[Congressional Record Volume 143, Number 108 (Monday, July 28, 1997)]
[Senate]
[Pages S8173-S8174]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                       FAST-TRACK TRADE AUTHORITY

  Mr. DORGAN. Madam President, because the Senate has very little 
business today, I wanted to come to the floor to talk about the 
universal service fund issue. But because we don't have much else to 
do, I need to unburden myself on a couple of other issues.
  This deals with a subject discussed by my colleague from Montana, 
Senator Baucus, on the issue of trade. He was discussing one small 
issue with respect to China and the WTO. I want to talk about another 
issue that is going to be the subject of substantial debate in the 
month of September. When we get back from the August recess, which 
Congress will take, we are told that the administration will request 
from this Congress something called fast-track authority for trade 
negotiations.
  Fast-track authority, again, is a term that doesn't mean much, 
perhaps, to most. Everything with fast seems to me to connote something 
that is kind of interesting. There is fast food, fast talk, fast track. 
It all kind of connotes doing something unusual, not taking time to 
prepare. Fast track means that somebody can go negotiate a trade 
agreement someplace, bring it back to Congress, and once they bring it 
to Congress nobody in Congress has the right to offer amendments. That 
is fast track. To me that is undemocratic. But it is called fast track.

  We have negotiated several trade agreements under fast track. All of 
them have been abysmal failures, terrible failures. We were told that 
we should grant fast track authority once again so our trade 
negotiators can go abroad and negotiate new trade agreements with other 
countries.
  Let me review for just a moment what this has gotten us, and why I 
and some others in this Chamber intend in September to come and 
aggressively oppose both the President and those in this Chamber who 
want to extend fast-track trade authority. We asked for fast-track 
trade authority for negotiating a trade agreement with Mexico, our 
neighbor to the south. Do you know that just before we negotiated a 
trade agreement with Mexico under fast track that we had a trade 
surplus with Mexico? In other words, our trade balance was to our 
favor--not much, but a trade surplus. So we negotiated a trade 
agreement with Mexico.
  Guess what happens? Now we have an enormous trade deficit with 
Mexico. What has happened to American jobs? They go to Mexico.
  Do you know that we import more cars from Mexico into the United 
States of America than the United States exports to all of the rest of 
the world? Think of that. We import more cars from Mexico to our 
country than we export to the rest of the world. We were told that if 
we would just do this trade deal with Mexico, all it would mean is that 
the products of low-skilled labor would come into this country from 
Mexico but certainly not high-skilled labor.
  What comes from Mexico? Cars, car parts, electronics--exactly the 
opposite kinds of products given the assurances that we were given when 
the deal was done with Mexico. I didn't support the North American 
Free-Trade Agreement--this so-called free-trade agreement with Mexico. 
They attached a free-trade handle to this agreement. That is another 
name thing--free trade; free lunch. There is no free lunch. The fact is 
there is nothing free about free trade.
  You would think our trade negotiators ought to be able to go out and 
negotiate a trade agreement that we would win from time to time. Why is 
it that our trade negotiators seem to lose every trade agreement that 
they enter into?
  Then there is Canada. We had a free-trade agreement with Canada. Now 
the trade deficit with Canada has gotten much worse. We have a peculiar 
and difficult circumstance with our Canadian border up in the North 
Dakota area with the flood of unfairly subsidized Canadian grain coming 
south across our border.
  How about Japan or China? We have massive trade deficits every single 
year with these countries. And the trade deficit doesn't diminish. It 
doesn't get smaller. It doesn't improve. These trade deficits are 
abiding deficits every single year.
  What does it mean to our country when you have a long-term trade 
deficit? With China it has gone from $10 million up to $40 billion in a 
dozen years. As a result, our country has become a cash cow for China's 
hard currency needs. It is fundamentally unfair to our workers in our 
country, and it is unfair to our factories and our producers in our 
country.
  People say, ``Well, but those of you who do not like these trade 
agreements, you just do not understand. You do not have the breadth and 
the ability to see across the horizon. You do not see the world view 
here.'' What we do see is this country's interests.
  I am all for expanding our trade. I am all for fair trade. But I will 
be darned if we ought to stand in this country for a trade 
relationship--the one we have with Japan, the one we have with China, 
the one we have with Mexico, or Canada for that matter, and others--
that allows our producers and our workers to be put in a position where 
they cannot compete against unfair trade.
  We cannot and should not have to compete in any circumstance with any

[[Page S8174]]

country that produces a product using 14-year-old kids working 14 hours 
a day, being paid 14 cents an hour, and then ships their product to 
Toledo, Fargo, Denver, and San Francisco. Then we are told, ``You 
compete with that, America. You compete with that.'' We shouldn't have 
to compete with that.
  When we put people in our factories, we have a child labor law. When 
we put people in our factories, we have a minimum wage. When our people 
work in our factories, we have air pollution laws against polluting air 
and against polluting water.
  Then a producer says to us, ``Well, that is fine if you want to do 
that. If you want to protect children, pay a decent wage and protect 
your air and water, we will go elsewhere. We will produce elsewhere. We 
will produce in China, Sri Lanka, Bangladesh, and Mexico. We will 
produce elsewhere where we are not nearly as encumbered by the niceties 
of production such as child labor laws or minimum wages.'' We shouldn't 
have to put up with that.
  The point I am making is this: Those who come to us in September and 
say, ``Give us fast-track trade authority so we can go out and 
negotiate new trade agreements,'' ought to understand that some of us 
believe that you ought to correct the old trade agreements you have 
first. You ought to correct the problems that are causing massive 
deficits with Mexico, massive trade deficits with China, and massive 
deficits with Japan.
  I am not saying that we want to close our markets to them. Instead we 
need to be saying to them, ``When you want to buy things, then you buy 
from us.'' We say to China, ``If you have a $40 billion trade deficit 
with us, when you want to buy airplanes, you buy them from us. When you 
want to buy wheat, you come shop in this country.''
  Instead, China shops around the world for wheat. When it needs 
airplanes, it says to one major American airplane company, ``By the 
way, we would like to buy your airplanes, but we want you to 
manufacture them in China.''
  That doesn't work. It is not fair trade. It is not the way the trade 
system ought to work.
  Those of us who feel that way in September are going to be here on 
the floor saying fast-track trade authority ought not be extended. What 
we ought to do to the extent that we have the energy is to fix the 
trade problems that now exist--yes, in NAFTA, in GATT, and in bilateral 
trade relationships with Japan and China and others. That is the job we 
should be doing. Congress has the responsibility to insist the 
administration does it, and Congress itself needs to be involved in 
doing it.
  I know what will happen when we do that in September when the 
administration asks for fast-track authority and some of us stand up 
and say, ``Wait a second; we wonder whether this is in the interests of 
our country.'' We will have people immediately jump up and say, ``Yes, 
you people are against free trade. You are a bunch of xenophobic, 
isolationist stooges who simply don't understand this world now is a 
smaller world. We from day to day and minute to minute have trade 
relationships with each other all around the globe, and you don't 
understand that. You never have gotten it, and you don't get it now.'' 
We hear those discussions virtually always when we raise the question 
of trade.
  On the other hand, I think maybe those who view us in such a cavalier 
way will have to deal with the insistence of some of us that we finally 
must as a country insist on fair trade relationships. Perhaps they will 
begin to understand these abiding and long-term trade deficits. 
Incidentally, the largest trade deficits in the history of our country 
are occurring now. We currently have the largest merchandise trade 
deficits in our history. Maybe they will come to understand that these 
trade deficits will retard this country's long-term economic growth and 
hurt this country and we must do something about them.
  There is great anxiety in this Chamber--and has been for a long 
while--about the budget deficit. We have made enormous progress in 
reducing that budget deficit. But there has not been a whisper in this 
Chamber about suggesting we do something about the largest trade 
deficit in American history. That trade deficit relates to jobs, 
economic opportunities, and the future of this country as well. It is 
long past the time when we do something about it.

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