-Hawley notion of how we should 
trade. It is not calling for higher tariffs; nothing of the sort. It is 
demanding of other countries that we stop being mistreated. It is 
demanding of other countries that those who believe they can continue 
to access our marketplace must understand that their marketplace will 
have to be open as a consequence of that, and the failure to open it 
means that we will impose reciprocal trade treatment on our trading 
partners.
  Now, we are going to have a meeting in the next day or two with the 
United States Trade Ambassador and the Secretary of Agriculture to talk 
about the issues of United States-Canada grain. That is but one issue 
among these larger sets of issues, but nevertheless it is important. I 
hope that this issue doesn't continue to fester. I hope that this side, 
that this Government and this country, will say to the Canadians on the 
grain issue: You can't do that. We are not going to allow you to do 
that.
  But my experience has been, regrettably, over many years, that 
standing

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up for this country's interests has been the exception rather than the 
rule in trade issues. All too often our country backs away and says, 
well, we don't want to ruffle any feathers here. I am just a little 
tired of that.

  When China wants to buy airplanes, guess what? China is a huge market 
with 1.2 billion or so people, and they need to buy airplanes. So I am 
told that China comes to our country and says to us, ``Well, we need to 
buy some airplanes, and we don't manufacture airplanes. But instead of 
buying it from you, what we want you to do is bring your technology and 
produce it in China.''
  I don't understand that either. This country ought not be interested 
in that. When we have a country with a $40 billion trade surplus with 
us, or we a deficit with them, and they need something we have, then 
they ought to buy it from us off the shelf. China ought to buy more 
wheat from us. They ought to buy airplanes from us produced in this 
country with U.S. employees and from U.S. companies.
  We ought not to continue to allow our trading relationships to be 
foreign policy relationships. They ought to be economic relationships 
with tough, shrewd negotiators working out relationships where the 
rules are fair, where our employees and our producers can expect fair 
treatment and fair ability to compete.
  So, in September when the President brings to this Congress a request 
for fast-track trading authority, I intend to be on the floor of the 
Senate saying no. I have no idea how many of my colleagues will join 
me. I know for sure as I stand here today that those of us who do say 
no will be branded as some sort of isolationists. Those who do that are 
wrong and thoughtless, but they will do it.
  But I will insist that finally this country have the nerve and the 
will to stand up for itself and its interests. I believe that my 
children will inherit, just as they inherit the budget deficit, a trade 
deficit that means we will have a lower standard of living in this 
country unless we take action to deal with it and deal with it 
effectively.
  Let me conclude where I began. This country can compete on any terms 
anywhere in this world as long as the rules are fair. But we have not 
been able to satisfactorily conclude trade negotiations in recent 
decades in any reasonable way that gives us the feeling--or at least 
gives me the feeling--that we have succeeded.
  Time after time after time our trade negotiators celebrate after they 
have lost. They don't understand they have lost. I am not even sure 
they do when they see the red ink pile up and the growing, record 
merchandise trade deficit that now exists in this country.
  I hope that one day we can have a thoughtful and interesting debate 
about trade policy. It should not be between camps who think trade is 
good or bad. Everyone ought to believe that expanded world trade, 
provided the circumstances and rules of trade are fair, is good for 
this world. But everyone also ought to believe that when this country 
is taken advantage of with markets that are closed, rules that are 
unfair, and countries that employ child labor and pollute this Earth's 
environment, that is not fair trade and is not something we ever ought 
to have to subscribe to.
  Mr. President, once again, I expect September will be an interesting 
month and a challenging month on the issue of trade largely because of 
the debate on fast track. I intend to be back often to discuss this 
subject.
  Mr. President, I yield the floor and make a point of order that a 
quorum is not present.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will call the roll.
  The bill clerk proceeded to call the roll.
  Mr. SHELBY. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for 
the quorum call be rescinded.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr. Kyl). Without objection, it is so ordered. 
The Senator has 10 minutes under morning business.
  Mr. SHELBY. I thank the Chair.
  (The remarks of Mr. SHELBY pertaining to the introduction of S. 1040 
are located in today's Record under ``Statements on Introduced Bills 
and Joint Resolutions.'')

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