[Congressional Record Volume 143, Number 113 (Tuesday, September 2, 1997)]
[Senate]
[Pages S8648-S8650]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                       FAST TRACK TRADE AUTHORITY

  Mr. DORGAN. Madam President, I noted in a news report recently 
something which I have heard previously. The news reported that 
President Clinton and his administration will in just a matter of days 
from now, on September 10, send a legislative proposal to give 
President Clinton and this administration something called fast track 
trade authority.
  Now, that might sound like a foreign language to a lot of folks, but 
the notion of fast track trade authority is relatively simple. It is 
that trade negotiators shall negotiate trade agreements between the 
United States and other countries, then bring these trade agreements to 
the Congress, and they shall be considered in Congress under something 
called fast track procedures. That means no one here in the Congress is 
allowed to or will be able to offer amendments to alter that proposed 
trade agreement.
  That is what fast track means. It is a special deal for a trade 
agreement brought back to Congress so that all Members of Congress are 
prevented from offering amendments. Members of Congress will be allowed 
only to vote yes or no on the entire agreement.
  The Constitution of the United States in article I, section 8 says, 
``The Congress shall have the power to regulate Commerce with foreign 
Nations.''
  Yet, in recent decades we have developed this notion of fast track 
trade authority that has given both Republican and Democrat Presidents 
the opportunity to bring trade agreements to the Congress under a 
procedure that handcuffs Members of Congress and prevents them from 
offering any amendments at any time.
  I want to share why I think this is important and why I believe it is 
inappropriate to grant fast track trade authority to this 
administration. I should say that when I was in the House of 
Representatives, I led an effort in the Chamber of the House to prevent 
fast track trade authority being given to a previous administration as 
well.
  The Washington Post, in an article written by Ann Devroy, titled 
``Battle Lines Forming Over Clinton's Bid for Fast Track Trade 
Powers,'' states the Business Roundtable, among others, will work to 
help President Clinton get these fast track procedures in place by 
getting Congress to pass a proposal to give the President fast track 
powers. ``The job won't be easy,'' it says.
  It reports that the Business Roundtable has written in a letter to 
its members, ``The political climate for new trade agreements is not 
good. Organized labor, human rights groups, protectionists, 
isolationists and environmentalists are questioning the benefits of 
trade.''
  Now, I guess I don't fit any of these descriptions. I am not an 
isolationist. I am not a member of organized labor. I am not a member 
of a human rights group. I am not a protectionist. I am not a member of 
some environmental organization. I am not some xenophobe, and I am not 
someone from a small town who cannot see over the horizon. I studied a 
little economics. I even taught a little economics in college. I 
understand something about the trade issue.
  I understand that in international trade this country is not moving 
forward; it is falling back. We are not winning; we are losing. We 
ought not proceed to develop new trade agreements until we solve the 
problems of the old trade agreements. And I want to recite a few of 
those problems.
  This was an interesting article written by a journalist who is a very 
good journalist. But nowhere in this article in talking about trade 
authority--and this is the difficulty we have in this Chamber--does it 
point out that we will have the largest merchandise trade deficit in 
the history of this country. Nowhere does it point that out. How can 
you have a discussion of trade and fail to mention in the context of 
that discussion that we now suffer the largest trade deficit in the 
history of our country?
  I don't understand that. This is not theory. It is not some academic 
discussion. It is a discussion about whether we are going to proceed to 
give this administration the ability to have fast track authority for a 
new trade agreement they or trade agreements they will negotiate, and 
bring them to Congress and tie our hands so that no amendments may be 
offered.
  Some do not mind, I suppose, that we have the largest merchandise 
trade deficit in history. They say trade is trade. In fact, this 
article quotes the Business Roundtable as saying, ``Those who oppose 
this question the benefit of trade.''
  What a lot of nonsense that is. I don't question the benefit of 
trade. In fact, much of what we produce in my State, an agricultural 
State, must find a foreign home. I understand the benefits of trade. I 
also understand the benefits of trade that is fair and the benefits of 
trade relationships with other countries that are fair trade 
relationships. I also understand about being taken advantage of. I also 
understand about trade policies that have been more foreign policy than 
trade policy over the last half century.
  For the first 25 years following the Second World War, our trade 
policy was foreign policy. It had very little to do with trade. The 
fact was that this country was bigger, better, stronger and could 
outtrade and outproduce almost any other country in the world with one 
hand tied behind its back. So we could afford to exercise a foreign 
policy disguised as trade policy with dozens of our trading allies and 
still prevail. And it was just fine, at least in the first 25 years 
following the Second World War.
  During those first 25 years, incomes in this country continued to 
rise. However, in the second 25 years, we ran into some very shrewd, 
tough international competitors and it has not been as easy for us to 
compete unless the trade rules are fair. Unfortunately, the trade rules 
have not been fair because we have continued to negotiate trade 
agreements that are more foreign policy than trade policy. As a result 
we have trade agreements that are fundamentally unfair to American 
workers and American producers. I want to go through a few of these in 
this discussion.
  The first chart that I want to show is a chart about the merchandise 
trade deficit in our country. Nobody seems to care much about it here 
in the Congress. You don't hear people talking about it. There is 
always this angst about the budget deficit, and we have worked on that 
and finally have our fiscal house in some order. But there is no 
discussion at all about the other deficit, the merchandise trade 
deficit, which is a sea of red ink and growing every single year. In 
fact, we had the largest merchandise trade deficit in American history 
last year, and we are most likely going to exceed that this year. We 
have had deficit after deficit after deficit. There have been 21 
straight years of merchandise trade deficits.
  Let me just describe what has happened following our trade 
agreements. We rush off and send our best negotiators to negotiate 
trade agreements. When they finish negotiating some agreement with some 
country, whether it be Japan or the GATT agreement or NAFTA or some 
other agreement, they have a huge celebration or giant feast

[[Page S8649]]

at which they all declare they have won.
  But, what have our negotiators actually won? We had a $28 billion 
merchandise trade deficit in 1981 when the trade agreement took effect 
from the Tokyo round of trade talks. By 1989, this Congress passed--
without my vote, I might add--a United States-Canada Free-Trade 
Agreement, at which time we now had a $115 billion merchandise trade 
deficit.
  In 1994, a trade agreement, negotiated under fast track with Mexico 
and Canada, called NAFTA or the North American Free-Trade Agreement 
came into effect. By that time, we had amassed a $166 billion 
merchandise trade deficit. Then there was the Uruguay round of talks 
under the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade or GATT, and the trade 
agreement enacted by Congress which took effect January 1, 1995. By 
that time, we had a $173 billion merchandise trade deficit. That has 
now grown to a $191 billion merchandise trade deficit, and is 
continuing to grow again this year.
  DRI and McGraw-Hill, which is a company that does econometric 
projections, suggests our merchandise trade deficit will likely double 
in a 10-year period. We are headed in the wrong direction, not the 
right direction. So the question is, Do we continue doing this? Or does 
somebody stand up and say, ``Wait a second, this doesn't make any 
sense. You are asking us to give fast track trade authority to 
negotiate another trade agreement when all we have seen is an ocean of 
merchandise trade deficits.''
  With this discussion, I am not suggesting that we ought not trade. Of 
course we should trade. But we ought to say to our trading allies that 
the conditions under which we trade with them must represent fair 
trade. If you get your products into our marketplace, that's fine. But, 
then we expect our products to get into your marketplace. If we have 
standards that will not allow our producers to pollute our air and 
water, then we expect you to produce under the same standards.
  If we have standards that say we can't hire a 14-year-old and have 
him work 14 hours a day and pay him 14 cents an hour to produce a 
product that we then ship to Pittsburgh or Los Angeles and Denver, then 
we expect you not to employ a 14-year-old and pay him 14 cents an hour, 
producing something you ship to those same cities. Those are the 
conditions under which our workers, our citizens, and our businesses 
ought to expect trade to be handled under our trade agreements.
  Now, when you look at this ocean of red ink which no one writes about 
and no one talks about, it seems to me it is time to stop to evaluate 
where we are. Daniel Webster said, on the floor of this Senate about 
160 years ago, ``When the mariner has been tossed for many days in 
thick weather and on an unknown sea, he naturally avails himself of the 
first pause in the storm, the earliest glance at the Sun, to take his 
latitude and ascertain how far the elements have driven him from his 
true course.'' That might be a good suggestion for this Congress on the 
issue of trade.
  Instead, what this Congress will debate, without even talking about 
this choking trade debt, will be fast track.
  There is fast food, fast lane, fast living, fast talk, and fast 
break. I remember when I played high school basketball the notion of a 
fast break was to move quickly and rush and get ahead of the defenders 
before they could get set up and make the basket. That's what a fast 
break is all about. You go ahead, before anybody notices you, and score 
your points.
  Everything that says fast somehow connotes lack of preparation. That 
certainly has been the case with fast track in trade. Anyone, I say, 
anybody who believes that we have been successful in representing the 
economic interests of this country in pursuing the kind of process we 
pursued in recent years in trade just is not looking at the same set of 
facts that exists for this presentation I am giving today.
  Madam President, the instant you discuss these issues there are those 
in this town who categorize you in one of two camps. You are described 
as a free trader, period, end of story. This connotes, by the way, that 
you support all of these negotiations and fast track and so on. You are 
either a free trader, or you are some kind of xenophobic, isolationist 
stooge who doesn't get it and are called a basic protectionist. Those 
are the two camps. You are one or the other, and you can't be in 
between because there is no thoughtfulness in between, we are told.
  I stand right square in the middle of this issue, saying that this 
country has a problem and we ought to deal with it. We ought not be 
talking about negotiating new trade agreements as long as we have 
vexing, difficult problems with old trade agreements that we refuse to 
deal with. Fast track--if we are going to fast track anything, let's 
fast track the efforts to solve old trade problems.
  We negotiated a trade agreement with Mexico. At the time, we had a 
nearly $2 billion trade surplus with Mexico. Guess what? It has not 
been very long--only 3 years later--and we have ended up with nearly a 
$16 billion trade deficit with Mexico. We go from a small surplus, to a 
big deficit.
  We negotiate a trade agreement with Mexico and we are told what is 
going to come into this country from Mexico will be the product of low-
skill and low-wage work.
  What is actually coming in from Mexico? Automobiles, automobile 
parts, and electronics parts. Do you know we now import more cars from 
Mexico into the United States than the United States exports to the 
rest of the entire world? Think of that.
  Has the United States-Mexico, has the NAFTA agreement worked out the 
way we expected? I would like one person to come to this Senate and 
say, ``Boy, this really worked out well. What we wanted was to have an 
agreement with Canada and Mexico positioned such that at end of it, we 
would have a combined trade deficit of nearly $40 billion.'' Is that 
what we wanted? I don't think so.
  At the root of all of this, whether it's with Mexico or Canada is our 
past agreements and the fast track process that wouldn't allow the 
agreements to be changed and corrected. As a result we have a severe 
problem with Canadian grain flooding across our border in a 
fundamentally unfair way.
  And by the way, we can't resolve these issues now because we pulled 
the teeth of our own trade laws in all these trade agreements. We have 
pulled the teeth of those provisions which could have been effective in 
representing us and in remedying these problems. And now that the teeth 
are pulled, we wonder why we can't chew on these issues. You can't chew 
because there is no effective remedy left.
  Does anybody think that this represents progress? Is it progress to 
have Mexico and Canada have a huge trade surplus with the United 
States? Is it progress that we have this deficit with them?
  China has a large and growing trade deficit, which has been growing 
exponentially. In a dozen years it has grown from $10 million up to 
over $40 billion. How about Japan? Every single year, we have had a 
recurring trade deficit of $48 billion to over $50 billion a year.
  What does all of that represent? It represents jobs. And it 
represents, by and large, a diminution of our manufacturing sector. No 
economy will long remain a strong economy if it doesn't retain a strong 
manufacturing base.
  There are those who believe it doesn't matter where you produce. Get 
in your Lear jet or get in your Gulfstream and travel around the world. 
Look out the window and find out where on this Earth, what patch of 
ground can you find where you can build a plant and have people come in 
the front door of that plant and pay them a quarter an hour, a half a 
dollar an hour, or 75 cents an hour. Pay them no benefits, no pensions, 
no insurance, and pollute the air and water as you produce because that 
represents profit and that represents progress. Not to me it doesn't. 
Not to this country it doesn't.
  The consideration of fast-track trade authority by this Congress 
ought, it seems to me, to persuade us finally to ask ourselves, what 
truly is progress in international trade? Do we really think that a 
trade picture that looks like this is progress?
  Six countries have 92 percent of our record level merchandise trade 
deficit. Nearly 30 percent of the trade deficit is with Japan. It is 24 
percent and growing with China. Canada and Mexico together, have 
another 24 percent. The

[[Page S8650]]

latest figures show that NAFTA, the crown jewel of trade agreements has 
produced a record nearly $40 billion combined trade deficit. Do we 
really think that those kinds of numbers represent progress?
  This is not working. It is not a case of this country saying we want 
to close our borders and shut off imports; it's a case of this country 
saying we expect the trade rules to be fair. We expect our negotiators 
who negotiate trade agreements to win from time to time. Should we 
expect that every time our trade negotiators run off someplace that 
they lose? I don't think so. Yet, that is what happened.
  We have a beef agreement with Japan. Nobody knows much about these 
things, because all this is like a foreign language. We have an 
avalanche of Japanese goods coming into America. I do not object to 
that. All I ask is that American goods get into Japan on a fair basis.
  We couldn't get much American beef into Japan, so we had a huge 
negotiation with the Japanese. It must have been 8, 10 years ago, by 
now, that they announced this breakthrough. You would have thought 
there was a national day of fiesta and rejoicing. It was a major 
breakthrough; a big beef agreement with Japan. Guess what the agreement 
was. We have such a low expectation of our trade negotiations.
  The agreement with Japan was the following: When the agreement is 
fully phased in, there will remain only a 50-percent tariff on American 
beef going into Japan. That tariff will be reduced, except if the 
quantity increases, it snaps back to 50 percent. Under any other set of 
circumstances, that would be defined as failure, but it was defined in 
our negotiations with Japan as a success. That is true with virtually 
every single set of negotiations this country has been involved in the 
last two decades.
  This is not a complaint about Republicans or Democrats. It's a 
complaint against both and all. I have not yet met anyone who is 
willing to look me in the eye and talk about the facts about the 
merchandise trade deficits in this country and have them tell me that 
this is a record they want to stand on.
  My hope is that in the coming couple of weeks, as we discuss the 
issue of fast-track trade authority, we might finally have the debate 
we really need. We don't want a thoughtless debate about ``this person 
is a protectionist'' and ``this person is a free trader.'' Rather we 
need a thoughtful debate about precisely what kind of trade agreements 
represent this country's real interests, what kind of trade agreements 
require us to compete internationally and compete effectively and 
fairly, and what kind of trade agreements make certain that this 
country, when it does compete in the international marketplace, is able 
to do so on an even and fair basis.
  Madam President, it is obvious, I suppose, that I will be 
aggressively opposing the fast-track authority that this President will 
request. If he, on September 10, makes a formal request, he will no 
doubt have substantial support for it. I have had several people come 
up to me in my State who said to me, ``Oh, by the way, Byron, I was 
supposed to tell you to vote for fast track because my company sent out 
a memo to all the employees saying, `We want you all to contact your 
Senator to vote for fast track.' I don't know about fast track,'' they 
said, ``but that is something my company wants you to vote for.''
  I am not going to support fast track. I will be on the floor of the 
Senate often to talk about what I think are the problems in 
international trade and what I think are our priorities.
  We have massive problems with Canada, for example, on grain trade. 
The responsibility that we have is not to create some fast-track 
procedure for new agreements, but to create a fast-track determination 
to solve old trade problems from previous agreements that do not work.
  Until trade negotiators demonstrate a willingness to do that, and 
until this administration demonstrates a willingness to do that, I do 
not think it ought to get the vote of the U.S. Senate or the U.S. House 
for a peculiar and unique authority called fasttrack that, in my 
judgment, undercuts the constitutional requirement of Congress, to 
regulate commerce.
  Madam President, I yield the floor.
  Mr. WELLSTONE addressed the Chair.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr. Coats). The Senator from Minnesota.
  Mr. WELLSTONE. Mr. President, let me just say to my colleague from 
North Dakota that I appreciate his analysis. I look forward to joining 
him in this debate. I think he is really one of the most eloquent 
Senators, or for that matter Congressmen, in Washington on a set of 
issues that are so important to working people, so important to 
producers, and I thank him.

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