[Congressional Record Volume 143, Number 123 (Tuesday, September 16, 1997)]
[House]
[Pages H7358-H7362]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




      FAST-TRACK AUTHORITY SOUGHT ON TRADE AGREEMENT NEGOTIATIONS

  The SPEAKER pro tempore (Mr. Thune). Under the Speaker's announced 
policy of January 7, 1997, the gentleman from Michigan [Mr. Stupak] is 
recognized for 41 minutes as the designee of the minority leader.
  Mr. STUPAK. Mr. Speaker, I will not be using all my time tonight, but 
I do want to say a few comments. Today the President and Vice President 
came to the legislative hill, to the Capitol Hill to detail for us, at 
least the Democratic Caucus, the fast-track trade authority that the 
President would like this Congress to approve.
  As I listened to the comments being made by my colleagues and others 
on fast-track legislation, and I hope the listeners understand that 
fast track means give the President the authority to enter into a trade 
agreement mostly with South America, Chile, and the Caribbean Basin, 
and that authority or that agreement, frayed agreement, that the 
President would negotiate on behalf of his negotiators, would then come 
before the Congress for approval or disapproval. There would be no 
opportunity to amend this fast track. You have no opportunity to alter 
it. You have to accept it as is and vote yes or no.
  I sit on the Subcommittee on Health and Environment of the Committee 
on Commerce, and as we have dealt with over the past few years food 
safety and food standards in this country and how it was affected by 
the NAFTA agreement, and what can we expect as we look for a new round 
of trade negotiations under a fast track authority with South America, 
Chile, or the Caribbean Basin. In the caucus today when the President 
came, we heard a lot of discussion about labor standards and 
environmental standards, and those are very important, and those 
standards in and of themselves would be enough to defeat any kind of 
fast-track legislation, if not adequately covered.
  But I come to the floor tonight because I did not hear a lot of 
discussion about the food safety issue and the pesticides that are used 
in other countries. As food is developed in other countries and shipped 
here to the United States, of course the United States being the 
largest consuming Nation, do those standards underneath these trade 
agreements, our standards, the U.S. standards, the highest in the 
world, are they going to be upheld? Or do the trade agreements, as is 
pointed out in NAFTA, will they be lowered, either due to the written 
word of the agreement or because of the lack of inspection of the 
vehicles, container ships, coming into the United States?
  Understand when a container ship comes into the United States, and 
let us say it has bananas in the container, the large container on the 
outside may be marked bananas from Ecuador. But once they are removed 
from that container and put into boxes and on our grocery shelves, we 
do not know where they come from. There is no way. There is no labeling 
required.
  Therefore, you do not know what pesticides, what country it even came 
from, and do they have standards that you wanted for yourself and for 
your family?
  Recently in this country we have had a lot of outbreak of E. coli and 
hepatitis A breaking out throughout this country, including my own 
State of Michigan. How does it get by our inspectors?
  If you take NAFTA alone, if you look back at NAFTA, North American 
Free-Trade Agreement with Mexico and Canada, coming up through Mexico, 
12,000 trucks a day, 3.3 million trucks a year cross the border. Less 
than 1 percent are inspected.
  Now, there is not enough inspection, there is no enforcement. I am 
not talking about the trucks, which are another story in and of 
themselves, but I am talking about the container and what do these 
trucks contain, what kind of food, what have we found?
  The Government Accounting Office in May of 1997 reviewed NAFTA and 
the effect of the food and use of pesticides on food products coming 
into this country, and they found strawberries alone, about 18 percent, 
just a random sample, 18 percent violate our standards for food safety 
and the use of pesticides. Head lettuce, which we get a lot from 
Mexico, 15 percent is in violation of our food standards in the 
pesticide use. Carrots, another 12 percent of them.
  There is not enough enforcement, there is not enough inspection, not 
just the vehicles they are traveling in, but also what pesticides are 
used on these food products and how they are shipped, handled and 
labeled and sent to the United States.
  I mentioned hepatitis A. If you take a look at Texas, where most of 
the food comes in through this country from Mexico, you will find that 
along these border communities, hepatitis A outbreak is 2 to 5 times 
greater than other parts of the country. In fact, there are some 
counties in Texas where it is 10 times greater than the state average 
and the national average.
  I mentioned Michigan, and being from Michigan, even in Michigan we 
have the strawberries where we had 130 children affected with hepatitis 
A because of strawberries, when after we traced back, came out of 
Mexico, because they do not have the same sanitation requirements, the 
same safety inspections, the same food inspection. Once they get across 
the border, again, in a truck, only 99 percent of them are not 
inspected, less than 1 percent are inspected. Of 12,000 trucks per day, 
then you can see how these things easily get into our society, into our 
food chain, and on our dining room table.
  Pesticides, if you take a look at it under NAFTA, and in the past 
agreements and the studies have shown, that basically we have waived 
our standards. When we come to food safety, we should not be waiving 
our high standards, and we have. It is not necessarily a trade issue, 
but reality is a health issue, about the health and safety for our 
families.

                              {time}  2315

  So those who would argue that those of us who may oppose any kind of 
NAFTA or fast track authority, it is not because we are against trade, 
it is the health and safety of our families that we are concerned 
about.
  In fact, the concern is not just for our own families and what is 
happening from other countries and food being shipped into this country 
that we are consuming, but even if we take a look at it, what have we 
seen? Even the Department of Agriculture, Secretary

[[Page H7359]]

Glickman has been on Capitol Hill and has called upon us, the 
legislative branch, to push for more regulation of meats and poultry, 
and he continues to raise concerns about the pesticide safety in this 
country. But yet at the same time that administration and the 
Department of Agriculture, the opponents of a fast track extension 
actually make it easier for unsafe food to enter into this country.
  So the gentleman from Ohio [Mr. Brown], who sits on the Subcommittee 
on Health and Environment with me, will be sending a letter to the 
President urging him to include specific food safety provisions in his 
fast track proposal. Again, we did not hear much about it at the caucus 
today when the President and Vice President were there, but we welcome 
all Members of the Congress, Democrats and Republicans, to join on the 
letter.
  What we are asking the President to do is to renegotiate the 
provisions of NAFTA which relate to border inspections and food safety 
and to ensure that any future request from this fast track authority 
includes strong food safety protections.
  We would like to see increased funding for border inspections, or 
alternatively, limit the increasing rate of food imports to ensure the 
safety of our own food supply that we put on the table every night. We 
would like to see an aggressive program of labeling on all foodstuffs, 
including fresh and frozen fruits, meats, and vegetables, and also what 
country were they grown in, what is the country of origin. We think 
these are just some very basic things we should do to assure the health 
and safety and security of our families.
  Mr. Speaker, I do not think it is fair to ask the American people, 
when we start talking about fast track or NAFTA, to start lowering our 
own high standards for the health, safety, and welfare of our children. 
When we take a look at it, what is the rush to enter into another fast 
track agreement? There are many arguments for and against, and I am not 
here to argue trade agreements but I am just trying to say, what is the 
rush here? Why are we continuing to enter into these trade agreements? 
Why do we have to have fast track agreements we cannot amend or alter?
  I think it is a bad deal for American workers and American consumers. 
I think we need to take a very serious look, and I think if we do, the 
country would say, why are we making these trade agreements so quickly? 
Why are we giving the President so much power? It is really not 
necessary. The economy is going well; let us keep it going.
  I see the gentleman from California [Mr. Hunter] is here on the 
floor, and I yield to him.
  Mr. HUNTER. Mr. Speaker, I want to say to the gentleman that I agree 
with him with respect to fast track and the fact that when Americans 
buy especially agricultural goods now that are grown in other 
countries, they are really buying a pig in a poke. We have a number of 
countries that still allow the use of DDT-like pesticides, pesticides 
and chemicals that this country banned long ago due to the experience 
of our researchers who found that they had a very unhealthy effect on 
America's populace.
  It is interesting, Mr. Speaker. My kids do a farmer's market every 
week, and the farmer's markets in San Diego County, in fact in all of 
California and I am sure in the gentleman's State, generally in 
farmer's markets one can only sell produce that is grown in the State. 
We have so many people who ask us, ``Can you prove to us this does not 
come from Mexico, because we know that they can use DDT and other 
pesticides in Mexico and other places.'' We can assure them, because 
there is a certificate there that shows that in fact it is grown in the 
State of California, that it does not come from those places where some 
very dangerous substances are placed on the agricultural produce that 
our population ultimately buys. So I think there is a real value in 
slowing down the so-called fast track.
  I can remember my friend was not a fan of NAFTA, at least I believe 
he was not a fan of NAFTA, and we were told when NAFTA was before us as 
an issue that since we had approximately in those days a $3 billion 
trade surplus with Mexico, that we were going to build on that surplus 
by passing NAFTA. I glanced at the figures today, and the Clinton 
administration admits that this year we had a $17 billion trade loss 
with Mexico. I just wonder what kind of a track record that is to 
justify a new fast track for other countries that have not yet been 
able to take advantage of the United States and drive us into such a 
trade loss.
  I appreciate the gentleman for his remarks. I think it would be good, 
because we have so much produce now that comes from other countries, to 
at least allow the American people to see by some sort of a labeling 
system what in fact is grown in America, so that they know that that 
produce grown in America has protections that we afford it. I know the 
gentleman, and I think the gentleman from California [Mr. Bono] is 
offering legislation to that effect, and perhaps the gentleman from 
Michigan [Mr. Stupak] is as well.
  So I want to add my support for what has been said and tell the 
gentleman that I will work with him to see that we slow down this fast 
track.
  Mr. STUPAK. Mr. Speaker, reclaiming my time, I thank the gentleman 
and I appreciate him coming out and saying a few words. I know some 
people thought, and I do not have much auto in my district, in fact 
basically none, maybe some parts but no cars are being built there, 
that it was all a manufacturing issue. A lot of us, and I know the 
gentleman did also, were against NAFTA, and he is from California and 
we see the wave of these trucks coming in every day and not getting 
inspected.
  In particular, I know the gentleman was familiar with chapter 7, 
which dealt with NAFTA, the food trade chapter. Actually, when we read 
it, it limits our border inspections of food and similar items, and 
also chapter 9 basically comes right out and says we are going to have 
an open border to Mexican trucks of limited inspection.
  We are seeing these problems developing. The gentleman mentioned DDT 
as being one of them, and the gentleman is right that they allow DDT 
being used on lettuce and tomatoes and carrots and vegetables and 
fruits. One of the things we are saying is, let us renegotiate some of 
these provisions of NAFTA which relate to border inspections and food 
safety, and ensure that future requests for fast track would include 
strong food safety protections. My concern in coming to the floor 
tonight is we did not hear that today in the caucus when the President 
appeared.
  Also, we want to increase the funding for border inspections to limit 
the increasing rate of food being imported in. The gentleman was 
absolutely correct when he said the gentleman from California (Mr. 
Bono) has the legislation that puts in an aggressive program to label 
all foodstuffs, including fresh and frozen vegetables, meats and 
fruits, and label the country of origin, because the gentleman is 
correct. The farmer's market has an insurance that it is grown in his 
State and in the local area, it has been inspected, and not being 
brought from outside the country where we have all kinds of chemicals 
being used.

  So we are concerned here as we start another round of fast track that 
we want to make sure there are adequate protections, that child labor 
laws are there, there are workplace and environmental safety standards 
and some basic human rights. But I would hope that we do not fast track 
our standards, our safety, and our family's health and security.
  If I just may close, once again I find it amazing that at a time when 
the administration is pushing for more regulation in meats and poultry 
due to what happened with the Hudson hamburger, and they tell us Burger 
King, and I am not slamming the company, but in this State we still 
cannot determine where the meat that goes for those hamburgers comes 
from. We do not know if it is from Europe, we do not know if it is from 
Mexico, we do not know if it is from Canada or Kansas; we really do not 
know, but yet we certainly consume them as a nation, because we are a 
consuming nation. So those assurances we want in any kind of fast track 
legislation.
  So we, certainly the gentleman from Ohio (Mr. Brown) and I have been 
urging Members to make sure there are the food safety provisions in any 
fast track proposal, and we still have not seen it. As I say that I see 
that my friend the gentleman from Ohio has joined us on the floor, and 
I will yield to him at this time.

[[Page H7360]]

  Mr. BROWN of Ohio. Mr. Speaker, I appreciate the gentleman from 
Michigan's time and the work that he has done with food safety, a real 
leader in the House of Representatives on that issue in regards to 
NAFTA and fast track, and whether or not this Chamber allows the 
President to continue to negotiate these trade agreements in a way that 
unfortunately Presidents of both parties, President Bush, President 
Reagan, President Clinton, have been negotiating over the last many 
years.
  One of the statements that the gentleman was talking about, we do not 
know where food comes from. One of the things I thought of the other 
day, if one travels to Mexico, if an American citizen goes to Mexico, 
people will tell that visitor, that American, other Americans will say 
in certain parts of Mexico one should not eat the food, one should be 
careful about the water one drinks; one should just be careful, there 
are certain things one should not eat. Yet those same places in Mexico 
send food to this country and we do not really know where it comes 
from. Some irony. We should not eat that when we are in Mexico, but it 
is good enough for our kids when it comes here.
  That is why it is so important that before we move ahead and rush 
headlong into another series of trade agreements that cost American 
jobs and trade agreements that endanger our food supply and trade 
agreements that put unsafe trucks on the roads throughout the United 
States, that we stop and we fix the North American Free-Trade 
Agreement, that we do take care of food safety issues, that we do in 
the North American Free-Trade Agreement take care of truck safety, that 
we do deal with the problems of drugs at the border, that we do take 
care of especially the jobs issues with NAFTA.
  One of the real interesting aspects of this is that the 
administration loves to tell us and the Republican leadership of the 
House love to tell us that we are exporting more than ever to Mexico, 
we are sending all of these goods all over the world, that American 
exports are up and that is why our trade policy is working. Well, the 
fact is that while we do sell more goods to Mexico than we did 4 years 
ago, our balance of trade is worse because we import so much more. So 
we went from a $2 billion trade surplus with Mexico 4 years ago to a 
$20 billion trade deficit today.
  Mr. Speaker, even the things that we sell to Mexico are not really 
exports. So often they are what somebody termed industrial tourism. We 
send parts to Mexico. They may be in Mexico only a day or two or three. 
Those parts are then made and assembled into a car or assembled into 
something else and then sent back to the United States. So those things 
that we are exporting to Mexico so often end up being just put 
together, assembled in Mexico and sent back to the United States.
  The other thing we are sending a lot of to Mexico, are so-called 
capital goods or various kinds of machine tools, where we are sending 
things to Mexico which they use to build high-technology plants and 
produce things and then send them back to the United States.
  So we really are not sending more goods to Mexico, that really are 
exports that stay in Mexico, than we were in 1993. The fact is that we 
are doing things that are only costing us jobs more and more. The 
people that are the losers in this trade deal that we have going on, 
whether it is NAFTA or whether it is fast track down the line, the 
people that are the losers are people in this country that lose their 
jobs, work with their hands, the people that there are not enough 
people in Congress caring about.

                              {time}  2330

  That is why it is especially important that we slow down on fast 
track, we fix the things that are wrong with NAFTA, we fix things that 
are wrong such as the jobs issue, we fix the food safety issues, we fix 
the truck safety and the drug problems at the border. Because we owe it 
to the people whom we represent, we owe it to them that when they go to 
the store, that they do know, in fact, where this food comes from, 
whether it comes from Michigan or New Jersey or Ohio, or whether it 
comes from Mexico, or wherever it comes from.
  Just like the food labeling that is now on soup cans or anything we 
eat, it says how much sodium is in that can of soup. We want to know 
what is in it. We want to know the ingredients in foods and where those 
foods come from. That is what we are asking.
  That is one of the things we can do to fix NAFTA. We can do better 
inspections at the border, where, as the gentleman [Mr. Stupak] said, 
less than 1 percent of fresh and frozen fruits and vegetables are 
examined and inspected at the border. We have to do better than that.
  We are asking the President to simply slow down. Do not rush headlong 
into this new series of trade agreements. Let us fix what is wrong with 
NAFTA. Let us make those things better with food safety and truck 
safety, and all of the jobs issues. Let us make that better before we 
move on into another trade agreement that costs jobs and endangers our 
Nation's food supply.
  Mr. STUPAK. Reclaiming my time, Mr. Speaker, the gentleman made a 
good point about the trade deficit, how we had a surplus, and now we 
have somewhere between a $16 to $20 billion deficit. And the idea of 
parts going down to Mexico, they are being assembled, and they come 
right back. The gentleman mentioned tourism. When we take parts and 
assemble them in another country and send them right back as a finished 
product at a high rate of cost, such as vehicles, we call those things 
industrial tourists. They just go down for a few days, enjoy the 
sunshine, come right back up and be sold to us northerners up here. 
Industrial tourists is what we call this.
  That is why we see the big trade deficit. I know the last time we did 
a special order we talked about the twin deficits, not just the budget 
deficit but also a trade deficit which needs to be addressed. What we 
are asking for, and it is not that we are against free trade, and we 
are not protectionists, but what we are really saying here is what are 
the rules of trade here?
  We have standards for intellectual property, we have standards for 
patents, we have standards for compact disk players or CDs, as we call 
it. Can we not take those same standards, those same rules we apply to 
intellectual property, to CDs, and to patents, and should they not 
apply to things like labor standards, environmental standards, but 
especially food safety standards?
  What we are saying, before we have this new fast track, what are the 
standards we are going to live by, what are the rules of the game, and 
let us all have the same rules of conduct, whether it is food safety, 
intellectual property, truck safety, whatever it might be, because we 
insist, and we have strong consumer standards in this country, and we 
insist that they be part of any trade agreement.
  I see my friend, the gentleman from New Jersey [Mr. Pallone] is here, 
and I gladly yield to him.
  Mr. PALLONE. I thank the gentleman for yielding to me, Mr. Speaker.
  I just want to start out by saying that I appreciate the remarks that 
my colleague, the gentleman from Michigan [Mr. Stupak], and also my 
colleague, the gentleman from Ohio [Mr. Brown], have been making in 
talking about fast track, and also talking about the experience that 
this country has with NAFTA, and expressing their concern over where we 
are going with this fast track legislation.
  I know that the gentleman from Michigan [Mr. Stupak] and the 
gentleman from Ohio [Mr. Brown] have been doing special orders on this 
issue for a number of months now, and I have listened to some of it. I 
certainly agree with everything that the two of the gentlemen have been 
saying. They have really been taking the lead on this.
  I just wanted to very briefly, if I could, follow up and talk about 
the environmental aspect, because it is something that concerns me a 
great deal. What I find so strange is that the advocates of this new 
fast track authority, and I guess we are going to be voting on this 
probably within the next week or two, keep suggesting that somehow we 
should not even make reference to NAFTA and the experiences of NAFTA in 
deciding how to vote on fast track. To me, that makes absolutely no 
sense at all, because if anything, the best indicator to me of what 
might happen once this fast track authority is given, and if it is 
given, and these trade

[[Page H7361]]

agreements are negotiated, that the best experience I have is the 
experience that we have with NAFTA.
  I was very much opposed to NAFTA. I voted against it. For those who 
at the time were having a debate on NAFTA, I remember distinctly how we 
were being told that if we were concerned about labor conditions, if we 
were concerned about the environment, that certain so-called side 
agreements were going to be entered into, and that those should 
basically alleviate the concerns of people like myself who felt that 
enough was not being done to deal with the environmental and labor 
issues.
  I did not buy that at the time, but it was sort of a bill of goods or 
whatever that was being sold to people at the time to try to persuade 
them to vote for NAFTA. Frankly, I think that the experience of the 
last few years with NAFTA has shown very dramatically that there was no 
result from those side agreements; that, in fact, labor conditions in 
Mexico got worse; that there were more job losses here in the United 
States as a result of the loss of jobs and the transfer of factories 
and manufacturing to Mexico.
  The same thing was true of the environmental agreement. The 
environmental side agreement was supposedly going to improve 
environmental conditions in Mexico, and what do we have? For the last 
few years we have more companies going down to the border area, 
polluting the area so the level of pollution has gotten worse, coming 
back to the United States, and having a negative impact on the United 
States.
  My understanding was there was about $2 billion in funds that was 
supposed to be used to clean up some of the toxic wastes and other 
problems on the border area with Mexico, and not one penny of that 
money has been spent so far. So for those who say, do not look back at 
NAFTA in deciding whether to vote for fast track, the only reason they 
are saying that is because NAFTA has been a failure.
  Mr. BROWN of Ohio. If the gentleman will continue to yield, Mr. 
Speaker, the gentleman is exactly right. When NAFTA passed, obviously 
the three of us and our friend, the gentleman from California [Mr. 
Hunter], voted no on it back in 1993, but the people that supported 
NAFTA never really prepared, they never really prepared the border area 
for what was going to happen.

  They really were disingenuous about it, because they knew that there 
would be more traffic coming across the border, they knew there would 
be more pollution, as the gentleman from New Jersey [Mr. Pallone] says, 
more pollution along the maquiladoras, along the area near the border, 
and they simply did not prepare for building any kind of an 
infrastructure to deal with what was going back and forth across the 
border.
  When truck traffic is such that I believe there are 12,000 trucks a 
week, something like that----
  Mr. STUPAK. Twelve thousand trucks a day.
  Mr. BROWN of Ohio. One truck every 7 seconds across the border, they 
knew truck traffic was going to increase. They knew more than likely 
there would be drugs in some of those trucks smuggled in. They knew 
there would be huge loads of fresh and frozen fruits and vegetables 
crossing the border coming north every day, and they knew a lot of 
these trucks would not be safe, and they knew there would be 
environmental problems because of the increased activity.
  Yet, there was no planning in NAFTA; there was no real appropriation 
to build the infrastructure at the border to take care of that, to 
accommodate that. It did not just mean hiring more inspectors, because 
there simply are not enough stations, way stations, and the actual 
infrastructure itself, gates coming across the border, to be able to 
manage all that. So they did not prepare, I think, purposely did not 
prepare this country for the problems at the border.
  There is no sign that they are doing it this time with fast track 
with Chile, with any other trade agreement. That is why we need to stop 
and say, wait a second, show us you can fix the infrastructure at the 
border, that you can clean up the environment at the maquiladora, that 
you can deal with the problems of truck safety and food safety and drug 
smuggling. Then we can talk about fast track, then we can talk about 
trade agreements that are actually in people's interests in the Western 
Hemisphere, American workers' interests, Chilean workers' interests, 
and not just the investors that benefit from these trade agreements 
that make the rich richer. That is really what these trade agreements 
have been all about.
  Mr. PALLONE. Mr. Speaker, the gentleman talks about the investors 
getting richer. Those are the only people who have benefited from this. 
I look at these agreements and say, OK, you have the United States and 
you have Mexico. As far as I am concerned, from the United States point 
of view, if as a result of NAFTA more people have jobs and more people 
have higher wages for the jobs that they have, or, similarly, that 
somehow the environmental standards go up in the United States, or 
looking at it from Mexico's point of view, that the wages of the 
Mexican citizens go up or that the environmental standards or cleanup 
is improved in Mexico, then we might say, OK.
  But here it actually makes it worse on both sides. The way I 
understand it, and I have it from my own district, I can give some 
examples, plants that have closed in my district, what is happening is 
our plants are closing, our workers are losing their jobs, or in order 
to make sure that the plant does not move to Mexico, they have to give 
up benefits or lower their wages. Then at the same time, when we look 
at the situation in Mexico, my understanding is that wages have 
actually gone down there.
  The same thing with the environment. The effort is to reduce our 
environmental laws and make them less stringent, because we are told 
that if we do not, the plant is going to move to Mexico. Similarly, in 
Mexico, nothing has been done to clean up any of the problems in the 
border areas, and the amount of pollution that is being spewed is even 
greater than before. So in reality, what is happening is things are 
being ratcheted down. The environmental standards and the air quality 
and the water quality in general between the two countries is getting 
worse, and the labor situation is getting worse. No one benefits.
  The thing that is amazing to me is that even though we have this 
experience that shows that no one benefits from either the 
environmental or labor or wage point of view, other than the 
corporations and those who have invested in the corporations, even 
though we have that experience that shows that no one has benefited, in 
the case of NAFTA, nonetheless, we are now being told to move on, let 
us get the fast track authority, let us enter into similar agreements 
with other countries, and do not worry about what happened with NAFTA. 
That is not a good example. Somehow, the situation in Mexico is an 
aberration, and that will not happen with the other countries.
  It is really hard for me to believe that we are being told to do 
this, based on the experience of NAFTA.
  Mr. STUPAK. Right. Reclaiming my time, Mr. Speaker, when they say do 
not look back, do not look back at NAFTA, I think we do have to take a 
look at it. Remember, we had side agreements on tomatoes, and we had 
side agreements on lettuce, we had side agreements on citrus fruits, to 
try to protect the U.S. interests here.
  Yet, if we take a look at it and take a look at NAFTA, and I think we 
have to, because it is the only agreement we can make a comparison to, 
but again we are expanding it to South America and Chile, and Mexico is 
right there in Central America, it is all part of that region, we have 
an increase. Fruit imports in the United States has increased 45 
percent. Vegetable imports have risen 31 percent. So those are going 
up, the imports in the country, from Mexico.
  But then yet, as the gentleman from Ohio [Mr. Brown] pointed out, the 
inspections, and take a look at chapter 7 and chapter 9 of the NAFTA 
food requirements or food trade requirements, we have limited 
inspections. In fact, they will inspect a limited number of Mexican 
trucks, and there is a limited infrastructure to even carry it out, 
where 1 percent of 12,000 trucks per day are being inspected.

[[Page H7362]]

  Actually, it is 3.3 million trucks entering this country, and we are 
inspecting 1 percent. And we say, how can there be an increase in drugs 
coming into this country? The truck may say ``bananas,'' but we do not 
know what is really in there because we are not inspecting it. They all 
know that.
  Then we have a NAFTA Agreement which limits our ability to make the 
inspection at the border and to limit the number of trucks that will be 
inspected. So the more trucks you bring up, the less are going to be 
inspected, the greater chance of getting through whatever you want, be 
it contraband, be it fruits or vegetables laced with DDT.
  Again, this is not just us who oppose NAFTA saying this. This is 
found in the Government Accounting Office May 1997 report. It is all 
documented. And their recommendations that we have been talking about 
here tonight are certainly contained in here.
  Again, I think the issue here is not necessarily a trade agreement, 
but really a safety agreement: What standards are we going to apply? Do 
we lower our standards to allow more goods to come in this country? Is 
that not what this is really about? What are the standards, and should 
we not all go by the same standards?

  We have to have standards. We have them for, as I said earlier, for 
patent law, intellectual property, compact disks. Remember the big 
fight with China on that? We have these standards and enforce them, but 
somehow when it comes to food safety, the environment, labor, we are 
not going to enforce it? I think there are some very good arguments 
here that must be made. What is the rush? Let us slow this thing down.
  Mr. BROWN of Ohio. That is exactly the point, Mr. Speaker, if the 
gentleman will continue to yield. We in this country for a long time, 
for a lot of years, have raised our living standards with pure food 
laws, with strong clean air laws, with good, solid safe drinking water 
laws, on fights that were conducted in this Chamber, where often groups 
of very conservative Members that had major backing from the largest 
corporations in the country would oppose clean water laws, would oppose 
safe drinking laws, would oppose pure food laws.
  Over a period of decades after decades after decades, beginning in 
the early part of this century when books were written about 
contaminated food and all the problems with our food supply, over those 
many, many years, we have built probably the best standards to protect 
all people in this country; not just the rich, not just the poor, not 
just white, not just black, not just men, not just women, everyone.
  We have protected people because they know when they go to the 
grocery store that meat is inspected. They know that there are clean 
air and clean water requirements. We know when we go shopping that the 
food we buy is generally, almost 100 percent of the time, good, clean, 
safe food. What we are doing is we are having our standards pulled down 
by a country that has not had those kinds of protections built into 
their laws, and has not had that kind of history.
  Rather than allow them to pull our standards down, we can negotiate 
trade agreements that would pull their standards up. And we are going 
in the exact opposite direction. That is why we need to pursue the 
kinds of efforts the gentleman from Michigan [Mr. Stupak] is pursuing 
with his work.
  Mr. PALLONE. I just wanted to say, I know earlier today the gentleman 
had spoken up at a meeting about the need for more enforcement, and I 
think the response was that, well, we need more money. Congress should 
appropriate more money for enforcement. I sort of laughed and said to 
myself, well, if we do not have the ability, if this body, if this 
House of Representatives and the other body are not going to 
appropriate the money to do the enforcement, to make sure the 
inspections take place, then we should not be supporting NAFTA and fast 
track.

                              {time}  2345

  I want to say that if this same group of elected officials are going 
to say that we are not going to provide the funding to make sure these 
enforcement measures take place, then they should not be supporting 
NAFTA and should not be supporting fast track.
  I think my colleague from Ohio comes right to the point, because he 
is saying what are we going to put first here? We are going the put the 
mechanisms to make sure the laws are properly enforced; that the 
environmental laws are enforced; that there is not going to be the 
ratcheting down or the weakening of standards, whether it is labor 
standards or it is environmental standards. And once we have those 
guarantees in place, both here and in the country we are entering into 
this trade agreement with, then, sure, we can move toward free trade, 
but not have the cart before the horse, or whatever the term is, and 
that is what we are getting now.
  We are being told the most important thing is to have the agreement, 
because the flag of free trade is the most important flag and we have 
to wave that wherever we are in the world. And in the meantime we will 
try to use our good devices to try to convince some of these other 
governments that they should have better environmental standards or 
better labor standards. But that is secondary and we cannot really talk 
to them about that now because they might be offended by it and we have 
to enter these agreements and wave that free trade flag.
  I do not buy it, and I am glad the gentlemen with me here tonight do 
not buy it and, hopefully, we will not have a lot of other people buy 
it when this comes up a couple of weeks from now.
  Mr. STUPAK. Mr. Speaker, reclaiming my time, it is amazing that the 
President indicated at the caucus today that the way to get around this 
and to make sure there is inspection and food safety at the border is 
to increase the inspections. And if Congress will not appropriate the 
money, the heck with it, let us just move forward with this trade 
agreement anyway as the fast track trade agreement.
  But, remember, it was 2 or 3 weeks ago the administration was up here 
pushing for more regulation, more regulation for more inspection in 
this country for meats, poultry, and they continued to raise concerns 
about pesticides being used in this country. If we cannot control and 
inspect adequately, and the Secretary of Agriculture wants more 
regulations and more authority to invoke emergency powers to take food 
off our tables and the grocery store shelves, if we cannot do it within 
our own country, because we do not have enough people and they need 
more authority, how will we do it on items coming into this country 
where we inspect 1 percent of everything that comes in? It defies their 
argument. It defies their logic.
  So I certainly hope our colleagues on both sides of the aisle, and I 
am glad to see the gentleman from California [Mr. Hunter] is here 
helping us out on this issue tonight and the gentleman from Ohio [Mr. 
Brown] and the gentleman from New Jersey [Mr. Pallone]. I hope they 
will all join us in sending a letter to the President urging him to 
include specific food safety provisions in his fast track proposal.
  And we welcome all Members, Democrats, Republicans, Independents to 
sign this letter because, as we said earlier, what we want to know is 
what are the rules of the game? What are the rules of the trade game? 
We should not lower our standards as a country. We should not lower the 
health and safety requirements of this country. We have rules that 
affect intellectual property rights, compact disks, patent law. Why can 
those same standards, those same rules not be afforded to labor, the 
environment but especially food safety? Let us not fast track our 
standards, our safety and our families' health and security.
  Mr. Speaker, I apologize to you and the staff, I said I would be 
brief, but I was joined by all my friends here tonight, that I could 
not anticipate, so we went a little longer.

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