[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.

                          ____________________