[Congressional Record Volume 143, Number 131 (Friday, September 26, 1997)]
[House]
[Pages H8029-H8036]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]
FAST-TRACK TRADE NEGOTIATIONS
The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under the Speaker's announced policy of
January 7, 1997, the gentleman from Michigan [Mr. Bonior] is recognized
for 60 minutes as the designee of the minority leader.
Mr. BONIOR. Mr. Speaker, before I begin my remarks about trade, let
me associate myself with the remarks of my colleagues who have spoken
this afternoon on the issue of campaign reform.
The system in the country is broken. If we ever needed any more
evidence of its dilapidated state, all we have to do is pick the
morning papers up, listen to the morning radio, watch the evening news.
It is zapping the energy, the integrity, the heart of the Democratic
system in our country today.
{time} 1300
The present system is a disaster. It needs to be scrapped. People
spend too much time raising money, going after money, and not enough
time focusing on the problems that face this country. I believe we are
in a process of watching it die. And it will die, and it will come
down.
As my friends and colleagues have said in these last 30 or 40
minutes, they on this side of the aisle, for the most part, do not get
it. The Speaker wants to spend more money. He wants to provide more
access to the big boys and take away our ability to have a say in what
happens in this very building.
So, Mr. Speaker, I just wanted to add those notes before I talk about
fast track.
Fast track is probably, I could make a transition here, but I will
not at this point. I will save that for another day because there is a
transition to be made with respect to our trade policies and how this
institution operates and how this city operates.
As the vote over NAFTA expansion gets closer, there are a lot of
people who are calling for attention. Some are politicians. Some are
CEO's. Some speak for farmers. Other stand for labor. Some hire
consultants. Some go on TV. Even cartoon characters like Donald Duck
and Mickey Mouse have lobbyists in this building and downtown looking
after them.
All of these interests have a voice, and they are shouting to be
heard. But some of the people with the most at stake in this debate
have been silent, or are silent. They do not have a choice. They do not
have a choice voice. I am talking about children. I want to talk a
little about children before I get into the heart of the trade issue
because I believe this gets to the heart of the trade issue.
As many as 11 million children today toil day after day in the fields
and in the factories of Mexico. They pick tomatoes. They pick onions.
They pick strawberries. They glue soles on shoes. They unload and load
crates of produce that weigh more than they do.
Starting at 7 years of age, millions of Mexican children are kept out
of school and are forced to work, often exposing them to the most
dangerous pesticides and toxins. And we say, ``well, is not child labor
prohibited under NAFTA?'' Sure it is. But the Mexican Government just
looks the other way. And what is even worse, multinational corporations
in this country, employers who go over and establish businesses in
Mexico, and this Government of ours looks the other way as well.
According to the U.S. News and World Report, the three NAFTA
governments have not filed a single complaint in Mexican child labor
even though it is commonplace, not a single complaint. I am willing to
bet that of all the experts touting NAFTA, of all the armchair
economists, of all of those pushing fast track expansion today, none of
them would want their kids, children, quitting elementary school to
pick tomatoes laced with pesticides.
Are they really willing to sacrifice their education, the health and
the future of poor Mexican children, at the altar of free trade? Child
labor does not just affect lives in Mexico. It is putting downward
pressure on the standards in the United States.
How does this work? We say to ourselves, ``What has this got to do
with America? What has this got to do with our workers? What has this
got to do with our industries?'' Well, how can a tomato farmer in
Florida who adheres to our labor and environmental standards compete
with someone who pays children pennies an hour and who pollutes with
impunity?
That is what our workers are up against, our business people are up
against, companies that pollute with impunity with these toxins and
pesticides, pesticides, by the way, that got into the strawberries,
came into this country. One hundred seventy-nine children in Michigan
were poisoned with strawberries that were contaminated, some very
seriously, life-or-death situations, because those vegetables and those
fruits are not checked.
We say, ``Well, do they not inspect them when they come into the
border?'' 3.3 million trucks go across that border every year, 10,000
trucks a day. Do my colleagues know how many of them get inspected? One
percent. They call it a wave line. The inspector stands there and waves
them on through. The line stretches for miles, truckers honking their
horns, and they just wave them on through.
It is not contaminated fruits and vegetables that get through into
our market now. It is also what else is in the compartment of those
trucks; like 70 percent of all the cocaine that comes into the United
States comes from Mexico today. That is another story.
Let me get back to that tomato farmer. He or she cannot compete with
what is coming in from Mexico today because in Mexico we have got kids
that are 7, 8, 9 picking it for pennies, and we have got pesticides and
toxins that are prohibited here being used.
That is why America's trade agreements must include strong,
enforceable protection for workers and the environment. That is why we
have been coming to the floor day after day, week after week, month
after month, saying, Mr. President, colleagues on this side of the
aisle, some of my own colleagues, these are the standards that we need
to have as we move into this new century of ours. We will be setting
the pattern in this fast track on what will be negotiated in trade for
the next century.
We cannot stay with the policies that take us back to the conditions
of the 19th century, and that is what the administration's policy
basically does. It will move us down on wages, on working conditions,
on health conditions to a 19th century standard. It will take us back
in the past. We need to move people forward. We need to have Mexican
workers and Chilean workers and their environments meet the standards
that we have established here in the United States rather than our
workers coming down to their standards.
Our trade agreement should harness the power of markets to lift
standards abroad, not lower ours. And if we sacrifice our standards, we
sacrifice not
[[Page H8030]]
only standards, but the values, the values that literally hundreds of
thousands of workers over the last 100 years in this country sacrificed
for. And when I say ``sacrificed,'' we have to kind of flashback in our
memories to what our grandparents and our parents did to make sure we
got an 8-hour day, a 40-hour workweek, to make sure they got proper
medical care, they got health insurance, they got pensions, they got
decent wages, they got the right to collective bargaining, they got the
right to strike. They got all these rights so they could harness their
energies and create the most viable and vibrant middle class in the
history of the world.
And now all these things are being eroded because these benefits that
were gotten oftentimes by people who marched, who went to jail, who
were beaten, some even died in order for these rights in this country,
they are being eroded by the fact that companies are moving over to
Mexico and other places that do not enforce these rights; and then
these companies in this country say, well, we will move our facilities
down to Mexico if you do not agree to a wage freeze, if you do not
agree to a benefit freeze, if you do not agree to these environmental
concerns that we have.
And do not take my word for it. There was a study done by a woman by
the name of Kate Brothenbrenner from Cornell University. She found that
62 percent of corporations in America today, 62 percent, have used the
NAFTA agreement and similar agreements to bring down or to pressure
employees to keep wages and benefits at the same or a lower level. Now
that is an incredible downward pressure on benefits and wages that
people have fought for for the last 100 years.
Profiting from child labor runs contrary to everything America stands
for. Remember the soccer ball situation we had in this country?
American kids became aware that they were out there on Saturday and
Sunday kicking that soccer ball after school, and someone told them
that the people that were stitching those soccer balls together were 6-
, 7- and 8-year-olds in Pakistan, who were working 10 hours a day, not
going to school, not getting any of the things that they were having,
in order for American children to play soccer. So a campaign erupted in
this country in which children all over the country and teachers and
coaches made an effort to change that. And we changed it. We put
pressure, and we changed it.
We need to do the same thing with respect to child labor in Mexico
and other parts of this planet that exploit children. If we continue to
look the other way instead of addressing it effectively and forcefully
in our trade agreements, we betray our values, and we betray our
children.
Now let me talk about something else. The administration would like
to have fast track in time for the President's trip to South America
next month. Beginning on November 12, the President is scheduled to
make visits to Venezuela, Brazil, and Argentina in order to develop
support for creating a free-trade area for the Americas.
For months now the administration has been saying that it is crucial
for fast track to be passed by the House before this trip, that it will
demonstrate American leadership. Of course, the administration only
sent up fast track proposal to Congress last week, and already we know
that the fast track that they are asking us to pass is actually a step
backward from the Reagan-Bush administration fast track that they used,
by the way, to pass NAFTA 4 years ago.
Many of us have said that a new trade negotiating authority must look
forward and address issues that have been neglected so far in our trade
agreements, because the reality of this phenomenon we call
globalization is that workers, our environment, and our food is as
affected by these changes as intellectual property, as
telecommunications, as automobile production. And those things are
protected, the latter thing that I mentioned. Intellectual property,
Mickey Mouse and Donald Duck, and Bill Gates, they are protected. Their
property is protected. Automobile production, protected. But when it
comes to workers' standards, no, no. The difference is that
intellectual property and all these things that I talked about and
content laws do get addressed, but safe and fair working conditions,
environmental standards and ensuring that imported food is safe do not
get addressed.
Instead of incorporating these issues into trade negotiations more
fully and completely, this fast track proposal actually restricts our
ability to include legitimate issues in trade agreements that directly
impact consumers and workers. It is clearly, clearly a step backward.
We propose that American leadership be used to develop a trade
agreement with Latin America that will lift workers up, not tie them
down. We cannot let this fast track be used simply to expand NAFTA,
because we know it will not work.
Look at the last 4 years and the impact NAFTA has had on wages and
the environment and on food and even on drugs. It is a horrible record.
But we are being asked to endorse this record. We are being asked to
sanction it, to put our stamp of approval on it, to give it our
blessing, to ignore the flaws as they expand NAFTA to other countries
in this hemisphere.
The same old argument is being trotted out again as to why we must
pass fast track quickly and expand NAFTA. The administration says it is
essential that they have this, otherwise they will be left behind in
South America; we will lose out to Europe. But that argument does not
stand up to the test. They used it 4 years ago to sell us NAFTA.
The NAFTA proponents were saying back then, ``If we do not pass
NAFTA, Europe and Japan will get into Mexico, and they will lock us
out. We will lose out.'' And the Japanese laughed at that statement, by
the way. And the record of NAFTA shows a much different story.
Before NAFTA, the United States had a trade surplus of nearly $2
billion with Mexico. After NAFTA, the surplus has deteriorated to the
point where we have a $16 billion trade deficit. That means they sell
us $16 billion more than we sell them. I want to talk about what they
actually sell us because that is kind of a strange figure. I will get
to that in just a second.
We do not sell to their middle class because their middle class is
eroding. They lost 8 million people in the middle class since NAFTA in
Mexico, 8 million people. They used to pay their workers $1 an hour.
They pay them now 70 cents an hour, because there is no collective
organization to help workers raise their standards to ours. There is no
enforcement of the laws in Mexico to do that. There is no enforcement
to keep their environment clean, or at least to clean up their
environment.
``How did Europe and Japan fare in Mexico?'' my colleagues ask. ``Did
they get locked out?'' The answer is no. In fact, they are doing much
better than us. Europe and Japan had a trade surplus with Mexico before
NAFTA. But unlike the United States, they have maintained their trade
surplus with Mexico, even through the Mexico peso crash in 1994.
On a trip through the maquilladora zone along the United States-
Mexican border, we see names like Sony and Samsung along with United
States companies. Asia is fully into Mexico today. I do not want
history to repeat itself, because we are being given the same warnings
about South America.
The truth is that we are doing very well today in South America. Our
exports are up 19 percent over last year, without fast track. We have
doubled our trade surplus with South America to 3.6 billion without
fast track. We are not losing out. We are winning. But if we expand a
bad trade deal like NAFTA to South America, I will be willing to bet
that South America will go the way of Mexico and, for that matter,
Japan and China.
{time} 1315
After 4 years of experience with NAFTA the American people certainly
are not being fooled by big corporate campaigns to expand NAFTA at this
time. In fact they are very much opposed to the President's fast track
proposal.
I have a little chart I want to show my colleagues here; it is a poll
that was done recently. By a 2 to 1 margin the American people oppose
fast track, according to the Wall Street Journal-NBC poll. Most
Americans believe that trade deals benefit multinational corporations
at the expense of working
[[Page H8031]]
families. This figure was taken from a poll done for the Democratic
Leadership Council, by the way, which supports fast track. Also by a 2
to 1 margin the American people believe that labor and environmental
and human rights issues should be included in trade agreements. Eighty-
three percent of Americans say, ``What's the rush with fast track?''
according to this poll. And, finally, most Americans say that increased
imports take away American jobs and hurt the wages of American workers.
So public opinion is overwhelmingly opposed to fast track and trade
deals done without proper labor and environmental standards because
they have looked at the record of NAFTA and they know that it has not
worked. You can talk to people. There was a recent study done by the
Policy Institute that showed that we have lost 394,000 jobs as a result
of NAFTA, net jobs; I am not talking about just jobs, I am talking
about net jobs. We have gained some jobs; net total we have lost a huge
number of jobs.
I would like for just a second to address one other issue before I
yield to the distinguished Democratic leader, the gentleman from
Missouri [Mr. Gephardt] who has been so fabulous in leading our efforts
on this issue, and that is the issue of exports, because the other side
like to ballyhoo the number, that we are exporting more to Mexico now,
even though they are importing a heck of a lot more here.
Let me tell you something. I want my colleagues to look at a memo
that I have from Professor Harley Shaiken, who was at the University of
California and who has studied the economic relationship between Mexico
and United States extensively. He is probably the foremost expert in
the country on this. Professor Shaiken shed some light on what I would
call the myth behind our increased exports to Mexico.
There is no denying that exports to Mexico have risen since NAFTA
although imports, as I said, have increased much more dramatically. But
Professor Shaiken, analyzing trade data, shows that the vast majority
of exports growth has been in what he calls revolving door exports or
industrial tourists.
Now these are goods that are shipped to Mexico as components, usually
along the border with the United States and the maquilladora, therefore
counted as exports but then assembled in Mexico and shipped right back
here. That is why they call them tourist exports. They are not even
there long enough to have a visa. They get shipped over there, they are
put together by people who make 70 cents an hour, and they are shipped
right back here, not to consumers in Mexico, as I said before. The
consumer middle class in Mexico has declined by about 8 million people
in the last 4 years.
Revolving door exports have surged 230 percent since NAFTA, rising
from 18 billion in 1993 to 42 billion last year. These exports
accounted for 40 percent of our total exports to Mexico in 1993, but
that share grew up to 62 percent last year.
So the upshot is, 62 percent of our exports to Mexico are shipped
right back here, and these are not job-creating exports, they are job-
destroying exports.
Professor Shaiken notes in his memos, paraphrasing Pogo, ``We have
met the market, and it is us.''
You know, there are so many aspects to this issue. There is a food
safety issue, there is the drug issue, there is the loss of jobs, the
downward pressure on wages, there is the environmental degradation.
I visited maquilladora in Tijuana with my distinguished leader, the
gentleman from Missouri [Mr. Gephardt], and we have some stories and
some pictures that I am sure my colleague will show you right now from
his recent visit to the border that really, for me, sickens my stomach
that our corporations and our Government have not dealt with these
questions of worker safety and worker rights and environmental
degradation, and I think you will understand why when you hear the
distinguished leader. So I am honored that he would join me this
afternoon in talking about this issue that is so fundamental to the
values which we hold so dear and which so many people have fought for
in this country for so many years, and I thank him for joining, and I
yield to him at this time.
Mr. GEPHARDT. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman, and I will come to
the well because I have some pictures I would like to show.
First, I would like to salute the gentleman from Michigan, the
distinguished whip on the Democratic side. No one has a greater
understanding of the challenges that face working families in America
than he does, and no one has fought harder to realize the interests of
working families than the gentleman from Michigan [Mr. Bonior]. So I am
always deeply pleased to be with him in talking about these important
issues.
Let me start today by saying right off the bat that I am for free
trade, as is the gentleman from Michigan. We believe trade is
synergistic, we think it has energy for everyone, we think it helps
every country that can engage in free trade, and we are for free trade
treaties between the United States and other countries and within the
whole world. We also believe that trade should be fair as well as free,
that it is not just enough to get tariffs down, that there are other
issues that need to be dealt with when you are talking about a trading
relationship.
Mr. Speaker, in the 1980's we advocated that there be access to
foreign markets like Japan so that we could get our products into their
market as easily as they could get their products into our market, and
through the 1980's and into the early 1990's we were able to get those
access issues to be debated, to be understood and, I think, to be
accepted by people in the United States and across the world.
Since the early 1990's, when the real debate began on the North
American Free Trade Agreement, we brought up the issue of fairness as
it applied to the proper application and administration of labor laws,
worker laws and environmental laws in other countries, and that is
because when we talk about the NAFTA, it was to be a free trade
agreement between two countries that were highly developed economically
and another country that was still in the early stages of development
with a much lower standard of living, and we realized that if trade was
to work for everybody in Canada, the United States and Mexico, it was
very important that there be a greater effort at the application of
national laws on labor and on environment.
Now why is that the case? That is the case because the standards we
have in these areas need to be moving toward uniformity, not toward
disappearing, because if you have no standards, then the lack of
standards becomes a comparative advantage for the country that has no
standards. Plus the fact I just do not see how anybody says we should
not try to get the laws of other countries we are trading with to be
properly enforced.
So as a result of that we wrote language into the so-called fast
track negotiating authority that said we would pay attention to these
issues, and in the negotiation, for the first time in the negotiation
of any free trade agreement we had serious discussions of how we could
get the national laws of each country on labor and the environment to
be properly enforced.
Now at the end of the day we were not able to get that enforcement
process to have real teeth. These issues wound up in so-called side
agreements that I felt were largely cosmetic, and that is the reason I
oppose the NAFTA agreement, because there was not a serious attempt to
really enforce these laws.
Now, right now, the President is asking us for fast track negotiating
authority to get new free trade agreements with, say, Brazil or
Argentina or Chile or other countries across the world, and just as in
1991, I voted for fast track for then-President Bush, I am quite
prepared to vote for fast track for President Clinton because obviously
I think he shares my values on these issues much more than President
Bush did, but I do not want again to go to a set of negotiations
without the Congress being very clear about what we expect in macro
terms to be in these agreements. I did that once; I do not want to do
that again. I think we suffered as a Congress from giving this fast
track authority, which of course gives tremendous power from the
Congress to the executive branch, which I am willing to give because I
understand the nature of trade negotiations, but I am not willing to
give it without some overall admonition about what we expect to have in
these treaties.
[[Page H8032]]
I do not want to mislead anyone. I do not want the Brazilians to be
misled as to what we will require in the Congress in these treaties. We
want labor and environmental enforcement of their laws in the core
trade treaty with trade sanctions in order to enforce it.
Now when I say that a lot of people say, ``Well, how can you ask
another country to enforce its laws?'' Why would we not ask another
country to enforce its laws? How could we possibly enter into a free
trade marriage, which is what a free trade agreement is, without making
sure that all the countries involved were going to enforce their
national laws?
Now let me go a step further. Before we negotiated the NAFTA, our
business community said that you have got to insist that Mexico change
and improve its intellectual property laws, and we went to Mexico and
did that. Mexico changed and improved its intellectual property and
capital laws, and we put those laws into the treaty and said that if
Mexico does not properly enforce their intellectual property and
capital laws, we will bring trade sanctions against their products
coming into the United States. And what I say to my friends in the
business community is if it is good enough for intellectual property
and capital, which we all care about, surely it must be good enough for
labor and the environment.
I just want symmetry. I want us to treat labor and environment as
strongly as we treat intellectual property and capital.
Now, having said all of that, I think as we enter this debate it is
important to understand what has happened with NAFTA. Some people are
saying, oh, you cannot look at NAFTA, that is unfair because no country
is alike. I agree with that, no country is alike. But surely it is
relevant to this debate to say we have done a free trade treaty with a
country that is in a state of development. What has happened there with
that free trade treaty? Has it worked the way we had hoped it would
work?
And so let us get out some facts about what is happened with NAFTA.
The first thing you need to understand is that since 1993 the number of
jobs and the number of factories on the border in Mexico has doubled
since 1993. In 1993 there were about 500,000 jobs on the border; now
there is almost 1 million.
You also need to understand that the turnover rate in those plants is
100 percent. The people work for less here, and they move on. Why do
they move on so quickly? There is a simple reason. Wages in the
maquilladora plants in Mexico have gone down in the last 3 years, not
up. They were $1 an hour; now people are paid 70 cents an hour. As a
result, people cannot live on that wage so they leave. They either come
to the United States or they go back to the interior where they grew up
in Mexico.
Now, as a result of that it has been really difficult to get
enforcement of Mexico's labor and environmental laws which might have
moved things in a better direction. You know if we really had gotten
Mexico's labor laws to be more properly enforced, maybe wages would be
$1.25 an hour rather than 70 cents an hour as they are now. But that
has not happened. Four cases have been brought under the labor side
agreement, and none of them have been resolved. Under the North
American Development Bank, which we set up to remedy some of these
environment conditions, only 3 loans have been let and none of them
have been completed, and there are literally hundreds of situations on
the border where there is real environmental danger to the people
living on the border.
Now I recently went to the border again, to Juarez, across the line
from El Paso, and I have here some pictures that I think best present
what is actually happening on the border. You know, one of the things
we need to do as we go into this debate is have a reality check, what
is actually happening with the free trade treaty.
Here is a picture of a brand new, very modern maquilladora plant, and
maybe hard to see over the television, but I think people in the room
here can see this is a maquilladora plant.
{time} 1330
It is a modern plant, I forget which company it was, one of our major
corporations. What you need to understand is the maquiladora plants in
places like Mexico are high tech, high quality, high productivity,
making the most sophisticated products in the world, as the gentleman
from Michigan pointed out. This is not low tech, old world technology.
This is the best plant you will find in the world.
But across a drainage ditch a few yards from that plant is the
housing where the people who work in the plant live. The housing is
literally made from the pallets and the boxes that come from the plant.
The people live on the ground. They are earning between $24 and $32 a
week for 8 and 10 hours of work a day. That is a picture of where they
live.
The next picture is a picture of the drainage ditch, which is behind
me. In this picture is the maquiladora, a few yards is the drainage
ditch. This is filled with pollution, human waste, the smell here was
overpowering, the amount of pollution in this ditch was overpowering.
This ditch is a hazard to people's health, hepatitis, cholera. And here
are the houses that the people live in. These are pallets, and the
people earn probably $24 to $32.
Here is another picture of the houses. Here is a young boy up on top
trying to make repairs in the roof of their house. As I talked to
people who are over here, they talked about not having enough food to
eat, about the children not being able to go to school because they
could not afford to send them to school. They could not afford the
clothes. They could not afford the supplies. They said that they have
school teachers paid by the government, but not buildings or supplies.
So to even go to the public schools, you had to have money. So about
half the kids are not attending school.
Here is a picture of washing machine boxes that came straight out of
the plant that is behind where these are, and people are living in
housing that is literally the packing boxes of the products they are
making.
Finally, here is one of the children that we saw in the colonias. The
children, as all children are, are beautiful. I talked to one young
girl and I asked her her name. She said which name do you want? My
right name, or the name I assumed to get a job in the plant at age 13?
Half these children are not in school. All of these children are
malnourished. They are living in subhuman conditions. If you go to the
maquiladoras and ask our companies why are you allowing people to live
in subhuman conditions who are your employees, they probably rightly
say because we are in competition with all the other companies that are
here, and this is cutthroat competition, and there are no standards.
I want to say something: It is not the responsibility of just the
companies to have standards. It is the responsibility of the Government
of the United States and the Government of Mexico to see that there are
human standards for the environment and for people in these factories
and in the housing that is around these factories.
It is our responsibility. So do not tell me that human standards and
worker standards and environmental standards have no place in a free
trade treaty. They have every place in a free trade treaty.
We must be clear if we give this power, as I believe we should, to
the President, of what we expect to be in these treaties. It must
include worker standards and labor standards and environmental
standards that have been passed by the Government of Mexico and
endorsed by the Government of the United States.
Finally, if trade is to actually fulfill its purpose, the people in a
developing country like Mexico have to make a human wage so they can
become consumers of the products they are making. Trade is good, trade
is synergistic, trade can raise the standard of living of every country
involved. But in order for that to happen, people have to make a
living, decent wage. Then we will fulfill the promise of trade. Then
trade will be good for every human being on Earth.
This is our leadership mission. The old debate about protectionism
and free trade is over. No one advocates protectionism. The issue today
in trade is how do we get human standards and decency into the trading
relationship between every country in the world. We can do this. This
must be our mission, of leadership of the world, so that
[[Page H8033]]
conditions like this for this young lady will not exist anywhere in the
world.
We can do this. This is our leadership mission. Bobby Kennedy said
some see things as they are and ask why; I dream things that never were
and ask why not.
In this NAFTA, we must ask, in this fast track we must ask, why not?
Better conditions for all of the people of the world, so that
capitalism and democracy become the hallmark for everybody in the world
that everybody wants to reach for.
Mr. BONIOR. I thank my colleague for his eloquent, impassioned, and
thorough description of this trade dilemma that we face. I would like
to also yield at this time to another champion who cares about these
values and these issues, my distinguished colleague from Ohio, Mr.
Brown, who has been a leader on these issues and who particularly on
the food safety issue has really highlighted the deficiencies in these
agreements.
Mr. BROWN of Ohio. I thank the gentleman from Michigan. As the
gentleman from Missouri [Mr. Gephardt] mentioned and said so
passionately and eloquently, and as the gentleman from Michigan [Mr.
Bonior] has talked about for years in this institution, in this body,
we have seen these trade agreements, whether it is GATT, whether it is
NAFTA, other trade agreements we have signed, have seen a diminishing
of standards, of clean air and safe drinking water and pure food
standards around the world. And that is what is particularly troubling
about extending NAFTA to Chile, or any other country in Latin America,
as a result of the fast track proposal by the President and by the
Republican leadership.
Fast track will accelerate the dismantling that we have worked so
hard to build a consensus around, clean air, safe drinking water, pure,
safe food. We simply should not give up on the consensus that we have
built in this country.
If you go back 90 years ago in the United States, we did not have the
kind of protections of our food supply. There was a book written by a
28-year-old journalist by the name of Upton Sinclair called ``The
Jungle,'' written about the Chicago packing yards in 1906. When that
book was written, America did not really have safeguards in place for
beef and poultry and fish and fruits and vegetables. And over time,
with the establishment of the Food and Drug Administration, in part
coming out of the book ``The Jungle'' and the scandal that Upton
Sinclair pointed out, we as a nation have moved together and built a
consensus around these clean air, safe drinking water laws, worker
safety laws, pure food laws. And it is something that 95 percent, at
least, of the people of this country I believe agree with that
consensus.
Yesterday, I think people spoke in this body, particularly loud and
clear, when there was overwhelming support, almost literally every
single Democrat in this party and a majority of the Republicans
supported the Sanders amendment, which will send I believe U.S. trade
negotiators a clear signal that Congress cares deeply about the
fundamental precepts of American sovereignty in the new global economy.
Let me outline on the time of the gentleman from Michigan, on what
exactly that means and the kind of erosion that we have begun to see in
some of the laws that have protected our way of life, clean air, safe
drinking water, worker safety laws, all of these things, what some of
the threats to that sovereignty and that body of laws that has kept our
standard of living and protected our people the way that they have.
The World Trade Organization was created by the GATT agreement that
passed Congress about 3 years ago. The World Trade Organization is sort
of an international United Nations of international commerce, if you
will, except in a lot of ways it has more teeth. Let me run through a
couple of examples of what has happened under the GATT, under the World
Trade Organization.
Venezuela, which was defending its state-owned monopoly, attacked the
United States in the World Trade Organization over provisions of the
Clean Air Act. The Venezuelans said America's environmental laws were
too strong and kept out Venezuelan oil. Venezuela went to the World
Trade Organization, they won, causing a weakening of American
environmental laws.
Second example, the Massachusetts State government passed a bill in
the legislature that said it would no longer do business with the
military government of Myanmar, what used to be called Burma, as a
protest against human rights violations, some of the worst of any
nation on Earth. The European Union, along with the military
dictatorship in Myanmar, in Burma, challenged the right of the State of
Massachusetts to make such a law and said it was a barrier to trade.
That is now being considered by the World Trade Organization.
The third is closer to home and more directly related to what Mr.
Bonior and Mr. Gephardt were talking about. And that is a dispute we
are in the middle of with the Government of Chile. Chile has, in the
eyes of a lot of Americans, been dumping salmon. They are a major,
major world exporter of salmon. They have been dumping salmon in the
U.S. market. That means selling salmon at a price less than it cost to
produce it, less than the market value, in fact less than the cost to
produce it.
American salmon farmers and salmon fishermen, mostly in Maine,
Alaska, Washington, Oregon, and California, have said this is not fair,
that they can dump salmon at less than cost and undercut American
salmon fishermen and salmon farmers and ultimately take the market away
from these businesses and take jobs away from American workers.
The Government of Chile, in bringing this lawsuit against the United
States, is about to, if they lose, which they have lost first round, is
about to go in front of the World Trade Organization and ask for it to
be declared an unfair trade practice, what the United States is trying
to do to even the playing field.
The Chilean Government has hired former Senator and former
Presidential candidate and former Senate Majority Leader Robert Dole to
represent them. Only 10 months after he was asking the American people
to vote for him for President, the Government of Chile has hired Bob
Dole to represent them against the United States of America. I think it
only begs the question. We wish Mr. Dole played on our team, on the
home team, rather than playing on Chile's team, rather than playing on
the visitor's team.
What is important is Senator Dole is representing a foreign
government against the United States, which ultimately will hurt
American businesses and will cost American jobs if Senator Dole and the
Chilean Government are successful.
Those are the kinds of things, whether it is weakening environmental
laws because of what Venezuela's Government has done, whether it is
getting rid of laws that the State of Massachusetts legislature passed,
or whether it is costing American jobs and hurting American businesses
when Senator Dole represents Chile against the United States. Those are
the kinds of things that are happening that will happen and continue to
happen and happen in much greater frequency under these provisions in
the fast track agreement.
We cannot continue to lower American standards on the environment, on
safe drinking water, on clean air. We cannot continued to allow other
businesses in other countries and other governments to try to weaken
America's food safety laws.
We have seen, as the gentleman from Michigan, Mr. Stupak, a colleague
of Mr. Bonior's, and I earlier this week had a news conference, talking
about the issues of food safety. A young woman from Michigan who had
seen her daughter get sick from hepatitis A from strawberries brought
in from Mexico in school lunches in Marshall, MI, southwest Michigan,
came and spoke at our news conference. She reiterated what a problem it
is we do not do the right kind of food inspection at the Mexican-
American border, and how America is beginning, because of some of these
trade agreements, to lower our standards of food safety.
Few things are more important to this country than to continue to
preserve and protect the world's safest, best, and least expensive food
supply that we so proudly as a nation have built.
[[Page H8034]]
{time} 1345
We have no business allowing these trade agreements to override what
we have done in our States and cities and what this Federal Government
has done to protect our air, protect our water, and protect our food
supply.
So I thank the gentleman from Michigan [Mr. Bonior] for his
involvement and what he has done in leading the charge on making sure
that our trade laws are written fairly so that American workers have a
fair shake, so it is not costing us jobs and hurting our quality of
life.
I asked the question, as many have asked over and over, why should we
rush headlong into another trade agreement that endangers America's
food supply and costs American jobs until we fix those trade
agreements, like NAFTA, that we have not yet fixed. I thank the
gentleman for yielding.
Mr. BONIOR. Mr. Speaker, I thank my colleague for his wonderful
description of a variety of problems, the sovereignty issue, as well as
the food safety issue.
I just want to take a second to talk about another aspect of this
that I think deserves some attention, and that is the whole question of
workers, American workers, Mexican workers, Canadian workers.
We have seen enormous prosperity for the people at the very top in
all three countries over the last 10 years. In the United States, that
actually goes beyond the very top; it extends probably down to the
people who make salaries that are in the top 20 to 25 percent in this
country have done quite well. But 80 percent of Americans since 1979
have basically had their wages frozen or have declined in real wage
terms.
In Mexico wages have fallen rapidly since NAFTA. Real wages and
productivity in Mexico, manufacturing in 1993 to 1996 are illustrated
here, and as we can see, the red line is productivity. That means how
much more output, how much more productive they have been, and we can
see there has been steady growth in productivity during NAFTA in
Mexico, but the wages of the workers have gone down. We talked about
how they were making $1 an hour. They are making 70 cents an hour, many
of them children, many of them 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13 years of age.
So in Mexico, clearly, as I mentioned earlier, 8 million middle-class
Mexican families dropped into poverty. Average workers are not
benefiting. In fact, they are being hurt by these trade agreements, and
I can say the same in Canada as well where wage stagnation for most of
the workers has occurred. People at the top are doing extremely well.
The top 1 percent are doing fabulously well.
So what we are asking for is that everybody gets to share in this
pie. Historically, the way workers have increased their share has been
to collectively organize and bargain for a better deal, for better
wages, for better health care, for a secure pension, and all of the
things that tend to make life fun, tend to make life bearable, tend to
make life possible for a family. These things just did not happen; they
happened in America because people came together and demanded them
collectively.
I remember in the 1950's, almost 40 percent of American families were
members of labor unions, and that was, of course, the greatest period
in America where we had growth of average families. Productivity was
ranging at about 90, 95 percent, and so wages and benefits were at 90,
95 percent. And as membership in organized labor bodies dropped through
the 1960's and 1970's and 1980's, to the point where it is about 15 or
14 percent today, wages relative to productivity dropped was well to
the point where, as I mentioned, since 1979 workers basically are
losing ground or have not gained anything at all. That is a long time;
it is almost 20 years.
So when we argue on behalf of Mexican workers being able to organize,
to assemble freely, to form unions that will work for them and their
families, we do that, we argue that not only for those Mexican workers,
but we argue it for our workers here.
Now, people say, well, how does that affect our workers here? It
affects them because if Mexican wages and benefits start to increase,
as they did here in the 1940's and 1950's and 1960's, then the
employers cannot play this game with workers and say, if you do not
take a cut here or a freeze here, we are going south, because, after
all, Mexico is basically economically a 51st State in the United
States. We have just gotten rid of all of the economic barriers. It is
right across the border.
I had the occasion a few months ago to talk with some women who came
to see me, who were from El Paso, TX, a town, which I might add, was
supposed to be reaping the most benefits, we were told during the NAFTA
debate, from NAFTA, because it was on the border. There would be a lot
of commerce, there would be a lot of energy, there would be a lot of
jobs created. Well, El Paso has one of the highest unemployment rates
of a major city in the country today.
These women came and they told me they worked at a textile facility;
most of these women were in their forties or early fifties, some single
parents. They had been working at this facility for many years, sewing,
making a little above the minimum wage. The minimum wage was $4.75 back
then; it is now $5.15. They were making $5 and $6. They all lost their
jobs because their company moved right across the border, not very much
more than 3 or 4 miles away, set up shop, and was able to pay Mexican
workers, I suspect some of them probably children, 70 cents an hour.
When these women, who were displaced after years of service to this
company, went to the Government, our Government which advocated NAFTA
and said, if we have displaced workers, we will help them with job
relocation and job retraining, when they went to their government to
get that promise, it was not there. None of them were helped; did not
have a program for them, could not take care of them. So they came to
see me and talk to me about this.
It is broken promises of NAFTA that are causing a lot of people to
reconsider what they did on that vote in this Chamber.
I think the thing that moves me the most about this is that I wish
the President and I wish all of my colleagues, for that matter the
American people who are interested in this issue, as most should be,
would have a chance to go down and see what the gentleman from Missouri
[Mr. Gephardt] showed in the pictures. One has to see it to believe it.
It is disgraceful. People are living on the border in subhuman
conditions, in cardboard boxes made out of the very containers that
they put together in facilities that they work in. When they struggle
to have an independent voice, to collectively form a union to increase
their ability to bargain with these multinational corporations, or not
multinational, regular business leaders, they are prohibited from doing
so.
I visited a colonia in Tijuana and talked with a group of people who
lived in a similar situation that Mr. Gephardt described in Juarez, and
the leader of the colonia told me and Mr. Gephardt and others that the
plant that they worked in accelerated the speed of the line so they
could get more production, and as a result, people that he worked with
who lived in his colonia, his village, were losing fingers and some
hands, and it was intolerable. These things were happening on a regular
basis.
So they decided, because they were not getting any action from this
company, that they would protest, so they stopped working. And he, as
the leader of the group, was fired from his job. He then tried to form
an independent union and ended up being thrown in jail for trying to
organize a union to deal with this scandalous situation.
It reminds me, and it should remind my colleagues, if we remember our
history, of what happened in this country 100 years ago. We maybe do
not even have to go back that far; 60, 70 years ago.
So when I say that these trade agreements are taking us backward to
those conditions, that is what I am talking about, because the
Government of Mexico, the multinationals that the gentleman from
Missouri [Mr. Gephardt] talked about, they are not doing anything to
change this. So what we want to do in these trade agreements is to
force them to do something, like we forced them to do something here
over the course of this past century. Force
[[Page H8035]]
them to do things that would help develop the strongest, most viable,
economically vibrant middle class that the world has ever seen.
So this is a struggle, and it is not easy, because we are up against
some of the wealthiest, most powerful people in the world and
governments in the world. But we are right. I am not always right, but
on this I feel it not only in my head, but I feel it in my gut and my
heart, and it is going to happen. It is just a matter of when and how
long and how many kids are going to have to be sacrificed in the
meantime by not getting an education, by being worked to death. How
much of our environment is going to get spoiled? How many of our people
here are going to lose their jobs? And how much disillusionment is
going to be created with the 70 percent in America and the 95 percent
in Mexico, or the 70 percent in Canada who are trying to make a go of
it each and every single day, and who remember the sacrifices of their
families and their mothers and their fathers and their grandparents to
get them to where they were.
Those folks need to join the battle, because when they are aligned
together, there is just too many of us, and we will win, because
history is on our side, right is on our side, economic right is on our
side.
I want to yield now to my distinguished colleague from New Jersey,
Mr. Pallone, who has been also one of the great champions on protecting
average working people and especially the environment.
Mr. PALLONE. Mr. Speaker, I just want to thank the gentleman from
Michigan [Mr. Bonior] for all of the work that he has done in
opposition to the fast track legislation and the way that it has been
handled so far.
I know that one of the concerns that the gentleman mentioned, too,
and I was listening, is the need to protect the environment as well as
the health and safety of American families. One of the concerns that I
have had is that so far we are hearing mainly the suggestion that there
would be additional environmental side agreements, that somehow the
environment would be addressed in further trade agreements with other
countries in the same way that it was with NAFTA as a side agreement to
the initial treaty, and my concern is that that does not adequately
protect the environment, that that is not the way to go about it.
In fact, what we have learned is that in the case of NAFTA, the
environmental side agreement, if you will, has basically resulted in
the number of factories along this very heavily-polluted United States-
Mexican border, the number of factories has actually increased by 20
percent, so pollution problems are getting worse.
Also, little is being done to ensure that new facilities are
complying with environmental standards. Something like 44 tons of
hazardous waste that is illegally dumped by these border factories
every day are not being cleaned up. In fact, there was a commitment to
spend, I think, as much as $2 billion to do cleanup along the border,
and none of that money has been spent.
Mr. BONIOR. That is right. That was the promise of NAFTA: We will
spend $2 billion and clean it up. They spent less than 1 percent of
that money, and virtually nothing has been done. There are a few
projects underway right now, but virtually nothing has been done.
Mr. PALLONE. Mr. Speaker, what I think that the administration is
telling us now is that they are willing to put negotiating objectives
in the fast track legislation that would include specific references to
the environment. But I do not believe that that is going to accomplish
our goal because that will not require that environmental agreements
actually be included as part of the treaties that we negotiate.
Mr. BONIOR. Mr. Speaker, I want to thank my friend from New Jersey,
Mr. Pallone, who has been such a champion on this, and I thank the
Chair for his indulgence, and I appreciate the opportunity to discuss
this issue.
Mr. MOAKLEY. Mr. Speaker, it's been 4 years since NAFTA was signed.
And for those 4 years it's been nothing but bad news: NAFTA has been
bad news for American workers; NAFTA's been bad news for Mexican
workers; and NAFTA's been bad news for the environment.
American workers have lost 420,000 jobs thanks to NAFTA and Mexican
workers' wages have dropped to one-third of what they were in 1980--
from $2.40 an hour in 1993 to $1.50 in 1996.
So, Mr. Speaker if NAFTA is such a dismal failure? If NAFTA has hurt
so many workers on both sides of the border, why on Earth are we
talking about repeating its mistakes?
Thanks to NAFTA hundreds of American companies have closed shop in
the United States only to reopen in Mexico to take advantage of cheaper
labor and weaker worker protections.
And some of those corporations that don't shift their businesses
south threaten to move in order to stop union organizing. They tell
their workers if they try to organize the company will move south to
Mexico and they'll be out on the streets.
Meanwhile, those companies that move to Mexico are having horrible
effects on the environment. Democratic Leader Dick Gephardt just
returned from the border where the pollution and disease are
unbelievable.
In the border region, where maquilladora plants have been set up to
do business cheaply, corporations pollute at will, with no control from
the Mexican Government. Dozens of medical reports describe increased
disease rates, child deformity, and infant mortality rates caused by
the lack of environmental control.
On the American side of the border with Mexico, hepatitis rates have
risen to about four times the United States average. Mr. Speaker,
hepatitis does not respect borders. Instances of tuberculosis are
higher since the passage of NAFTA as well.
Companies who conduct business in Mexico are free to spew toxic
wastes into the rivers and filthy pollutants into the air.
And Mr. Speaker, that air and that water does not stop at the Texas
border just because it's the United States. This Congress and our
President should be doing everything possible to protect our citizens.
Not selling them out for free trade at any price.
Back when we first debated NAFTA, I remember people arguing that this
agreement would help to create prosperity for Mexican workers.
Unfortunately, Mr. Speaker, those people were wrong. The Mexican
workers are actually worse off now than they were before. Democratic
Leader Gephardt brought back pictures of families living in packing
boxes used to ship the products they make.
And, Mexican wages aren't just dropping because of market forces. Mr.
Speaker, the Mexican Government actually implemented policies to keep
Mexican wages down to attract foreign investment. It is no surprise
that Mexicans aren't able to buy our products--most of them have
trouble putting food on the table.
Thanks to depressed Mexican wages and dangerous, unhealthy
workplaces, our trade deficit with Mexico is worse than ever. In other
words, we buy their products much more than they buy ours.
In 1993, prior to the passage of NAFTA, the United States actually
had a trade surplus with Mexico of $1.7 billion.
Today, we all know that this healthy surplus has collapsed into a
deficit of $16.2 billion. Mr. Speaker--under any circumstances, I would
call a $16.2 billion trade deficit bad news for our economy and I would
call the agreement that led to that deficit a bad idea. Yet President
Clinton and some of my colleagues want to use that agreement as a model
for others.
The agreement that brought this country from a trade surplus to a
trade deficit in only 4 years is going to be used again?
So Mr. Speaker, now that we know that NAFTA has hurt our workers,
failed to protect the environment, hurt the lives of Mexicans, and hurt
the American economy, I think we should talk about ways to fix its
mistakes, not ways to repeat them.
But the administration disagrees with me, they are proposing Fast
Track Trade Negotiating Authority, which has no protections for
worker's rights, no protection for the environment, and nothing
remotely resembling human rights.
During NAFTA, these elements were negotiated in side-agreements,
which were not enforced.
Now, 4 years later, the evidence is clear, the side agreements didn't
work. Any environmental or worker protections need to be included in
the body of the agreement itself, not as some sort of toothless
afterthought, as the administration would have it.
Unfortunately, these important standards are only included as
``objectives'' for our negotiators. Section 2, part C states that
``U.S. negotiators shall take into account U.S. domestic objectives
including, but not limited to, the protection of health and safety,
essential security, environmental * * *'', and so forth.
Mr. Speaker, these are excellent goals and our negotiators should
certainly keep them in mind. But this doesn't provide any sort of
guarantees that these initiatives will be taken care of. This
legislation does not force negotiators to make changes in workers'
rights; the legislation does not require any deals on environmental
protection or human rights either.
[[Page H8036]]
And it does not hold governments accountable for the mistreatment of
their workers and the abuse of their environment.
I know that the people who support the proposal say that section 2
allocates worker rights and environmental protection to the World Trade
Organization. But, Mr. Speaker, time and time again, the World Trade
Organization has refused to take on these issues.
In fact, in order to achieve enforceable standards for workers and
the environment, 131 countries would have to reach a consensus and we
all know that is never going to happen.
Mr. Speaker, we have seen that NAFTA has been a terrible failure and
we know many of the reasons why. I hope that the administration will
give history its due and learn from their mistakes instead of repeating
them.
Instead, we should learn from failures of NAFTA and work to build a
new plan for negotiating trade agreements.
{time} 1400
ENVIRONMENTAL ISSUES RELATING TO FAST TRACK LEGISLATION
The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under a previous order of the House, the
gentleman from New Jersey [Mr. Pallone] is recognized for 5 minutes.
Mr. PALLONE. Mr. Speaker, I just want to continue with the gentleman
from Michigan [Mr. Bonior] along the same lines. Even though this may
sound a little bureaucratic, it is important.
If we look at the proposed legislation, it says it will ensure that
trade and environmental protection are mutually supportive, and it in
fact even serves to limit consideration of the environment to foreign
government policies and practices regarding the environment that are
directly related to trade. It limits the ability of the United States
to deal with environmental issues by requiring that negotiations take
place through the World Trade Organization.
My point is that if we look at the language of what is being
proposed, not only does it not adequately protect the environment and
guarantee that the environment is addressed directly in these
subsequent agreements that are negotiated, but it may even limit the
ability to do that. So it does not in any way satisfy our concerns.
Mr. BONIOR. Mr. Speaker, will the gentleman yield?
Mr. PALLONE. I yield to the gentleman from Michigan.
Mr. BONIOR. Mr. Speaker, I think the gentleman has read that
correctly. This fast track authority that has been submitted by the
administration, I contend, is weaker on the environment and weaker on
labor standards than the one that was negotiated under NAFTA 4 years
ago.
I think these issues on the environment the gentleman talked about
need to be in the core agreement, with enforceable standards, like we
enforce capital and as we enforce intellectual property. It falls far,
far short of what is necessary. That is why major environmental groups
throughout this country are opposing this fast track, because they see
it as opening the flood gates and continuing the environmental
degradation that we have seen.
Mr. PALLONE. What I have been doing over the last couple of days, Mr.
Chairman, is I have put together a letter that I am trying, and some
Members have already signed and I am trying to get more Members to
sign, to the President basically saying this: That it is critical for
the fast track to require that environmental concerns be directly
addressed in negotiated agreements, rather than allowing environmental
protection to be negotiated separately in unenforceable side agreements
that do not adequately protect the environment.
To that end, trade agreements negotiated under fast track should also
be negotiated to include enforcement mechanisms that should hold
governments to set environmental protection. I am not saying even with
that that fast track is acceptable, but I believe very strongly that if
we were able to get these kinds of inclusions in there, at least we
would have a little better protection and know that something would be
done on the environment other than negotiating additional side
agreements that really have had no impact.
One of the things I keep saying over and over again is we have to
look at NAFTA as the example. I know a lot of people say, well, in
voting or in reviewing fast track legislation, we should not look back
at NAFTA. To me that makes no sense. NAFTA is the example that we have
of what may result as a result of fast track. If the environment did
not work with that, why should we believe it is going to work again?
Mr. BONIOR. If the gentleman will continue to yield, I found it quite
interesting that when the President came before our caucus in this very
building a couple of weeks ago, he mentioned on at least on two
occasions, maybe three, when he was talking to us, he said off the
cuff, and I could see his aides wincing in the background, and he said,
``Well, if you were not for NAFTA, you probably will not want to be for
fast track.''
There was a reason that people will not be for fast track; because
NAFTA has been, as we have said, it has been deficient in all of these
areas. That is why on our side of the aisle there may be upward of 20
Members who voted for NAFTA who will be voting against fast track
because it has not delivered. That is why the President has mentioned
on several occasions, and I think maybe not inadvertently, but I think
he would not do it again if he had to, that if Members voted against
NAFTA they would probably vote against fast track.
Mr. PALLONE. I appreciate that. If I could just say one last thing,
that is that the reason I feel so strongly about this is not only
because I think it is important to have better environmental standards
in the other countries, but also because if we do not, if we just allow
these free trade agreements to go forward without these kinds of
environmental safeguards, then what happens is ultimately our own
environmental standards are threatened, because it becomes very easy
for those countries to lure plants and companies, manufacturing, down
to, say, Mexico.
Mr. BONIOR. That is exactly what happened to the furniture industry
in southern California. It has gone over the border into Mexico because
they do not have to comply with environmental laws and rules. I visited
an acid factory in Tijuana, an acid field that was supposed to recycle
batteries, and it was a field probably the size of this room, filled
with acid. And right across the street, not more than 10 yards away,
was the largest dairy farm in that state, huge. And of course, the
obvious problems occurred. The children who were drinking the milk from
those cows were suffering and having serious health problems. It
boggles the mind to think that we are not only allowing this to occur,
but we have done nothing at all to correct it in this new legislation.
I thank the gentleman for his comments.
____________________