[Congressional Record Volume 143, Number 157 (Sunday, November 9, 1997)]
[Senate]
[Pages S12256-S12257]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                               FAST TRACK

  Mr. TORRICELLI. Mr. President, this Congress is engaged in a great 
debate about giving the President of the United States virtually 
unrestricted authority to engage and negotiate with other nations in 
what has been termed fast-track authority.
  Capital markets and international political leaders are waiting to 
see whether or not this Congress will grant that authority to the 
President of the United States.
  To some, the debate has already been defined as either one 
of believing in free trade or returning to protectionism. I believe 
that that is a disservice to this Congress and indeed to the debate 
itself because the issue is extraordinarily more complex.

  The United States needs no lectures about the advantages or the 
pursuit of free trade nor, indeed, does this Congress. In Bretton 
Woods, the Kennedy Round, the Uruguay Round, the United States has both 
led and constructed the current system both in monetary and trade 
relations.
  This country understands that free, unfettered trade, the opening of 
international markets, is the very foundation of both our own and 
international prosperity. This generation's standard of living has been 
based on the lessons of each of these agreements.
  As a result, the United States has become the largest importing 
nation in the world. Indeed, although the United States has an economy 
that is smaller than the combined economies of the European community, 
we import more than twice the industrialized product from the 
developing world.
  This trade has been not without benefit to even those industries 
which seemingly have suffered the most. Although there have been 
serious dislocations in key industrial industries, like autos and steel 
and new products like

[[Page S12257]]

semiconductors and computers, the current competitiveness and 
efficiency of even these industries have benefited by international 
trade and competition.
  Indeed, it is because of this enhanced efficiency in competition that 
I supported fast-track authority in 1988, supported the Canada-U.S. 
Free Trade Agreement and most recently the GATT agreement.
  I take the Senate floor today because I have reached my own 
conclusion that when asked to vote in this body, I will not support 
fast-track authority as currently requested by the President of the 
United States this year. I do so despite a long history of supporting 
similar authority and as one who believes strongly in free trade as 
enhancing American competitiveness and it being essential to America's 
quality of life, because I believe the United States has reached an 
important crossroads in our trade strategy.
  Like many Americans, I am simply not convinced that the U.S. 
Government has a strategy to maximize benefits in current trade 
agreements. I do not fear the competition of foreign trade. I simply 
fear that our negotiators are not prepared to protect and defend our 
national interests with a coherent strategy.
  I base my conclusion on four principal problems.
  First, over 4 decades, by necessity, through the cold war and in 
times of threats to our national security, it became necessary for the 
United States on occasion to compromise in our trade strategy in order 
to engage in the protection of other important national interests.
  By necessity, whether it was to secure Philippine military bases or 
the cooperation of Korean or Turkish or a host of other allies, the 
United States would set apart our trade objectives in order to secure 
national security concerns.
  Even now while American intellectual property rights are being 
compromised in China, we are being told that this is necessary for the 
political engagement of the People's Republic of China.
  Mr. President, my first objection to fast-track authority to the 
President is these agreements on trade must stand for economic purposes 
of their own weight. The American people and this Congress must be 
convinced the country is pursuing a coherent trade strategy without 
compromise for other purposes.
  Second, it is critical that this Congress be convinced that our trade 
negotiators are using the leverage of those seeking access to our 
market to its maximum advantage. In negotiating NAFTA, the United 
States afforded Mexico the most important advantage that any nation 
economically could ever seek. That is, to gain access to the American 
market for their products. But we did so without using all of the 
leverage available to the United States. So Mexico, a country that is a 
principal conduit for narcotics into the United States, a source of 
massive illegal immigration to the United States, a nation which does 
not allow access to American products or investment without 
reservation, was afforded the opportunities of NAFTA without, by 
necessity, conceding cooperation on all these fronts. So in my mind, 
Mr. President, the second reason for a reservation in proceeding with 
fast-track authority is that the United States is not using its 
principal leverage in negotiating with other nations.
  Third, Mr. President, in my mind, is the legitimate concern about the 
pace of international economic integration. Mr. President, during this 
debate, both in this body and in the other, no one will be quoted more 
often than Adam Smith. Indeed, to my mind, there is no man who has been 
read less and quoted more often than Adam Smith in his ``Wealth of 
Nations.'' For my third reason in objecting to fast-track authority, I 
return to his treatise of more than two centuries ago when he said, ``. 
. . freedom of trade should be restored only by slow gradations, and 
with a good deal of reserve and circumspection. Were those high duties 
and prohibitions taken away all at once . . . the disorder which this 
would occasion might no doubt be very considerable.''
  Mr. President, free trade is a national objective, but like other 
human virtues, it may never be fully realized. It is forever pursued, 
but it requires so many changes in culture and values and so many 
complications that it must remain a goal, understanding it may never be 
realized. Every Member of this institution recognizes that fast-track 
authority and opening the American market involves a host, indeed 
hundreds, of different industries that compromise many communities and 
their economic strength. It is understood and recognized that, like 
manufacturing, certain high-labor-intensive industries have no long-
term future in the American economy.
  As Adam Smith warned two centuries ago, that does not mean that with 
haste or even immediacy they must be subjected to their demise. There 
are industries in this country that employ thousands, if not millions, 
of people who live on the economic margins of our society who have no 
other economic choice. The 50- or 60-year-old textile worker who may 
have lived in this country for generations, or be new to our land, who 
may speak English or may not, who may be educated or may have the bare 
minimum of education, will not in a single generation or with the 
stroke of a pen be transformed from a textile worker to a computer 
technician.
  American trade policy with a goal of free trade must be realistic and 
fair to all elements of this society and must take into account the 
very disorder of which Adam Smith warned only that we be accommodating.
  Mr. President, finally, a fourth and final reason that I believe this 
Senate should withhold fast-track authority on this occasion. It is 
based on a series of judgments that this Congress reached a long time 
ago. It has become, I believe, standard in this country, almost without 
reservation, to believe that it is appropriate, from bans on child 
labor to a reasonable minimum wage, to the human rights organized labor 
unions, to just and fair environmental standards. But our country now, 
in the decision to engage itself in free and open global trade, needs 
to reach a judgment. How is it we keep these basic commitments without 
engaging in an extraordinary and even hypocritical contradiction? At 
this moment in time, the Nation wants both to maintain these high moral 
standards, some of which have transcended generations, but at the same 
time to take advantage of the inexpensive products, the economic 
opportunities of importations where workers have no right to organize, 
nonexistent or unenforced minimum wage and, in many cases, almost no 
protections against child labor, and a minimum of environmental 
standards.

  The difference, Mr. President, is whether or not the United States 
will, in some cases, engage in exploitation, not whether or not the 
United States will engage in free trade. I believe, therefore, Mr. 
President, that on this occasion, with a commitment to free trade and 
an understanding of the need and necessity for the United States to 
engage in free, fair, and open competition, this Congress should not 
grant unrestricted authority to the President of the United States to 
engage in trade negotiations, without reserving for ourselves the right 
to ensure that there is a trade strategy that encompasses the goal of 
reaching trade balance, dealing with structural imbalances that, by 
necessity, are arising from countries that continue to protect their 
own markets. And we deal with these inherent contradictions of how we 
maintain both a standard of living for those in our country who cannot 
quickly adjust to the competition, the contradictions of maintaining 
environmental labor standards, while allowing access to our market to 
those who do not.
  This will require a trade strategy by the Executive that, to my 
judgment, has not yet been defined and may not yet exist. I do hope, 
however, Mr. President, that this is understood for what it is--not a 
retreat, not protectionism, just forcing this country, at long last, to 
begin to define a real and lasting trade strategy.
  Mr. President, I yield the floor.

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