Congressional Record, Volume 144 Issue 130 (Friday, September 25, 1998)

[Congressional Record Volume 144, Number 130 (Friday, September 25, 1998)]
[House]
[Pages H8765-H8805]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]

RECIPROCAL TRADE AGREEMENT AUTHORITIES ACT OF 1997

Mr. ARCHER. Mr. Speaker, pursuant to House Resolution 553, I call up
the bill (H.R. 2621) to extend trade authorities procedures with
respect to reciprocal trade agreements, and for other purposes, and ask
for its immediate consideration.
The Clerk read the title of the bill.
The SPEAKER pro tempore. Pursuant to House Resolution 553, the bill
is considered read for amendment.
The text of H.R. 2621 is as follows:

H.R. 2621

Be it enacted by the Senate and House of Representatives of
the United States of America in Congress assembled,

TITLE I--TRADE AUTHORITIES PROCEDURES

SEC. 101. SHORT TITLE.

This title may be cited as the ``Reciprocal Trade Agreement
Authorities Act of 1997''.

SEC. 102. TRADE NEGOTIATING OBJECTIVES.

[[Page H8766]]

(1) Trade barriers and distortions.--The principal
negotiating objectives of the United States regarding trade
barriers and other trade distortions are--
(A) to expand competitive market opportunities for United
States exports and to obtain fairer and more open conditions
of trade by reducing or eliminating tariff and nontariff
barriers and policies and practices of foreign governments
directly related to trade that decrease market opportunities
for United States exports or otherwise distort United States
trade; and
(B) to obtain reciprocal tariff and nontariff barrier
elimination agreements, with particular attention to those
tariff categories covered in section 111(b) of the Uruguay
Round Agreements Act (19 U.S.C. 3521(b)).
(2) Trade in services.--The principal negotiating objective
of the United States regarding trade in services is to reduce
or eliminate barriers to international trade in services,
including regulatory and other barriers that deny national
treatment and unreasonably restrict the establishment and
operations of service suppliers.
(3) Foreign investment.--The principal negotiating
objective of the United States regarding foreign investment
is to reduce or eliminate artificial or trade-distorting
barriers to trade related foreign investment by--
(A) reducing or eliminating exceptions to the principle of
national treatment;
(B) freeing the transfer of funds relating to investments;
(C) reducing or eliminating performance requirements and
other unreasonable barriers to the establishment and
operation of investments;
(D) seeking to establish standards for expropriation and
compensation for expropriation, consistent with United States
legal principles and practice; and
(E) providing meaningful procedures for resolving
investment disputes.
(4) Intellectual property.--The principal negotiating
objectives of the United States regarding trade-related
intellectual property are--
(A) to further promote adequate and effective protection of
intellectual property rights, including through--
(i)(I) ensuring accelerated and full implementation of the
Agreement on Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property
Rights referred to in section 101(d)(15) of the Uruguay Round
Agreements Act (19 U.S.C. 3511(d)(15)),
(II) achieving improvements in the standards of that
Agreement, particularly with respect to United States
industries whose products are subject to the lengthiest
transition periods for full compliance by developing
countries with that Agreement; and
(III) ensuring that the provisions of any multilateral or
bilateral trade agreement entered into by the United States
provide protection at least as strong as the protection
afforded by chapter 17 of the North American Free Trade
Agreement and the annexes thereto;
(ii) providing strong protection for new and emerging
technologies and new methods of transmitting and distributing
products embodying intellectual property;
(iii) preventing or eliminating discrimination with respect
to matters affecting the availability, acquisition, scope,
maintenance, use, and enforcement of intellectual property
rights; and
(iv) providing strong enforcement of intellectual property
rights, including through accessible, expeditious, and
effective civil, administrative, and criminal enforcement
mechanisms; and
(B) to secure fair, equitable, and nondiscriminatory market
access opportunities for United States persons that rely upon
intellectual property protection.
(5) Transparency.--The principal negotiating objective of
the United States with respect to transparency is to obtain
broader application of the principle of transparency
through--
(A) increased and more timely public access to information
regarding trade issues and the activities of international
trade institutions; and
(B) increased openness of dispute settlement proceedings,
including under the World Trade Organization.
(6) Reciprocal trade in agriculture.--The principal
negotiating objective of the United States with respect to
agriculture is to obtain competitive opportunities for United
States exports in foreign markets substantially equivalent to
the competitive opportunities afforded foreign exports in
United States markets and to achieve fairer and more open
conditions of trade in bulk and value-added commodities by--
(A) reducing or eliminating, by a date certain, tariffs or
other charges that decrease market opportunities for United
States exports--
(i) giving priority to those products that are subject to
significantly higher tariffs or subsidy regimes of major
producing countries; and
(ii) providing reasonable adjustment periods for United
States import-sensitive products;
(B) reducing or eliminating subsidies that decrease market
opportunities for United States exports or unfairly distort
agriculture markets to the detriment of the United States;
(C) developing, strengthening, and clarifying rules and
effective dispute settlement mechanisms to eliminate
practices that unfairly decrease United States market access
opportunities or distort agricultural markets to the
detriment of the United States, particularly with respect to
import-sensitive products, including--
(i) unfair or trade-distorting activities of state trading
enterprises and other administrative mechanisms;
(ii) unjustified trade restrictions or commercial
requirements affecting new technologies, including
biotechnology;
(iii) unjustified sanitary or phytosanitary restrictions,
including those not based on sound science in contravention
of the Uruguay Round Agreements;
(iv) other unjustified technical barriers to trade; and
(v) restrictive rules in the administration of tariff rate
quotas;
(D) improving import relief mechanisms to recognize the
unique characteristics of perishable agriculture;
(E) taking into account whether a party to the negotiations
has failed to adhere to the provisions of already existing
trade agreements with the United States or has circumvented
obligations under those agreements;
(F) taking into account whether a product is subject to
market distortions by reason of a failure of a major
producing country to adhere to the provisions of already
existing trade agreements with the United States or by the
circumvention by that country of its obligations under those
agreements; and
(G) otherwise ensuring that countries that accede to the
World Trade Organization have made meaningful market
liberalization commitments in agriculture.
(7) Labor, the environment, and other matters.--The
principal negotiating objective of the United States
regarding labor, the environment, and other matters is to
address the following aspects of foreign government policies
and practices regarding labor, the environment, and other
matters that are directly related to trade:
(A) To ensure that foreign labor, environmental, health, or
safety policies and practices do not arbitrarily or
unjustifiably discriminate or serve as disguised barriers to
trade.
(B) To ensure that foreign governments do not derogate from
or waive existing domestic environmental, health, safety, or
labor measures, including measures that deter exploitative
child labor, as an encouragement to gain competitive
advantage in international trade or investment. Nothing in
this subparagraph is intended to address changes to a
country's laws that are nondiscriminatory and consistent with
sound macroeconomic development.
(8) WTO extended negotiations.--The principal negotiating
objectives of the United States regarding trade in financial
services are those set forth in section 135(a) of the Uruguay
Round Agreements Act (19 U.S.C. 3555(a)), regarding trade in
civil aircraft are those set forth in section 135(c) of that
Act, and regarding rules of origin are the conclusion of an
agreement described in section 132 of that Act (19 U.S.C.
3552).
(c) International Economic Policy Objectives.--
(1) In general.--The President should take into account the
relationship between trade agreements and other important
priorities of the United States and seek to ensure that the
trade agreements entered into by the United States complement
and reinforce other policy goals. The United States
priorities in this area include--
(A) seeking to ensure that trade and environmental policies
are mutually supportive;
(B) seeking to protect and preserve the environment and
enhance the international means for doing so, while
optimizing the use of the world's resources;
(C) promoting the respect for worker rights and the rights
of children and an understanding of the relationship between
trade and worker rights, particularly by working with the
International Labor Organization to encourage the observance
and enforcing of core labor standards, including exploitative
child labor; and
(D) supplementing and strengthening standards for
protection of intellectual property under conventions
administered by international organizations other than the
World Trade Organization, expanding the conventions to cover
new and emerging technologies, and eliminating discrimination
and unreasonable exceptions or preconditions to such
protection.
(2) Applicability of trade authorities procedures.--Nothing
in this subsection shall be construed to authorize the use of
the trade authorities procedures described in section 103 to
modify United States law.
(d) Guidance for Negotiators.--
(1) Domestic objectives.--In pursuing the negotiating
objectives described in subsection (b), the negotiators on
behalf of the United States shall take into account United
States domestic objectives, including the protection of
health and safety, essential security, environmental,
consumer, and employment opportunity interests, and the law
and regulations related thereto.
(2) Consultations with congressional advisers and
enforcement of the trade laws.--In the course of negotiations
conducted under this title, the United States Trade
Representative shall--
(A) consult closely and on a timely basis with, and keep
fully apprised of the negotiations, the congressional
advisers on trade policy and negotiations appointed under
section 161 of the Trade Act of 1974; and
(B) take into account the need for the United States to
retain the ability to enforce

[[Page H8767]]

rigorously its trade laws in order to ensure that United
States workers, agricultural producers, and firms can compete
on fair terms and enjoy the benefits of reciprocal trade
concessions.
(e) Adherence to Obligations Under Uruguay Round
Agreements.--In determining whether to enter into
negotiations with a particular country, the President shall
take into account the extent to which that country has
implemented, or has accelerated the implementation of, its
obligations under the Uruguay Round Agreements.

SEC. 103. TRADE AGREEMENTS AUTHORITY.

(a) Agreements Regarding Tariff Barriers.--
(1) In general.--Whenever the President determines that one
or more existing duties or other import restrictions of any
foreign country or the United States are unduly burdening and
restricting the foreign trade of the United States and that
the purposes, policies, and objectives of this title will be
promoted thereby, the President--
(A) may enter into trade agreements with foreign countries
before--
(i) October 1, 2001, or
(ii) October 1, 2005, if trade authorities procedures are
extended under subsection (c), and
(B) may, subject to paragraphs (2) and (3), proclaim--
(i) such modification or continuance of any existing duty,
or
(ii) such continuance of existing duty-free or excise
treatment,

as the President determines to be required or appropriate to
carry out any such trade agreement. The President shall
notify the Congress of the President's intention to enter
into an agreement under this subsection.
(2) Limitations.--No proclamation may be made under
paragraph (1) that--
(A) reduces any rate of duty (other than a rate of duty
that does not exceed 5 percent ad valorem on the date of the
enactment of this Act) to a rate of duty which is less than
50 percent of the rate of such duty that applies on such date
of enactment; or
(B) reduces the rate of duty on an article to take effect
on a date that is more than 10 years after the first
reduction that is proclaimed to carry out a trade agreement
with respect to such article.
(3) Aggregate reduction; exemption from staging.--
(A) Aggregate reduction.--Except as provided in
subparagraph (B), the aggregate reduction in the rate of duty
on any article which is in effect on any day pursuant to a
trade agreement entered into under paragraph (1) shall not
exceed the aggregate reduction which would have been in
effect on such day if--
(i) a reduction of 3 percent ad valorem or a reduction of
one-tenth of the total reduction, whichever is greater, had
taken effect on the effective date of the first reduction
proclaimed under paragraph (1) to carry out such agreement
with respect to such article; and
(ii) a reduction equal to the amount applicable under
clause (i) had taken effect at 1-year intervals after the
effective date of such first reduction.
(B) Exemption from staging.--No staging is required under
subparagraph (A) with respect to a duty reduction that is
proclaimed under paragraph (1) for an article of a kind that
is not produced in the United States. The United States
International Trade Commission shall advise the President of
the identity of articles that may be exempted from staging
under this subparagraph.
(4) Rounding.--If the President determines that such action
will simplify the computation of reductions under paragraph
(3), the President may round an annual reduction by an amount
equal to the lesser of--
(A) the difference between the reduction without regard to
this paragraph and the next lower whole number; or
(B) one-half of 1 percent ad valorem.
(5) Other limitations.--A rate of duty reduction that may
not be proclaimed by reason of paragraph (2) may take effect
only if a provision authorizing such reduction is included
within an implementing bill provided for under section 105
and that bill is enacted into law.
(6) Other tariff modifications.--Notwithstanding paragraphs
(1)(B) and (2) through (5), and subject to the consultation
and layover requirements of section 115 of the Uruguay Round
Agreements Act, the President may proclaim the modification
of any duty or staged rate reduction of any duty set forth in
Schedule XX, as defined in section 2(5) of that Act, if the
United States agrees to such modification or staged rate
reduction in a negotiation for the reciprocal elimination or
harmonization of duties under the auspices of the World Trade
Organization or as part of an interim agreement leading to
the formation of a regional free-trade area.
(7) Authority under uruguay round agreements act not
affected.--Nothing in this subsection shall limit the
authority provided to the President under section 111(b) of
the Uruguay Round Agreements Act (19 U.S.C. 3521(b)).
(b) Agreements Regarding Tariff and Nontariff Barriers.--
(1) In general.--(A) Whenever the President determines
that--
(i) one or more existing duties or any other import
restriction of any foreign country or the United States or
any other barrier to, or other distortion of, international
trade unduly burdens or restricts the foreign trade of the
United States or adversely affects the United States economy,
or
(ii) the imposition of any such barrier or distortion is
likely to result in such a burden, restriction, or effect,

and that the purposes, policies, and objectives of this title
will be promoted thereby, the President may enter into a
trade agreement described in subparagraph (B) during the
period described in subparagraph (C).
(B) The President may enter into a trade agreement under
subparagraph (A) with foreign countries providing for--
(i) the reduction or elimination of a duty, restriction,
barrier, or other distortion described in subparagraph (A),
or
(ii) the prohibition of, or limitation on the imposition
of, such barrier or other distortion.
(C) The President may enter into a trade agreement under
this paragraph before--
(i) October 1, 2001, or
(ii) October 1, 2005, if trade authorities procedures are
extended under subsection (c).
(2) Conditions.--A trade agreement may be entered into
under this subsection only if such agreement makes progress
in meeting the applicable objectives described in section 102
and the President satisfies the conditions set forth in
section 104.
(3) Bills qualifying for trade authorities procedures.--The
provisions of section 151 of the Trade Act of 1974 (in this
title referred to as ``trade authorities procedures'') apply
to a bill of either House of Congress consisting only of--
(A) a provision approving a trade agreement entered into
under this subsection and approving the statement of
administrative action, if any, proposed to implement such
trade agreement,
(B) provisions directly related to the principal trade
negotiating objectives set forth in section 102(b) achieved
in such trade agreement, if those provisions are necessary
for the operation or implementation of United States rights
or obligations under such trade agreement,
(C) provisions that define and clarify, or provisions that
are related to, the operation or effect of the provisions of
the trade agreement,
(D) provisions to provide adjustment assistance to workers
and firms adversely affected by trade, and
(E) provisions necessary for purposes of complying with
section 252 of the Balanced Budget and Emergency Deficit
Control Act of 1985 in implementing the trade agreement,

to the same extent as such section 151 applies to
implementing bills under that section. A bill to which this
subparagraph applies shall hereafter in this title be
referred to as an ``implementing bill''.
(c) Extension Disapproval Process for Congressional Trade
Authorities Procedures.--
(1) In general.--Except as provided in section 105(b)--
(A) the trade authorities procedures apply to implementing
bills submitted with respect to trade agreements entered into
under subsection (b) before October 1, 2001; and
(B) the trade authorities procedures shall be extended to
implementing bills submitted with respect to trade agreements
entered into under subsection (b) after September 30, 2001,
and before October 1, 2005, if (and only if)--
(i) the President requests such extension under paragraph
(2); and
(ii) neither House of the Congress adopts an extension
disapproval resolution under paragraph (5) before October 1,
2001.
(2) Report to congress by the president.--If the President
is of the opinion that the trade authorities procedures
should be extended to implementing bills described in
paragraph (1)(B), the President shall submit to the Congress,
not later than July 1, 2001, a written report that contains a
request for such extension, together with--
(A) a description of all trade agreements that have been
negotiated under subsection (b) and the anticipated schedule
for submitting such agreements to the Congress for approval;
(B) a description of the progress that has been made in
negotiations to achieve the purposes, policies, and
objectives of this title, and a statement that such progress
justifies the continuation of negotiations; and
(C) a statement of the reasons why the extension is needed
to complete the negotiations.
(3) Report to congress by the advisory committee.--The
President shall promptly inform the Advisory Committee for
Trade Policy and Negotiations established under section 135
of the Trade Act of 1974 (19 U.S.C. 2155) of the President's
decision to submit a report to the Congress under paragraph
(2). The Advisory Committee shall submit to the Congress as
soon as practicable, but not later than August 1, 2001, a
written report that contains--
(A) its views regarding the progress that has been made in
negotiations to achieve the purposes, policies, and
objectives of this title; and
(B) a statement of its views, and the reasons therefor,
regarding whether the extension requested under paragraph (2)
should be approved or disapproved.
(4) Reports may be classified.--The reports submitted to
the Congress under paragraphs (2) and (3), or any portion of
such reports, may be classified to the extent the President
determines appropriate.
(5) Extension disapproval resolutions.--(A) For purposes of
paragraph (1), the term

[[Page H8768]]

``extension disapproval resolution'' means a resolution of
either House of the Congress, the sole matter after the
resolving clause of which is as follows: ``That the __
disapproves the request of the President for the extension,
under section 103(c)(1)(B)(i) of the Reciprocal Trade
Agreement Authorities Act of 1997, of the provisions of
section 151 of the Trade Act of 1974 to any implementing bill
submitted with respect to any trade agreement entered into
under section 103(b) of the Reciprocal Trade Agreement
Authorities Act of 1997 after September 30, 2001.'', with the
blank space being filled with the name of the resolving House
of the Congress.
(B) Extension disapproval resolutions--
(i) may be introduced in either House of the Congress by
any member of such House; and
(ii) shall be jointly referred, in the House of
Representatives, to the Committee on Ways and Means and the
Committee on Rules.
(C) The provisions of sections 152(d) and (e) of the Trade
Act of 1974 (19 U.S.C. 2192(d) and (e)) (relating to the
floor consideration of certain resolutions in the House and
Senate) apply to extension disapproval resolutions.
(D) It is not in order for--
(i) the Senate to consider any extension disapproval
resolution not reported by the Committee on Finance;
(ii) the House of Representatives to consider any extension
disapproval resolution not reported by the Committee on Ways
and Means and the Committee on Rules; or
(iii) either House of the Congress to consider an extension
disapproval resolution after September 30, 2001.

SEC. 104. CONSULTATIONS.

(a) Notice and Consultation Before Negotiation.--
(1) In general.--The President, with respect to any
agreement that is subject to the provisions of section
103(b), shall--
(A) provide, at least 90 calendar days before initiating
negotiations, written notice to the Congress of the
President's intention to enter into the negotiations and set
forth therein the date the President intends to initiate such
negotiations, the specific United States objectives for the
negotiations, and whether the President intends to seek an
agreement, or changes to an existing agreement; and
(B) before and after submission of the notice, consult
regarding the negotiations with the Committee on Finance of
the Senate and the Committee on Ways and Means of the House
of Representatives and such other committees of the House and
Senate as the President deems appropriate.
(2) Consultations regarding negotiations on certain
objectives.--
(A) Consultation.--In addition to the requirements set
forth in paragraph (1), before initiating negotiations with
respect to a trade agreement entered into under section
103(b) in which the subject matter is directly related to the
principal trade negotiating objectives set forth in section
2(b)(1) or section 102(b)(7), the President shall consult
with the Committee on Ways and Means of the House of
Representatives and the Committee on Finance of the Senate
and with the appropriate industry sector advisory groups
established under section 135 of the Trade Act of 1974 with
respect to such negotiations.
(B) Scope.--The consultations described in subparagraph (A)
shall concern the manner in which the negotiation will
address the objective of reducing or eliminating a specific
tariff or nontariff barrier or foreign government policy or
practice directly related to trade that decreases market
opportunities for United States exports or otherwise distorts
United States trade.
(3) Negotiations regarding agriculture.--Before initiating
negotiations under section 102(b)(6)(A) with any country, the
President shall assess whether United States tariffs on
agriculture products that were bound under the Uruguay Round
Agreements are lower than the tariffs bound by that country.
In addition, the President shall consider whether the tariff
levels bound and applied throughout the world with respect to
imports from the United States are higher than United States
tariffs and whether the negotiation provides an opportunity
to address any such disparity. The President shall consult
with the Committee on Ways and Means and the Committee on
Agriculture of the House of Representatives and the Committee
on Finance and the Committee on Agriculture, Nutrition, and
Forestry of the Senate concerning the results of the
assessment, whether it is appropriate for the United States
to agree to further tariff reductions based on the
conclusions reached in the assessment, and how all applicable
negotiating objectives will be met.
(b) Consultation With Congress Before Agreements Entered
Into.--
(1) Consultation.--Before entering into any trade agreement
under section 103(b), the President shall consult with--
(A) the Committee on Ways and Means of the House of
Representatives and the Committee on Finance of the Senate;
and
(B) each other committee of the House and the Senate, and
each joint committee of the Congress, which has jurisdiction
over legislation involving subject matters which would be
affected by the trade agreement.
(2) Scope.--The consultation described in paragraph (1)
shall include consultation with respect to--
(A) the nature of the agreement;
(B) how and to what extent the agreement will achieve the
applicable purposes, policies, and objectives of this title;
and
(C) the implementation of the agreement under section 105.
(c) Advisory Committee Reports.--The report required under
section 135(e)(1) of the Trade Act of 1974 regarding any
trade agreement entered into under section 103(a) or (b) of
this Act shall be provided to the President, the Congress,
and the United States Trade Representative not later than 30
days after the date on which the President notifies the
Congress under section 103(a)(1) or 105(a)(1)(A) of the
President's intention to enter into the agreement.

SEC. 105. IMPLEMENTATION OF TRADE AGREEMENTS.

(a) In General.--
(1) Notification and submission.--Any agreement entered
into under section 103(b) shall enter into force with respect
to the United States if (and only if)--
(A) the President, at least 90 calendar days before the day
on which the President enters into the trade agreement,
notifies the House of Representatives and the Senate of the
President's intention to enter into the agreement, and
promptly thereafter publishes notice of such intention in the
Federal Register;
(B) within 60 days after entering into the agreement, the
President submits to the Congress a description of those
changes to existing laws that the President considers would
be required in order to bring the United States into
compliance with the agreement;
(C) after entering into the agreement, the President
submits a copy of the final legal text of the agreement,
together with--
(i) a draft of an implementing bill described in section
103(b)(3);
(ii) a statement of any administrative action proposed to
implement the trade agreement; and
(iii) the supporting information described in paragraph
(2); and
(D) the implementing bill is enacted into law.
(2) Supporting information.--The supporting information
required under paragraph (1)(C)(iii) consists of--
(A) an explanation as to how the implementing bill and
proposed administrative action will change or affect existing
law; and
(B) a statement--
(i) asserting that the agreement makes progress in
achieving the applicable purposes, policies, and objectives
of this title;
(ii) setting forth the reasons of the President regarding--

(I) how and to what extent the agreement makes progress in
achieving the applicable purposes, policies, and objectives
referred to in clause (i);
(II) whether and how the agreement changes provisions of an
agreement previously negotiated;
(III) how the agreement serves the interests of United
States commerce; and
(IV) how the implementing bill complies with section
103(b)(3).

[[Page H8769]]

(III) may not be amended by either Committee; and
(ii) in the Senate shall be original resolutions of the
Committee on Finance.
(B) The provisions of section 152(d) and (e) of the Trade
Act of 1974 (19 U.S.C. 2192(d) and (e)) (relating to the
floor consideration of certain resolutions in the House and
Senate) apply to procedural disapproval resolutions.
(C) It is not in order for the House of Representatives to
consider any procedural disapproval resolution not reported
by the Committee on Ways and Means and the Committee on
Rules.
(c) Rules of House of Representatives and Senate.--
Subsection (b) of this section and section 103(c) are enacted
by the Congress--
(1) as an exercise of the rulemaking power of the House of
Representatives and the Senate, respectively, and as such are
deemed a part of the rules of each House, respectively, and
such procedures supersede other rules only to the extent that
they are inconsistent with such other rules; and
(2) with the full recognition of the constitutional right
of either House to change the rules (so far as relating to
the procedures of that House) at any time, in the same
manner, and to the same extent as any other rule of that
House.

SEC. 106. TREATMENT OF CERTAIN TRADE AGREEMENTS.

(a) Certain Agreements.--Notwithstanding section 103(b)(2),
if an agreement to which section 103(b) applies--
(1) is entered into under the auspices of the World Trade
Organization regarding trade in information technology
products,
(2) is entered into under the auspices of the World Trade
Organization regarding extended negotiations on financial
services as described in section 135(a) of the Uruguay Round
Agreements Act (19 U.S.C. 3555(a)),
(3) is entered into under the auspices of the World Trade
Organization regarding the rules of origin work program
described in Article 9 of the Agreement on Rules of Origin
referred to in section 101(d)(10) of the Uruguay Round
Agreements Act (19 U.S.C. 3511(d)(10)), or
(4) is entered into with Chile,

SEC. 107. CONFORMING AMENDMENTS.

(a) In General.--Title I of the Trade Act of 1974 (19
U.S.C. 2111 et seq.) is amended as follows:
(1) Implementing bill.--
(A) Section 151(b)(1) (19 U.S.C. 2191(b)(1)) is amended by
striking ``section 1103(a)(1) of the Omnibus Trade and
Competitiveness Act of 1988, or section 282 of the Uruguay
Round Agreements Act'' and inserting ``section 282 of the
Uruguay Round Agreements Act, or section 105(a)(1) of the
Reciprocal Trade Agreement Authorities Act of 1997''.
(B) Section 151(c)(1) (19 U.S.C. 2191(c)(1)) is amended by
striking ``or section 282 of the Uruguay Round Agreements
Act'' and inserting ``, section 282 of the Uruguay Round
Agreements Act, or section 105(a)(1) of the Reciprocal Trade
Agreement Authorities Act of 1997''.
(2) Advice from international trade commission.--Section
131 (19 U.S.C. 2151) is amended--
(A) in subsection (a)--
(i) in paragraph (1), by striking ``section 123 of this Act
or section 1102 (a) or (c) of the Omnibus Trade and
Competitiveness Act of 1988,'' and inserting ``section 123 of
this Act or section 103(a) or (b) of the Reciprocal Trade
Agreement Authorities Act of 1997,''; and
(ii) in paragraph (2), by striking ``section 1102 (b) or
(c) of the Omnibus Trade and Competitiveness Act of 1988''
and inserting ``section 103(b) of the Reciprocal Trade
Agreement Authorities Act of 1997'';
(B) in subsection (b), by striking ``section
1102(a)(3)(A)'' and inserting ``section 103(a)(3)(A) of the
Reciprocal Trade Agreement Authorities Act of 1997'' before
the end period; and
(C) in subsection (c), by striking ``section 1102 of the
Omnibus Trade and Competitiveness Act of 1988,'' and
inserting ``section 103 of the Reciprocal Trade Agreement
Authorities Act of 1997,''.
(3) Hearings and advice.--Sections 132, 133(a), and 134(a)
(19 U.S.C. 2152, 2153(a), and 2154(a)) are each amended by
striking ``section 1102 of the Omnibus Trade and
Competitiveness Act of 1988,'' each place it appears and
inserting ``section 103 of the Reciprocal Trade Agreement
Authorities Act of 1997,''.
(4) Prerequisites for offers.--Section 134(b) (19 U.S.C.
2154(b)) is amended by striking ``section 1102 of the Omnibus
Trade and Competitiveness Act of 1988'' and inserting
``section 103 of the Reciprocal Trade Agreement Authorities
Act of 1997''.
(5) Advice from private and public sectors.--Section 135
(19 U.S.C. 2155) is amended--
(A) in subsection (a)(1)(A), by striking ``section 1102 of
the Omnibus Trade and Competitiveness Act of 1988'' and
inserting ``section 103 of the Reciprocal Trade Agreement
Authorities Act of 1997'';
(B) in subsection (e)(1)--
(i) by striking ``section 1102 of the Omnibus Trade and
Competitiveness Act of 1988'' each place it appears and
inserting ``section 103 of the Reciprocal Trade Agreement
Authorities Act of 1997''; and
(ii) by striking ``section 1103(a)(1)(A) of such Act of
1988'' and inserting ``section 105(a)(1)(A) of the Reciprocal
Trade Agreement Authorities Act of 1997''; and
(C) in subsection (e)(2), by striking ``section 1101 of the
Omnibus Trade and Competitiveness Act of 1988'' and inserting
``section 102 of the Reciprocal Trade Agreement Authorities
Act of 1997''.
(6) Transmission of agreements to congress.--Section 162(a)
(19 U.S.C. 2212(a)) is amended by striking ``or under section
1102 of the Omnibus Trade and Competitiveness Act of 1988''
and inserting ``or under section 103 of the Reciprocal Trade
Agreement Authorities Act of 1997''.
(b) Application of Certain Provisions.--For purposes of
applying sections 125, 126, and 127 of the Trade Act of 1974
(19 U.S.C. 2135, 2136(a), and 2137)--
(1) any trade agreement entered into under section 103
shall be treated as an agreement entered into under section
101 or 102, as appropriate, of the Trade Act of 1974 (19
U.S.C. 2111 or 2112); and
(2) any proclamation or Executive order issued pursuant to
a trade agreement entered into under section 103 shall be
treated as a proclamation or Executive order issued pursuant
to a trade agreement entered into under section 102 of the
Trade Act of 1974.

SEC. 108. DEFINITIONS.

In this title:
(1) United states person.--The term ``United States
person'' means--
(A) a United States citizen;
(B) a partnership, corporation, or other legal entity
organized under the laws of the United States; and
(C) a partnership, corporation, or other legal entity that
is organized under the laws of a foreign country and is
controlled by entities described in subparagraph (B) or
United States citizens, or both.
(2) Uruguay round agreements.--The term ``Uruguay Round
Agreements'' has the meaning given that term in section 2(7)
of the Uruguay Round Agreements Act (19 U.S.C. 3501(7)).
(3) World trade organization.--The term ``World Trade
Organization'' means the organization established pursuant to
the WTO Agreement.
(4) WTO agreement.--The term ``WTO Agreement'' means the
Agreement Establishing the World Trade Organization entered
into on April 15, 1994.

TITLE II--TRADE ADJUSTMENT ASSISTANCE

SEC. 201. ADJUSTMENT ASSISTANCE FOR WORKERS.

Section 245 of the Trade Act of 1974 (19 U.S.C. 2317) is
amended--
(1) in subsection (a) by striking ``1993'' and all that
follows through ``1998'' and inserting ``1998, 1999, and
2000''; and
(2) in subsection (b) by striking ``1994'' and all that
follows through ``1998'' and inserting ``1998, 1999, and
2000''.

SEC. 202. ADJUSTMENT ASSISTANCE FOR FIRMS.

Section 256(b) of the Trade Act of 1974 (19 U.S.C. 2346(b))
is amended by striking ``1993'' and all that follows through
``1998'' and inserting ``1998, 1999, and 2000''.

SEC. 203. GENERAL ACCOUNTING OFFICE REPORT.

Section 280(a) of the Trade Act of 1974 (19 U.S.C. 2391(a))
is amended--
(1) by striking ``2, 3, and 4'' and inserting ``2 and 3'';
and
(2) by striking ``January 31, 1980'' and inserting
``October 1, 1999''.

SEC. 204. TERMINATION.

Section 285(c) of the Trade Act of 1974 (19 U.S.C. 2271
note) is amended in paragraphs (1) and (2)(A)(i) by striking
``1998'' and inserting ``2000''.

SEC. 205. EFFECTIVE DATE.

The amendments made by this title take effect on the date
of the enactment of this Act.

TITLE III--REVENUE PROVISIONS

SEC. 301. REPEAL OF SPECIAL RULE FOR RENTAL USE OF VACATION
HOMES, ETC., FOR LESS THAN 15 DAYS.

(a) In General.--Section 280A of the Internal Revenue Code
of 1986 (relating to disallowance of certain expenses in
connection with business use of home, rental of vacation
homes, etc.) is amended by striking subsection (g).
(b) No Basis Reduction Unless Depreciation Claimed.--
Section 1016 of such Code is amended by redesignating
subsection (e) as subsection (f) and by inserting after
subsection (d) the following new subsection:
``(e) Special Rule Where Rental Use of Vacation Home, Etc.,
for Less Than 15 Days.--If a dwelling unit is used during the
taxable year by the taxpayer as a residence and such dwelling
unit is actually rented for less than 15 days during the
taxable year, the reduction under subsection (a)(2) by reason
of such rental use in any taxable year beginning after
December 31, 1997, shall not exceed the depreciation
deduction allowed for such rental use.''.
(c) Effective Date.--The amendments made by this section
shall apply to taxable years beginning after December 31,
1997.

[[Page H8770]]

The SPEAKER pro tempore. The amendment printed in the bill, modified
by the amendment printed in House Report 105-745, is adopted.
The text of H.R. 2621, as amended by the amendment printed in the
bill and, as modified by the amendment printed in House Report 105-745,
is as follows:

H.R. 2621

Be it enacted by the Senate and House of Representatives of
the United States of America in Congress assembled,
TITLE I--TRADE AUTHORITIES PROCEDURES

SEC. 101. SHORT TITLE AND FINDINGS.

(a) Short Title.--The Act may be cited as the ``Reciprocal
Trade Agreement Authorities Act of 1998''.
(b) Findings.--The Congress makes the following findings:
(1) The expansion of international trade is vital to the
national security of the United States. Trade is critical to
the economic growth and strength of the United States and to
its leadership in the world. Stable trading relationships
promote security and prosperity. Trade agreements today serve
the same purposes that security pacts played during the Cold
War, binding nations together through a series of mutual
rights and obligations. Leadership by the United States in
international trade fosters open markets, democracy, and
peace throughout the world.
(2) The national security of the United States depends on
its economic security, which in turn is founded upon a
vibrant and growing industrial base. Trade expansion has been
the engine of economic growth. Trade agreements maximize
opportunities for the critical sectors and building blocks of
the economy of the United States, such as information
technology, telecommunications and other leading
technologies, basic industries, capital equipment, medical
equipment, services, agriculture, environmental technology,
and intellectual property. Trade will create new
opportunities for the United States and preserve the
unparalleled strength of the United States in economic,
political, and military affairs. The United States, secured
by expanding trade and economic opportunities, will meet the
challenges of the twenty-first century.

SEC. 102. TRADE NEGOTIATING OBJECTIVES.

(a) Overall Trade Negotiating Objectives.--The overall
trade negotiating objectives of the United States for
agreements subject to the provisions of section 103 are--
(1) to obtain more open, equitable, and reciprocal market
access;
(2) to obtain the reduction or elimination of barriers and
distortions that are directly related to trade and that
decrease market opportunities for United States exports or
otherwise distort United States trade;
(3) to further strengthen the system of international
trading disciplines and procedures, including dispute
settlement; and
(4) to foster economic growth, raise living standards, and
promote full employment in the United States and to enhance
the global economy.
(b) Principal Trade Negotiating Objectives.--
(1) Trade barriers and distortions.--The principal
negotiating objectives of the United States regarding trade
barriers and other trade distortions are--
(A) to expand competitive market opportunities for United
States exports and to obtain fairer and more open conditions
of trade by reducing or eliminating tariff and nontariff
barriers and policies and practices of foreign governments
directly related to trade that decrease market opportunities
for United States exports or otherwise distort United States
trade; and
(B) to obtain reciprocal tariff and nontariff barrier
elimination agreements, with particular attention to those
tariff categories covered in section 111(b) of the Uruguay
Round Agreements Act (19 U.S.C. 3521(b)).
(2) Trade in services.--The principal negotiating objective
of the United States regarding trade in services is to reduce
or eliminate barriers to international trade in services,
including regulatory and other barriers that deny national
treatment or unreasonably restrict the establishment or
operations of service suppliers.
(3) Foreign investment.--The principal negotiating
objective of the United States regarding foreign investment
is to reduce or eliminate artificial or trade-distorting
barriers to trade related foreign investment by--
(A) reducing or eliminating exceptions to the principle of
national treatment;
(B) freeing the transfer of funds relating to investments;
(C) reducing or eliminating performance requirements and
other unreasonable barriers to the establishment and
operation of investments;
(D) seeking to establish standards for expropriation and
compensation for expropriation, consistent with United States
legal principles and practice; and
(E) providing meaningful procedures for resolving
investment disputes.
(4) Intellectual property.--The principal negotiating
objectives of the United States regarding trade-related
intellectual property are--
(A) to further promote adequate and effective protection of
intellectual property rights, including through--
(i)(I) ensuring accelerated and full implementation of the
Agreement on Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property
Rights referred to in section 101(d)(15) of the Uruguay Round
Agreements Act (19 U.S.C. 3511(d)(15)), particularly with
respect to United States industries whose products are
subject to the lengthiest transition periods for full
compliance by developing countries with that Agreement, and
(II) ensuring that the provisions of any multilateral or
bilateral trade agreement entered into by the United States
provide protection at least as strong as the protection
afforded by chapter 17 of the North American Free Trade
Agreement and the annexes thereto;
(ii) providing strong protection for new and emerging
technologies and new methods of transmitting and distributing
products embodying intellectual property;
(iii) preventing or eliminating discrimination with respect
to matters affecting the availability, acquisition, scope,
maintenance, use, and enforcement of intellectual property
rights; and
(iv) providing strong enforcement of intellectual property
rights, including through accessible, expeditious, and
effective civil, administrative, and criminal enforcement
mechanisms; and
(B) to secure fair, equitable, and nondiscriminatory market
access opportunities for United States persons that rely upon
intellectual property protection.
(5) Transparency.--The principal negotiating objective of
the United States with respect to transparency is to obtain
broader application of the principle of transparency
through--
(A) increased and more timely public access to information
regarding trade issues and the activities of international
trade institutions; and
(B) increased openness of dispute settlement proceedings,
including under the World Trade Organization.
(6) Reciprocal trade in agriculture.--(A) The principal
negotiating objective of the United States with respect to
agriculture is to obtain competitive opportunities for United
States exports agricultural commodities in foreign markets
substantially equivalent to the competitive opportunities
afforded foreign exports in United States markets and to
achieve fairer and more open conditions of trade in bulk and
value-added commodities by--
(i) reducing or eliminating, by a date certain, tariffs or
other charges that decrease market opportunities for United
States exports--
(I) giving priority to those products that are subject to
significantly higher tariffs or subsidy regimes of major
producing countries; and
(II) providing reasonable adjustment periods for United
States import-sensitive products, in close consultation with
the Congress on such products before initiating tariff
reduction negotiations;
(ii) reducing or eliminating subsidies that decrease market
opportunities for United States exports or unfairly distort
agriculture markets to the detriment of the United States;
(iii) developing, strengthening, and clarifying rules and
effective dispute settlement mechanisms to eliminate
practices that unfairly decrease United States market access
opportunities or distort agricultural markets to the
detriment of the United States, particularly with respect to
import-sensitive products, including--
(I) unfair or trade-distorting activities of state trading
enterprises and other administrative mechanisms, with
emphasis on requiring price transparency in the operation of
state trading enterprises and such other mechanisms;
(II) unjustified trade restrictions or commercial
requirements affecting new technologies, including
biotechnology;
(III) unjustified sanitary or phytosanitary restrictions,
including those not based on scientific principles in
contravention of the Uruguay Round Agreements;
(IV) other unjustified technical barriers to trade; and
(V) restrictive rules in the administration of tariff rate
quotas;
(iv) improving import relief mechanisms to recognize the
unique characteristics of perishable agriculture;
(v) taking into account whether a party to the negotiations
has failed to adhere to the provisions of already existing
trade agreements with the United States or has circumvented
obligations under those agreements;
(vi) taking into account whether a product is subject to
market distortions by reason of a failure of a major
producing country to adhere to the provisions of already
existing trade agreements with the United States or by the
circumvention by that country of its obligations under those
agreements;
(vii) otherwise ensuring that countries that accede to the
World Trade Organization have made meaningful market
liberalization commitments in agriculture; and
(viii) taking into account the impact that agreements
covering agriculture to which the United States is a party,
including the North American Free Trade Agreement, have on
the United States agricultural industry.
(B)(i) Before commencing negotiations with respect to
agriculture, the United States Trade Representative, in
consultation with the Congress, shall seek to develop a
position on the treatment of seasonal and perishable
agricultural products to be employed in the negotiations in
order to develop an international consensus on the treatment
of seasonal or perishable agricultural products in
investigations relating to dumping and safeguards and in any
other relevant area.
(ii) The negotiating objective provided in subparagraph (A)
applies with respect to agricultural matters to be addressed
in any trade agreement entered into under section 103 (a) or
(b), including any trade agreement entered into under section
103 (a) or (b) that provides for accession to a trade
agreement to which the United States is already a party, such
as the North American Free Trade Agreement and the United
States-Canada Free Trade Agreement.
(7) Labor, the environment, and other matters.--The
principal negotiating objective of the United States
regarding labor, the environment, and other matters is to
address the following aspects of foreign government policies
and practices regarding labor, the environment, and other
matters that are directly related to trade:

[[Page H8771]]

(A) To ensure that foreign labor, environmental, health, or
safety policies and practices do not arbitrarily or
unjustifiably discriminate or serve as disguised barriers to
trade.
(B) To ensure that foreign governments do not derogate from
or waive existing domestic environmental, health, safety, or
labor measures, including measures that deter exploitative
child labor, as an encouragement to gain competitive
advantage in international trade or investment. Nothing in
this subparagraph is intended to address changes to a
country's laws that are consistent with sound macroeconomic
development. Nothing in this subparagraph shall be construed
to authorize inclusion in an implementing bill under this Act
or in an agreement subject to an implementing bill under this
Act provisions that would restrict the autonomy of the United
States in these areas.
(8) WTO extended negotiations.--The principal negotiating
objectives of the United States regarding trade in financial
services are those set forth in section 135(a) of the Uruguay
Round Agreements Act (19 U.S.C. 3555(a)), regarding trade in
civil aircraft are those set forth in section 135(c) of that
Act, and regarding rules of origin are the conclusion of an
agreement described in section 132 of that Act (19 U.S.C.
3552).
(c) International Economic Policy Objectives.--
(1) In general.--The President should take into account the
relationship between trade agreements and other important
priorities of the United States and seek to ensure that the
trade agreements entered into by the United States complement
and reinforce other policy goals. The United States
priorities in this area include--
(A) seeking to ensure that trade and environmental policies
are mutually supportive;
(B) seeking to protect and preserve the environment and
enhance the international means for doing so, while
optimizing the use of the world's resources;
(C) promoting respect for worker rights and the rights of
children and an understanding of the relationship between
trade and worker rights, particularly by working with the
International Labor Organization to encourage the observance
and enforcement of core labor standards, including the
prohibition on exploitative child labor; and
(D) supplementing and strengthening standards for
protection of intellectual property under conventions
administered by international organizations other than the
World Trade Organization, expanding these conventions to
cover new and emerging technologies, and eliminating
discrimination and unreasonable exceptions or preconditions
to such protection.
(2) Applicability of trade authorities procedures.--Nothing
in this subsection shall be construed to authorize the use of
the trade authorities procedures described in section 103 to
modify United States law.
(d) Guidance for Negotiators.--
(1) Domestic objectives.--In pursuing the negotiating
objectives described in subsection (b), the negotiators on
behalf of the United States shall take into account United
States domestic objectives, including the protection of
health and safety, essential security, environmental,
consumer, and employment opportunity interests, and the law
and regulations related thereto.
(2) Consultations with congressional advisers and
enforcement of the trade laws.--In the course of negotiations
conducted under this title, the United States Trade
Representative shall--
(A) consult closely and on a timely basis with, and keep
fully apprised of the negotiations, the Congressional
Oversight Group appointed under section 107 with respect to
the negotiations; and
(B) preserve the ability of the United States to enforce
rigorously its trade laws, including the antidumping and
countervailing duty laws, and avoid agreements which lessen
the effectiveness of domestic and international disciplines
on unfair trade, especially dumping and subsidies, in order
to ensure that United States workers, agricultural producers,
and firms can compete fully on fair terms and enjoy the
benefits of reciprocal trade concessions.
(3) Consultation before agreement initialed.--In the course
of negotiations conducted under this Act, the United States
Trade Representative shall--
(A) consult closely and on a timely basis (including
immediately before initialing an agreement) with, and keep
fully apprised of the negotiations, the congressional
advisers for trade policy and negotiations appointed under
section 161 of the Trade Act of 1974 (19 U.S.C. 2211), the
Committee on Ways and Means of the House of Representatives,
and the Committee on Finance of the Senate; and
(B) with regard to any negotiations and agreement relating
to agricultural trade, also consult closely and on a timely
basis (including immediately before initialing an agreement)
with, and keep fully apprised of the negotiations, the
Committee on Agriculture of the House of Representatives and
the Committee on Agriculture, Nutrition, and Forestry of the
Senate.
(e) Adherence to Obligations Under Uruguay Round
Agreements.--In determining whether to enter into
negotiations with a particular country, the President shall
take into account the extent to which that country has
implemented, or has accelerated the implementation of, its
obligations under the Uruguay Round Agreements.
(f) Report on Child Labor Laws.--With respect to any trade
agreement which the President seeks to implement under trade
authorities procedures, the President shall submit to the
Congress a report describing the extent to which the country
or countries that are parties to the agreement have in effect
laws governing exploitative child labor.

SEC. 103. TRADE AGREEMENTS AUTHORITY.

(a) Agreements Regarding Tariff Barriers.--
(1) In general.--Whenever the President determines that one
or more existing duties or other import restrictions of any
foreign country or the United States are unduly burdening and
restricting the foreign trade of the United States and that
the purposes, policies, and objectives of this title will be
promoted thereby, the President--
(A) may enter into trade agreements with foreign countries
before--
(i) October 1, 2001, or
(ii) October 1, 2005, if trade authorities procedures are
extended under subsection (c), and
(B) may, subject to paragraphs (2) and (3), proclaim--
(i) such modification or continuance of any existing duty,
(ii) such continuance of existing duty-free or excise
treatment, or
(iii) such additional duties,

as the President determines to be required or appropriate to
carry out any such trade agreement.

The President shall notify the Congress of the President's
intention to enter into an agreement under this subsection.
(2) Limitations.--No proclamation may be made under
paragraph (1) that--
(A) reduces any rate of duty (other than a rate of duty
that does not exceed 5 percent ad valorem on the date of the
enactment of this Act) to a rate of duty which is less than
50 percent of the rate of such duty that applies on such date
of enactment;
(B) notwithstanding any other provision of this Act,
reduces the rate of duty below that applicable under the
Uruguay Round Agreements, on any agricultural product which
was the subject of tariff reductions by the United States as
a result of the Uruguay Round Agreements, for which the rate
of duty, pursuant to such Agreements, was reduced on January
1, 1995, to a rate which was not less than 97.5 percent of
the rate of duty that applied to such article on December 31,
1994; or
(C) increases any rate of duty above the rate that applied
on January 1, 1996.
(3) Aggregate reduction; exemption from staging.--
(A) Aggregate reduction.--Except as provided in
subparagraph (B), the aggregate reduction in the rate of duty
on any article which is in effect on any day pursuant to a
trade agreement entered into under paragraph (1) shall not
exceed the aggregate reduction which would have been in
effect on such day if--
(i) a reduction of 3 percent ad valorem or a reduction of
one-tenth of the total reduction, whichever is greater, had
taken effect on the effective date of the first reduction
proclaimed under paragraph (1) to carry out such agreement
with respect to such article; and
(ii) a reduction equal to the amount applicable under
clause (i) had taken effect at 1-year intervals after the
effective date of such first reduction.
(B) Exemption from staging.--No staging is required under
subparagraph (A) with respect to a duty reduction that is
proclaimed under paragraph (1) for an article of a kind that
is not produced in the United States. The United States
International Trade Commission shall advise the President of
the identity of articles that may be exempted from staging
under this subparagraph.
(4) Rounding.--If the President determines that such action
will simplify the computation of reductions under paragraph
(3), the President may round an annual reduction by an amount
equal to the lesser of--
(A) the difference between the reduction without regard to
this paragraph and the next lower whole number; or
(B) one-half of 1 percent ad valorem.
(5) Other limitations.--A rate of duty reduction that may
not be proclaimed by reason of paragraph (2) may take effect
only if a provision authorizing such reduction is included
within an implementing bill provided for under section 105
and that bill is enacted into law.
(6) Other tariff modifications.--Notwithstanding paragraphs
(1)(B) and (2) through (5), and subject to the consultation
and layover requirements of section 115 of the Uruguay Round
Agreements Act, the President may proclaim the modification
of any duty or staged rate reduction of any duty set forth in
Schedule XX, as defined in section 2(5) of that Act, if the
United States agrees to such modification or staged rate
reduction in a negotiation for the reciprocal elimination or
harmonization of duties under the auspices of the World Trade
Organization or as part of an interim agreement leading to
the formation of a regional free-trade area.
(7) Authority under uruguay round agreements act not
affected.--Nothing in this subsection shall limit the
authority provided to the President under section 111(b) of
the Uruguay Round Agreements Act (19 U.S.C. 3521(b)).
(b) Agreements Regarding Tariff and Nontariff Barriers.--
(1) In general.--(A) Whenever the President determines
that--
(i) one or more existing duties or any other import
restriction of any foreign country or the United States or
any other barrier to, or other distortion of, international
trade unduly burdens or restricts the foreign trade of the
United States or adversely affects the United States economy,
or
(ii) the imposition of any such barrier or distortion is
likely to result in such a burden, restriction, or effect,

and that the purposes, policies, and objectives of this title
will be promoted thereby, the President may enter into a
trade agreement described in

[[Page H8772]]

subparagraph (B) during the period described in subparagraph
(C).
(B) The President may enter into a trade agreement under
subparagraph (A) with foreign countries providing for--
(i) the reduction or elimination of a duty, restriction,
barrier, or other distortion described in subparagraph (A),
or
(ii) the prohibition of, or limitation on the imposition
of, such barrier or other distortion.
(C) The President may enter into a trade agreement under
this paragraph before--
(i) October 1, 2001, or
(ii) October 1, 2005, if trade authorities procedures are
extended under subsection (c).
(2) Conditions.--A trade agreement may be entered into
under this subsection only if such agreement makes progress
in meeting the applicable objectives described in section 102
and the President satisfies the conditions set forth in
section 104.
(3) Bills qualifying for trade authorities procedures.--The
provisions of section 151 of the Trade Act of 1974 (in this
title referred to as ``trade authorities procedures'') apply
to a bill of either House of Congress consisting only of--
(A) a provision approving a trade agreement entered into
under this subsection and approving the statement of
administrative action, if any, proposed to implement such
trade agreement,
(B) provisions directly related to the principal trade
negotiating objectives set forth in section 102(b) achieved
in such trade agreement, if those provisions are necessary
for the operation or implementation of United States rights
or obligations under such trade agreement,
(C) provisions that define and clarify, or provisions that
are related to, the operation or effect of the provisions of
the trade agreement,
(D) provisions to provide adjustment assistance to workers
and firms adversely affected by trade, and
(E) provisions necessary for purposes of complying with
section 252 of the Balanced Budget and Emergency Deficit
Control Act of 1985 in implementing the trade agreement,

to the same extent as such section 151 applies to
implementing bills under that section. A bill to which this
paragraph applies shall hereafter in this title be referred
to as an ``implementing bill''.
(c) Extension Disapproval Process for Congressional Trade
Authorities Procedures.--
(1) In general.--Except as provided in section 105(b)--
(A) the trade authorities procedures apply to implementing
bills submitted with respect to trade agreements entered into
under subsection (b) before October 1, 2001; and
(B) the trade authorities procedures shall be extended to
implementing bills submitted with respect to trade agreements
entered into under subsection (b) after September 30, 2001,
and before October 1, 2005, if (and only if)--
(i) the President requests such extension under paragraph
(2); and
(ii) neither House of the Congress adopts an extension
disapproval resolution under paragraph (5) before October 1,
2001.
(2) Report to congress by the president.--If the President
is of the opinion that the trade authorities procedures
should be extended to implementing bills described in
paragraph (1)(B), the President shall submit to the Congress,
not later than July 1, 2001, a written report that contains a
request for such extension, together with--
(A) a description of all trade agreements that have been
negotiated under subsection (b) and the anticipated schedule
for submitting such agreements to the Congress for approval;
(B) a description of the progress that has been made in
negotiations to achieve the purposes, policies, and
objectives of this title, and a statement that such progress
justifies the continuation of negotiations; and
(C) a statement of the reasons why the extension is needed
to complete the negotiations.
(3) Report to congress by the advisory committee.--The
President shall promptly inform the Advisory Committee for
Trade Policy and Negotiations established under section 135
of the Trade Act of 1974 (19 U.S.C. 2155) of the President's
decision to submit a report to the Congress under paragraph
(2). The Advisory Committee shall submit to the Congress as
soon as practicable, but not later than August 1, 2001, a
written report that contains--
(A) its views regarding the progress that has been made in
negotiations to achieve the purposes, policies, and
objectives of this title; and
(B) a statement of its views, and the reasons therefor,
regarding whether the extension requested under paragraph (2)
should be approved or disapproved.
(4) Reports may be classified.--The reports submitted to
the Congress under paragraphs (2) and (3), or any portion of
such reports, may be classified to the extent the President
determines appropriate.
(5) Extension disapproval resolutions.--(A) For purposes of
paragraph (1), the term ``extension disapproval resolution''
means a resolution of either House of the Congress, the sole
matter after the resolving clause of which is as follows:
``That the __ disapproves the request of the President for
the extension, under section 103(c)(1)(B)(i) of the
Reciprocal Trade Agreement Authorities Act of 1998, of the
trade authorities procedures under that Act to any
implementing bill submitted with respect to any trade
agreement entered into under section 103(b) of that Act after
September 30, 2001.'', with the blank space being filled with
the name of the resolving House of the Congress.
(B) Extension disapproval resolutions--
(i) may be introduced in either House of the Congress by
any member of such House; and
(ii) shall be referred, in the House of Representatives, to
the Committee on Ways and Means and, in addition, to the
Committee on Rules.
(C) The provisions of sections 152(d) and (e) of the Trade
Act of 1974 (19 U.S.C. 2192(d) and (e)) (relating to the
floor consideration of certain resolutions in the House and
Senate) apply to extension disapproval resolutions.
(D) It is not in order for--
(i) the Senate to consider any extension disapproval
resolution not reported by the Committee on Finance;
(ii) the House of Representatives to consider any extension
disapproval resolution not reported by the Committee on Ways
and Means and, in addition, by the Committee on Rules; or
(iii) either House of the Congress to consider an extension
disapproval resolution after September 30, 2001.
(d) Commencement of Negotiations.--In order to contribute
to the continued economic expansion of the United States, the
President shall commence negotiations covering tariff and
nontariff barriers affecting any industry, product, or
service sector, and to expand existing sectoral agreements to
countries that are not parties to those agreements, in cases
where the President determines that such negotiations are
feasible and timely and would benefit the United States. Such
sectors, include agriculture, commercial services,
intellectual property rights, industrial and capital goods,
government procurement, information technology products,
environmental technology and services, medical equipment and
services, civil aircraft, and infrastructure products.

SEC. 104. CONSULTATIONS AND ASSESSMENT.

(a) Notice and Consultation Before Negotiation.--
(1) In general.--The President, with respect to any
agreement that is subject to the provisions of section
103(b), shall--
(A) provide, at least 90 calendar days before initiating
negotiations, written notice to the Congress of the
President's intention to enter into the negotiations and set
forth therein the date the President intends to initiate such
negotiations, the specific United States objectives for the
negotiations, and whether the President intends to seek an
agreement, or changes to an existing agreement; and
(B) before and after submission of the notice, consult
regarding the negotiations with the Committee on Finance of
the Senate and the Committee on Ways and Means of the House
of Representatives and such other committees of the House and
Senate as the President deems appropriate.
(2) Consultations regarding negotiations on certain
objectives.--
(A) Consultation.--In addition to the requirements set
forth in paragraph (1), before initiating negotiations with
respect to a trade agreement subject to section 103(b) where
the subject matter of such negotiations is directly related
to the principal trade negotiating objectives set forth in
section 102(b)(1) or section 102(b)(7), the President shall
consult with the Committee on Ways and Means of the House of
Representatives and the Committee on Finance of the Senate
and with the appropriate advisory groups established under
section 135 of the Trade Act of 1974 with respect to such
negotiations.
(B) Scope.--The consultations described in subparagraph (A)
shall concern the manner in which the negotiation will
address the objective of reducing or eliminating a specific
tariff or nontariff barrier or foreign government policy or
practice directly related to trade that decreases market
opportunities for United States exports or otherwise distorts
United States trade.
(3) Negotiations regarding agriculture.--(A) Before
initiating negotiations the subject matter of which is
directly related to the subject matter under section
102(b)(6)(A)(i) with any country, the President shall assess
whether United States tariffs on agriculture products that
were bound under the Uruguay Round Agreements are lower than
the tariffs bound by that country. In addition, the President
shall consider whether the tariff levels bound and applied
throughout the world with respect to imports from the United
States are higher than United States tariffs and whether the
negotiation provides an opportunity to address any such
disparity. The President shall consult with the Committee on
Ways and Means and the Committee on Agriculture of the House
of Representatives and the Committee on Finance and the
Committee on Agriculture, Nutrition, and Forestry of the
Senate concerning the results of the assessment, whether it
is appropriate for the United States to agree to further
tariff reductions based on the conclusions reached in the
assessment, and how all applicable negotiating objectives
will be met.
(B) Before initiating negotiations to reduce United States
tariffs on agricultural products which the President
determines to be import sensitive, the President shall
consult with the Committee on Ways and Means and the
Committee on Agriculture of the House of Representatives and
the Committee on Finance and the Committee on Agriculture
Nutrition, and Forestry of the Senate concerning such tariff
reductions. The consultations shall include an assessment of
the impact of any tariff reduction on the United States
industry producing the product and whether adjustment periods
should be provided to the industry. The President, with the
advice of the International Trade Commission, shall determine
which agricultural products are import sensitive.
(C) Before initiating negotiations with regard to
agriculture, the United States Trade Representative shall--
(i) identify those agricultural products subject to tariff
reductions by the United States as a result of the Uruguay
Round Agreements, for which the rate of duty was reduced on
January 1, 1995, to a rate which was not less than 97.5

[[Page H8773]]

percent of the rate of duty that applied to such article on
December 31, 1994;
(ii) consult with the Committee on Ways and Means and the
Committee on Agriculture of the House of Representatives and
the Committee on Finance and the Committee on Agriculture,
Nutrition, and Forestry of the Senate concerning whether any
further tariff reductions on the products identified under
clause (i) should be appropriate, taking into account the
impact of any such tariff reduction on the United States
industry producing the product;
(iii) request that the International Trade Commission
prepare an assessment of the probable economic effects of the
tariff reduction on the United States industry producing the
product and on the United States economy as a whole; and
(iv) upon complying with clauses (i), (ii), and (iii),
notify the Committee on Ways and Means and the Committee on
Agriculture of the House of Representatives and the Committee
on Finance and the Committee on Agriculture, Nutrition, and
Forestry of the Senate those products identified in clause
(i) for which the Trade Representative intends to seek
further tariff liberalization in the negotiations.
(D) If, after negotiations described in subparagraph (C)
are commenced--
(i) the United States Trade Representative identifies any
additional agriculture product described in subparagraph
(C)(i) for tariff reductions which were not the subject of a
notification under subparagraph (C)(iv), or
(ii) any additional agricultural product described in
subparagraph (C)(i) is the subject of a request for tariff
reductions by a party to the negotiations,

the Trade Representative shall notify the committees referred
to in subparagraph (C)(iv) as soon as practicable of those
products.
(b) Consultation With Congress Before Agreements Entered
Into.--
(1) Consultation.--Before entering into any trade agreement
under section 103(b), the President shall consult with--
(A) the Committee on Ways and Means of the House of
Representatives and the Committee on Finance of the Senate;
and
(B) each other committee of the House and the Senate, and
each joint committee of the Congress, which has jurisdiction
over legislation involving subject matters which would be
affected by the trade agreement.
(2) Scope.--The consultation described in paragraph (1)
shall include consultation with respect to--
(A) the nature of the agreement;
(B) how and to what extent the agreement will achieve the
applicable purposes, policies, and objectives of this title;
and
(C) the implementation of the agreement under section 105,
including the general effect of the agreement on existing
laws.
(c) Advisory Committee Reports.--The report required under
section 135(e)(1) of the Trade Act of 1974 regarding any
trade agreement entered into under section 103(a) or (b) of
this Act shall be provided to the President, the Congress,
and the United States Trade Representative not later than 30
days after the date on which the President notifies the
Congress under section 103(a)(1) or 105(a)(1)(A) of the
President's intention to enter into the agreement.
(d) ITC Assessment.--
(1) In general.--The President, at least 90 calendar days
before the day on which the President enters into a trade
agreement under section 103(b), shall provide the
International Trade Commission (referred to in this
subsection as the ``Commission'') with the details of the
agreement as it exists at that time and request the
Commission to prepare and submit an assessment of the
agreement as described in paragraph (2). Between the time the
President makes the request under this paragraph and the time
the Commission submits the assessment, the President shall
keep the Commission current with respect to the details of
the agreement.
(2) ITC assessment.--Not later than 90 calendar days after
the President enters into the agreement, the Commission shall
submit to the President and Congress a report assessing the
likely impact of the agreement on the United States economy
as a whole and on specific industry sectors, including the
impact the agreement will have on the gross domestic product,
exports, and imports, aggregate employment and employment
opportunities, the production, employment, and the
competitive position of industries likely to be significantly
affected by the agreement, and the interests of United States
consumers.
(3) Review of empirical literature.--In preparing the
assessment, the Commission shall review available economic
assessments regarding the agreement, including literature
regarding any substantially equivalent proposed agreement,
and shall provide in its assessment a description of the
analyses used and conclusions drawn in such literature, and a
discussion of areas of consensus and divergence between the
various analyses and conclusions, including those of the
Commission regarding the agreement.

SEC. 105. IMPLEMENTATION OF TRADE AGREEMENTS.

(a) In General.--
(1) Notification and submission.--Any agreement entered
into under section 103(b) shall enter into force with respect
to the United States if (and only if)--
(A) the President, at least 90 calendar days before the day
on which the President enters into the trade agreement,
notifies the House of Representatives and the Senate of the
President's intention to enter into the agreement, and
promptly thereafter publishes notice of such intention in the
Federal Register;
(B) within 60 days after entering into the agreement, the
President submits to the Congress a description of those
changes to existing laws that the President considers would
be required in order to bring the United States into
compliance with the agreement;
(C) after entering into the agreement, the President
submits to the Congress a copy of the final legal text of the
agreement, together with--
(i) a draft of an implementing bill described in section
103(b)(3);
(ii) a statement of any administrative action proposed to
implement the trade agreement; and
(iii) the supporting information described in paragraph
(2); and
(D) the implementing bill is enacted into law.
(2) Supporting information.--The supporting information
required under paragraph (1)(C)(iii) consists of--
(A) an explanation as to how the implementing bill and
proposed administrative action will change or affect existing
law; and
(B) a statement--
(i) asserting that the agreement makes progress in
achieving the applicable purposes, policies, and objectives
of this title; and
(ii) setting forth the reasons of the President regarding--

(3) Reciprocal benefits.--In order to ensure that a foreign
country that is not a party to a trade agreement entered into
under section 103(b) does not receive benefits under the
agreement unless the country is also subject to the
obligations under the agreement, the implementing bill
submitted with respect to the agreement shall provide that
the benefits and obligations under the agreement apply only
to the parties to the agreement, if such application is
consistent with the terms of the agreement. The implementing
bill may also provide that the benefits and obligations under
the agreement do not apply uniformly to all parties to the
agreement, if such application is consistent with the terms
of the agreement.
(b) Limitations on Trade Authorities Procedures.--
(1) For lack of notice or consultations.--
(A) In general.--The trade authorities procedures shall not
apply to any implementing bill submitted with respect to a
trade agreement entered into under section 103(b) if during
the 60-day period beginning on the date that one House of
Congress agrees to a procedural disapproval resolution for
lack of notice or consultations with respect to that trade
agreement, the other House separately agrees to a procedural
disapproval resolution with respect to that agreement.
(B) Procedural disapproval resolution.--For purposes of
this paragraph, the term ``procedural disapproval
resolution'' means a resolution of either House of Congress,
the sole matter after the resolving clause of which is as
follows: ``That the President has failed or refused to notify
or consult (as the case may be) with Congress in accordance
with section 104 or 105 of the Reciprocal Trade Agreement
Authorities Act of 1998 on negotiations with respect to ____
and, therefore, the trade authorities procedures under that
Act shall not apply to any implementing bill submitted with
respect to that trade agreement.'', with the blank space
being filled with a description of the trade agreement with
respect to which the President is considered to have failed
or refused to notify or consult.
(2) Procedures for considering resolutions.--(A) Procedural
disapproval resolutions--
(i) in the House of Representatives--
(I) shall be introduced by the chairman or ranking minority
member of the Committee on Ways and Means or the chairman or
ranking minority member of the Committee on Rules;
(II) shall be referred to the Committee on Ways and Means
and, in addition, to the Committee on Rules; and
(III) may not be amended by either Committee; and
(ii) in the Senate shall be original resolutions of the
Committee on Finance.
(B) The provisions of section 152(d) and (e) of the Trade
Act of 1974 (19 U.S.C. 2192(d) and (e)) (relating to the
floor consideration of certain resolutions in the House and
Senate) apply to procedural disapproval resolutions.
(C) It is not in order for the House of Representatives to
consider any procedural disapproval resolution not reported
by the Committee on Ways and Means and, in addition, by the
Committee on Rules.
(c) Rules of House of Representatives and Senate.--
Subsection (b) of this section and section 103(c) are enacted
by the Congress--
(1) as an exercise of the rulemaking power of the House of
Representatives and the Senate, respectively, and as such are
deemed a part of the rules of each House, respectively, and
such procedures supersede other rules only to the extent that
they are inconsistent with such other rules; and
(2) with the full recognition of the constitutional right
of either House to change the rules (so far as relating to
the procedures of that House) at any time, in the same
manner, and to the same extent as any other rule of that
House.

SEC. 106. TREATMENT OF CERTAIN TRADE AGREEMENTS.

[[Page H8774]]

(2) is entered into under the auspices of the World Trade
Organization regarding the rules of origin work program
described in Article 9 of the Agreement on Rules of Origin
referred to in section 101(d)(10) of the Uruguay Round
Agreements Act (19 U.S.C. 3511(d)(10)), or
(3) is entered into with Chile,

and results from negotiations that were commenced before the
date of the enactment of this Act, subsection (b) shall
apply.
(b) Treatment of Agreements.--In the case of any agreement
to which subsection (a) applies--
(1) the applicability of the trade authorities procedures
to implementing bills shall be determined without regard to
the requirements of section 104(a), and any procedural
disapproval resolution under section 105(b)(1)(B) shall not
be in order on the basis of a failure or refusal to comply
with the provisions of section 104(a); and
(2) the President shall consult regarding the negotiations
described in subsection (a) with the committees described in
section 104(a)(1)(B) as soon as feasible after the enactment
of this Act.
(c) Multilateral Agreement on Investment.--Notwithstanding
any other provision of this Act, the trade authorities
procedures shall not apply to the Multilateral Agreement on
Investment concluded under the auspices of the Organization
for Economic Cooperation and Development.

SEC. 107. CONGRESSIONAL OVERSIGHT GROUPS.

(a) Appointment and Functions.--Not later than 30 days
after the date on which the President provides notice under
section 104(a)(1) of the President's intention to enter into
negotiations with respect to a trade agreement--
(1) the Speaker of the House of Representatives, upon the
recommendation of the chairman of the Committee on Ways and
Means, shall appoint 5 members (not more than 3 of whom are
members of the same political party) of such committee, and
(2) the President pro tempore of the Senate, upon the
recommendation of the chairman of the Committee on Finance,
shall appoint 5 members (not more than 3 of whom are members
of the same political party) of such committee,

to serve as members of a Congressional Oversight Group for
the negotiations. Each such member shall be accredited by the
United States Trade Representative on behalf of the President
as official advisers to the United States delegation in the
negotiations. Members of the Congressional Oversight Group
shall consult with and provide advice to the Trade
Representative regarding the formulation of specific
objectives, negotiating strategies and positions, and the
development of the trade agreement.
(b) Additional Members.--
(1) Authority to appoint.--In addition to the members
designated under subsection (a) for a Congressional Oversight
Group--
(A) the Speaker of the House of Representatives may appoint
additional members of the House from any other committee of
the House or joint committee of Congress to serve as members
of the Congressional Oversight Group; and
(B) the President pro tempore of the Senate may appoint
additional members of the Senate from any other committee of
the Senate or joint committee of Congress to serve as members
of the Congressional Oversight Group.

Members of the House and Senate appointed under this
paragraph shall be accredited by the United States Trade
Representative.
(2) Consultations.--Before designating any member under
paragraph (1), the Speaker or the President pro tempore shall
consult with--
(A) the chairman and ranking minority member of the
Committee on Ways and Means and the Committee on Finance, as
appropriate; and
(B) the chairman and ranking minority member of the
committee from which the member will be appointed.
(3) Affiliation.--Not more than 2 members may be appointed
under this subsection as members of any Congressional
Oversight Group from any 1 committee of Congress. If 2
members are appointed from 1 committee, they must be from
different political parties, and the total members from any
political party appointed under this subsection for any
Congressional Oversight Group may not exceed the total number
of members from any other political party.
(c) Guidelines.--
(1) Purpose and revision.--Within 120 days after the date
of the enactment of this Act, the United States Trade
Representative shall develop written guidelines, in
consultation with the chairmen and ranking minority members
of the Committee on Ways and Means of the House of
Representatives and the Committee on Finance of the Senate,
to facilitate the useful and timely exchange of information
between the Trade Representative and the Congressional
Oversight Groups established under this section. The Trade
Representative may revise the guidelines from time to time as
needed following further such consultation.
(2) Content.--The guidelines developed under paragraph (1)
shall provide for, among other things--
(A) regular, detailed briefings of each Congressional
Oversight Group regarding negotiating objectives and
positions and status of the negotiations with respect to
which the group was appointed, beginning as soon as
practicable after the appointment of the members of the
group, with more frequent briefings as trade negotiations
enter the final stage;
(B) access by members of each Congressional Oversight
Group, and staff with proper security clearances, to
pertinent documents relating to the negotiations, including
classified materials; and
(C) the closest practicable coordination between the Trade
Representative and each Congressional Oversight Group at all
critical periods during the negotiations, including at
negotiation sites.

SEC. 108. ADDITIONAL IMPLEMENTATION AND ENFORCEMENT
REQUIREMENTS.

(a) In General.--At the time the President submits the
final text of an agreement pursuant to section 105(a)(1)(C),
the President shall also submit a plan for implementing and
enforcing the agreement. The implementation and enforcement
plan shall include the following:
(1) Border personnel requirements.--A description of
additional personnel required at border entry points,
including a list of additional customs and agricultural
inspectors.
(2) Agency staffing requirements.--A description of
additional personnel required by Federal agencies responsible
for monitoring and implementing the trade agreement,
including personnel required by the Office of the United
States Trade Representative, the Department of Commerce, the
Department of Agriculture, and the Department of the
Treasury.
(3) Customs infrastructure requirements.--A description of
the additional equipment and facilities needed by the United
States Customs Service.
(4) Impact on State and local governments.--A description
of the impact the trade agreement will have on State and
local governments as a result of increases in trade.
(5) Cost analysis.--An analysis of the costs associated
with each of the items listed in paragraphs (1) through (4).
(b) Budget submission.--The President shall include a
request for the resources necessary to support the plan
described in subsection (a) in the first budget the President
submits to Congress after the submission of the plan.

SEC. 109. CHIEF AGRICULTURAL NEGOTIATOR.

(a) Establishment of Position.--There shall be in the
Office of the United States Trade Representative a Chief
Agricultural Negotiator, who shall be appointed by the
President, by and with the advice and consent of the Senate
from among individuals with appropriate experience in
agricultural matters. The Chief Agricultural Negotiator shall
hold office at the pleasure of the President and shall have
the rank of Ambassador.
(b) Functions.--The Chief Agricultural Negotiator shall
have as his or her primary function the conduct of trade
negotiations relating to agricultural commodities and shall
have such other functions as the United States Trade
Representative may direct.
(c) Compensation.--The Chief Agricultural Negotiator shall
be paid at the highest rate of basic pay payable to a member
of the Senior Executive Service.

SEC. 110. CONFORMING AMENDMENTS.

(a) In General.--Title I of the Trade Act of 1974 (19
U.S.C. 2111 et seq.) is amended as follows:
(1) Implementing bill.--Section 151(b)(1) (19 U.S.C.
2191(b)(1)) is amended by striking ``, section 1103(a)(1) of
the Omnibus Trade and Competitiveness Act of 1988,''; and
(2) Advice from international trade commission.--Section
131 (19 U.S.C. 2151) is amended--
(A) in subsection (a)--
(i) in paragraph (1), by striking ``section 123 of this Act
or section 1102 (a) or (c) of the Omnibus Trade and
Competitiveness Act of 1988,'' and inserting ``section 123 of
this Act or section 103(a) or (b) of the Reciprocal Trade
Agreement Authorities Act of 1998,''; and
(ii) in paragraph (2), by striking ``section 1102 (b) or
(c) of the Omnibus Trade and Competitiveness Act of 1988''
and inserting ``section 103(b) of the Reciprocal Trade
Agreement Authorities Act of 1998'';
(B) in subsection (b), by striking ``section
1102(a)(3)(A)'' and inserting ``section 103(a)(3)(A) of the
Reciprocal Trade Agreement Authorities Act of 1998'' before
the end period; and
(C) in subsection (c), by striking ``section 1102 of the
Omnibus Trade and Competitiveness Act of 1988,'' and
inserting ``section 103 of the Reciprocal Trade Agreement
Authorities Act of 1998,''.
(3) Hearings and advice.--Sections 132, 133(a), and 134(a)
(19 U.S.C. 2152, 2153(a), and 2154(a)) are each amended by
striking ``section 1102 of the Omnibus Trade and
Competitiveness Act of 1988,'' each place it appears and
inserting ``section 103 of the Reciprocal Trade Agreement
Authorities Act of 1998,''.
(4) Prerequisites for offers.--Section 134(b) (19 U.S.C.
2154(b)) is amended by striking ``section 1102 of the Omnibus
Trade and Competitiveness Act of 1988'' and inserting
``section 103 of the Reciprocal Trade Agreement Authorities
Act of 1998''.
(5) Advice from private and public sectors.--Section 135
(19 U.S.C. 2155) is amended--
(A) in subsection (a)(1)(A), by striking ``section 1102 of
the Omnibus Trade and Competitiveness Act of 1988'' and
inserting ``section 103 of the Reciprocal Trade Agreement
Authorities Act of 1998'';
(B) in subsection (e)(1)--
(i) by striking ``section 1102 of the Omnibus Trade and
Competitiveness Act of 1988'' each place it appears and
inserting ``section 103 of the Reciprocal Trade Agreement
Authorities Act of 1998''; and
(ii) by striking ``section 1103(a)(1)(A) of such Act of
1988'' and inserting ``section 105(a)(1)(A) of the Reciprocal
Trade Agreement Authorities Act of 1998''; and
(C) in subsection (e)(2), by striking ``section 1101 of the
Omnibus Trade and Competitiveness Act of 1988'' and inserting
``section 102 of the Reciprocal Trade Agreement Authorities
Act of 1998''.
(6) Transmission of agreements to congress.--Section 162(a)
(19 U.S.C. 2212(a)) is amended by striking ``or under section
1102 of the Omnibus Trade and Competitiveness Act of 1988''
and inserting ``or under section 103 of the

[[Page H8775]]

Reciprocal Trade Agreement Authorities Act of 1998''.
(b) Application of Certain Provisions.--For purposes of
applying sections 125, 126, and 127 of the Trade Act of 1974
(19 U.S.C. 2135, 2136(a), and 2137)--
(1) any trade agreement entered into under section 103
shall be treated as an agreement entered into under section
101 or 102, as appropriate, of the Trade Act of 1974 (19
U.S.C. 2111 or 2112); and
(2) any proclamation or Executive order issued pursuant to
a trade agreement entered into under section 103 shall be
treated as a proclamation or Executive order issued pursuant
to a trade agreement entered into under section 102 of the
Trade Act of 1974.

SEC. 111. DEFINITIONS.

SEC. 201. ADJUSTMENT ASSISTANCE FOR WORKERS.

Section 245 of the Trade Act of 1974 (19 U.S.C. 2317) is
amended--
(1) in subsection (a) by striking ``1993'' and all that
follows through ``1998,'' and inserting ``1998 and 1999 and
for the period beginning October 1, 1999, and ending December
31, 1999,''; and
(2) in subsection (b) by striking ``1994'' and all that
follows through ``1998,'' and inserting ``1998 and 1999 and
for the period beginning October 1, 1999, and ending December
31, 1999.''.

SEC. 202. NAFTA TRANSITIONAL PROGRAM.

Section 250(d)(2) of the Trade Act of 1974 (19 U.S.C.
2331(d)(2)) is amended by striking ``for any fiscal year
$30,000,000'' and inserting ``$30,000,000 for fiscal year
1998 or 1999 and shall not exceed $7,000,000 for the period
beginning October 1, 1999, and ending December 31, 1999''.

SEC. 203. ADJUSTMENT ASSISTANCE FOR FIRMS.

Section 256(b) of the Trade Act of 1974 (19 U.S.C. 2346(b))
is amended by striking ``1993'' and all that follows through
``1998'' and inserting ``1998 and 1999 and for the period
beginning October 1, 1999, and ending December 31, 1999''.

SEC. 204. GENERAL ACCOUNTING OFFICE REPORT.

SEC. 205. TERMINATION.

Section 285(c) of the Trade Act of 1974 (19 U.S.C. 2271
note preceding) is amended--
(1) in paragraph (1) by striking ``September 30, 1998'' and
inserting ``December 31, 1999''; and
(2) in paragraph (2)(A), by striking ``the day that is''
and all that follows through ``effective'' and inserting
``December 31, 1999''.

SEC. 206. EFFECTIVE DATE.

The amendments made by this title take effect on the date
of the enactment of this Act.

TITLE III--SPENDING OFFSETS

SEC. 301. COMPUTER-RELATED ACTIVITIES OF THE DEPARTMENT OF
AGRICULTURE.

(a) Prohibition on Funding.--No expenses for computer-
related activities of the Department of Agriculture that are
funded through the Commodity Credit Corporation pursuant to
section 4(g) of the Commodity Credit Corporation Charter Act
shall be funded in fiscal year 1999.
(b) Reduction in Limitation on Obligations.--Section 4(g)
of the Commodity Credit Corporation Charter Act (15 U.S.C.
714b(g)) is amended in the first sentence by striking
``$193,000,000'' and inserting ``$128,000,000''.

TITLE IV--MISCELLANEOUS TRADE PROVISIONS

SEC. 401. IDENTIFICATION OF COUNTRIES THAT DENY MARKET ACCESS
FOR UNITED STATES AGRICULTURAL PRODUCTS.

(a) Identification Required.--
(1) In general.--Chapter 8 of title I of the Trade Act of
1974 is amended by adding at the end the following:

``SEC. 183. IDENTIFICATION OF COUNTRIES THAT DENY MARKET
ACCESS FOR AGRICULTURAL PRODUCTS.

``(a) In General.--Not later than the date that is 30 days
after the date on which the annual report is required to be
submitted to Congressional committees under section 181(b),
the United States Trade Representative (hereafter in this
section referred to as the `Trade Representative') shall
identify--
``(1) those foreign countries that--
``(A) deny fair and equitable market access to United
States agricultural products, or
``(B) apply unjustified sanitary or phytosanitary standards
for imported agricultural products from the United States;
and
``(2) those foreign countries identified under paragraph
(1) that are determined by the Trade Representative to be
priority foreign countries.
``(b) Special Rules for Identifications.--
``(1) Criteria.--In identifying priority foreign countries
under subsection (a)(2), the Trade Representative shall only
identify those foreign countries--
``(A) that engage in or have the most onerous or egregious
acts, policies, or practices that deny fair and equitable
market access to the United States agricultural products,
``(B) whose acts, policies, or practices described in
subparagraph (A) have the greatest adverse impact (actual or
potential) on the relevant United States products, and
``(C) that are not--
``(i) entering into good faith negotiations, or
``(ii) making significant progress in bilateral or
multilateral negotiations,

to provide fair and equitable market access to United States
agricultural products.
``(2) Consultation and consideration requirements.--In
identifying priority foreign countries under subsection
(a)(2), the Trade Representative shall--
``(A) consult with the Secretary of Agriculture and other
appropriate officers of the Federal Government, and
``(B) take into account information from such sources as
may be available to the Trade Representative and such
information as may be submitted to the Trade Representative
by interested persons, including information contained in
reports submitted under section 181(b) and petitions
submitted under section 181(b) and petitions submitted under
section 302.
``(3) Factual basis requirement.--The Trade Representative
may identify a foreign country under subsection (a)(1) only
if the Trade Representative finds that there is a factual
basis for the denial of fair and equitable market access as a
result of the violation of international law or agreement, or
the existence of barriers, referred to in subsection (d).
``(4) Consideration of historical factors.--In identifying
foreign countries under paragraphs (1) and (2) of subsection
(a), the Trade Representative shall take into account--
``(A) the history of agricultural trade relations with the
foreign country, including any previous identification under
subsection (a)(2), and
``(B) the history of efforts of the United States, and the
response of the foreign country, to achieve fair and
equitable market access for United States agricultural
products.
``(c) Revocation and Additional Identifications.--
``(1) Authority to act at any time.--If information
available to the Trade Representative indicates that such
action is appropriate, the Trade Representative may at any
time--
``(A) revoke the identification of any foreign country as a
priority foreign country under this section, or
``(B) identify any foreign country as a priority foreign
country under this section.
``(2) Revocation reports.--The trade Representative shall
include in the semiannual report submitted to the Congress
under section 309(3) a detailed explanation of the reasons
for the revocation under paragraph (1) of the identification
of any foreign country as a priority foreign country under
this section.
``(d) Definitions.--For purposes of this section, a foreign
country denies fair and equitable market access if the
foreign country effectively denies access to a market for a
product through the use of laws procedures, practices, or
regulations which--
``(1) violate provisions of international law or
international agreements to which both the United States and
the foreign country are parties, or
``(2) constitute discriminatory nontariff trade barriers.
``(e) Publication.--The Trade Representative shall publish
in the Federal Register a list of foreign countries
identified under subsection (a) and shall make such revisions
to the list as may be required by reason of the action under
subsection (c).
``(f) Annual Report.--The Trade Representative shall, not
later than the date by which countries are identified under
subsection (a), transmit to the Committee on Ways and Means
and the Committee on Agriculture of the House of
Representatives and the Committee on Finance and the
Committee on Agriculture, Nutrition, and Forestry of the
Senate, a report on the actions taken under this section
during the 12 months preceding such report, and the reasons
for such actions, including a description of progress made in
achieving fair and equitable market access for United States
agricultural products.''.
(2) Clerical amendment.--The table of contents for the
Trade Act of 1974 is amended by inserting after the item
relating to section 182 the following:

``Sec. 183. Identification of countries that deny market access for
agricultural products.''.

(b) Investigations.--
(1) In general.--Subparagraph (A) of section 302(b)(2) of
the Trade Act of 1974 (19 U.S.C. 2412(b)(2)) is amended by
inserting ``or 183(a)(2)'' after ``section 182(a)(2)'' in the
matter preceding clause (i).
(2) Conforming amendment.--Subparagraph (D) of section
302(b)(2) of such Act is amended by inserting ``concerning
intellectual property rights that is'' after ``any
investigation''.

SEC. 402. ENFORCEMENT OF U.S.-JAPAN INSURANCE AGREEMENT.

(a) Findings.--The Congress finds that--
(1) the Japanese insurance market has historically been
closed to United States interests and investment;
(2) the terms of the U.S.-Japanese Insurance Agreement have
begun the process of opening the Japanese insurance market to
United States interests and investment; and

[[Page H8776]]

(3) failure to fully enforce the terms of the U.S.-Japanese
Insurance Agreement will endanger the United States
investments that have occurred and those which may occur in
the future.
(b) Sense of Congress.--It is the sense of the Congress
that the United States Trade Representative should work
diligently with the Minister of Finance of Japan to fully
enforce the terms of the U.S.-Japan Insurance Agreement so
that Japanese insurance markets will continue to be open to
United States investment and that existing and future United
States investments in the Japanese insurance markets are
protected.
(c) Definition.--As used in this section, the term ``U.S.-
Japan Insurance Agreement'' means the Measures by the
Government of the United States and the Government of Japan
Regarding Insurance, signed on October 11, 1994, as amended
by the Supplementary Measures by the Government of the United
States and the Government of Japan Regarding Insurance,
signed on December 24, 1996.

SEC. 403. MARKING OF CONTAINERS FOR PERISHABLE AGRICULTURAL
COMMODITIES.

(a) In General.--Section 304 of the Tariff Act of 1930 (19
U.S.C. 1304) is amended--
(1) by redesignating subsections (h), (i), (j), and (k) as
subsections (i), (j), (k), and (l), respectively; and
(2) by inserting after subsection (g) the following new
subsection:
``(h) Marking of Containers of Perishable Agricultural
Commodities.--
``(1) In general.--The immediate container, as it
ordinarily reaches the ultimate purchaser, of any perishable
agricultural commodity excepted from the marking requirements
of subsection (a) shall be marked in the manner required by
subsection (a), unless an exception from the requirements of
marking applies to such container under any subparagraph of
subsection (a)(3) other than subparagraph (J).
``(2) Definition.--For purposes of this subsection, the
term `perishable agricultural commodity' has the meaning
given that term in section 1(b) of the Perishable
Agricultural Commodities Act, 1930 (7 U.S.C. 499a(b)).''.
(b) Conforming Amendment.--Section 304(j) of such Act, as
redesignated by subsection (a)(1), is amended by striking
``subsection (h)'' and inserting ``subsection (i)''.
(c) Effective Date.--The amendments made by this section
apply to goods entered, or withdrawn from warehouse for
consumption, on or after the 120th day after the date of the
enactment of this Act.

SEC. 404. MONITORING AND ENFORCEMENT OF SUSPENSION AGREEMENT.

The administering authority (as defined in section 771(1)
of the Tariff Act of 1930) shall closely monitor and
vigorously enforce the suspension agreement concerning fresh
tomatoes from Mexico that was entered into on October 28,
1996, pursuant to section 734 of the Tariff Act of 1930. If
the administering authority determines that the suspension
agreement is being, or has been, violated, is no longer in
the public interest as set forth in section 734(d) of that
Act, or no longer meets the applicable requirements of
section 734(c) or (d) of that Act, the administering
authority shall immediately resume the antidumping
investigation suspended by the agreement and take other
action under section 734(i) of that Act. The administering
authority shall establish a Rapid Response Team to ensure
full compliance with the agreement and speedy resolution of
claims with respect to the agreement.

SEC. 405. REVIEW OF CONDITIONS ALONG UNITED STATES-MEXICAN
BORDER.

(a) Task Force To Review Conditions.--The President shall
establish a task force to review conditions along the United
States-Mexican border relating to housing, labor, the
environment, and other relevant issues as they relate to
United States companies that are located along the border.
The task force should determine the ways in which
partnerships made up of public and private entities can
improve conditions along the border.
(b) Report to Congress.--The President shall report to the
Congress not later than 1 year after the date of the
enactment of this Act on the results of the review under
subsection (a).

The SPEAKER pro tempore. The gentleman from Texas (Mr. Archer) and
the gentleman from New York (Mr. Rangel) each will control 1 hour of
debate on the bill.
The Chair recognizes the gentleman from Texas (Mr. Archer).

{time} 1600

General Leave

Mr. ARCHER. Mr. Speaker, I ask unanimous consent that all Members may
have 5 legislative days within which to revise and extend their remarks
and include extraneous matter on H.R. 2621.
The SPEAKER pro tempore. Is there objection to the request of the
gentleman from Texas?
There was no objection.
Mr. ARCHER. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume.
Mr. Speaker, this could be a fulcrum moment in America's future. This
is an unusually fragile time for economies throughout the world, the
likes of which we have not seen for generations.
There are only a few things that we in America can do to increase our
ability to be a bulwark against decaying economies around the world and
prevent their ultimately enveloping us. One thing we can do is
demonstrate a clear commitment to resist the suggestiveness of
protectionism, protectionism which could drag the whole world into
depression.
This legislation grants the administration the authority to negotiate
trade agreements and bring them back to Congress for an up or down
vote. Historically it has been bipartisan, and it represents a key
component to preserving our economy and helping the rest of the world
for years to come.
Trade has been and will always be the force that drives our economic
engine. Trade benefits everyone, workers, businesses and consumers. If
we are to stay on the right economic road, we should not halt the
process of opening foreign markets. We must not.
To the President's credit, his policy on trade has been very, very
good. It has helped us to continue to keep a growing economy. He
deserves credit for that. But it is sad that, today, the administration
is withholding its support for this bill, support that was so active
last year. It is sad that his strength in the past of resisting the
pressures of organized labor have now come into play today, and we
cannot afford to lose one month, six months or a year until we do one
of the few things that we can do to help America and the world.
The U.S. is the world's largest exporting country, with exports
nearing the $1 trillion mark. This economic boom has translated into
approximately 11.5 million U.S. jobs which pay on average 15 percent
more than non-trade related jobs. Many Americans do not know that they
have a trade-related job, but it affects 11.5 million jobs.
We have been able to achieve these impressive results because we have
been aggressive in expanding overseas markets. To sustain our growth
and prosperity, we must continue to tap into the growing economies
around the world, and we must remember that 19 out of 20 potential
customers in the world do not live in this country. As a result,
negotiating trade agreements that reduce tariff and non-tariff barriers
to our products and our services is a win-win proposition.
Our average tariffs are already very, very low, less than 3 percent,
but most of our trading partners have much, much higher tariffs: Chile,
11 percent, Argentina, 10 percent, Australia, 9 percent, Thailand, 26
percent. What do we have to fear? We have far less risk to go down from
under 3 percent than we have to gain by reducing tariffs that are
three, four and five times higher than ours.
Because we export more products and services than any country in the
world, reducing foreign tariffs means huge savings for our industries
and our workers. But, Mr. Speaker, unfortunately, we are at a
standstill. Without fast track, our failure to participate in shaping
the global trading system will allow our competitors to negotiate
preferential trade agreements and form strategic relationships that
exclude us. And that is why I say, again, we should not wait another
month or six months before we act on this vital legislation.
Each month we lose is a loss for America. Since 1992 our competitors
have negotiated 20 free trade agreements that exclude us in Latin
America and Asia alone. We are losing orders for our products over and
over again in Chile and other countries, and those orders are going to
Canada and they are going to Mexico and they are going to other
countries for export. The European union is negotiating in a trade
agreement with Latin America that will keep us out. We can no longer
afford to stand idly by.
So the legislation we consider today gives the President the
authority he needs to move ahead in negotiating these vital trade
agreements, and it does so without undermining Congress' constitutional
role.
Congress must under this bill be consulted before, during and after
trade negotiations. For farmers and ranchers, who derive 30 percent of
their income for exports, this bill puts the Committee on Agriculture,
in addition to the Committee on Ways and Means, in a position to review
all proposed agreements before they are signed.
The U.S. has everything to gain by passing fast track. We have
everything to lose if we fail. The choices before us are stark: We can
approve this legislation and sow the seeds of hope, growth

[[Page H8777]]

and prosperity, or we can yield to the forces of fear, protectionism
and shortsightedness and cast this opportunity aside, potentially
undermining the economies of the world, with America being irresistibly
potentially included in that undermining.
Mr. Speaker, I hope we will support future prosperity. Support fast
track, and vote for this bill.
Mr. Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.
Mr. RANGEL. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume.
Mr. Speaker, I rise in opposition to this bill. I certainly agree
with most of the things that the distinguished chairman of the
Committee on Ways and Means has said, that if this great Nation is
going to continue to grow and maintain our economic advantage, we have
to remove all of the barriers to trade.
Trade is the one thing that our Nation excels in, and we have to make
certain that we remain competitive. A piece of legislation like fast
track or trade, as I said earlier, or taxes or Social Security, cannot
be a pre-election gimmick, but it has to be, indeed, a bipartisan
effort, where people who have honest differences of opinion but still
want our Nation to maintain its leadership in trade sit down and work
out those differences.
We cannot afford to allow the world marketplace as it relates to
labor to set the standards for the United States of America. We cannot
pick a country that has the lowest labor wages, no benefits, no health
benefits, and allow industries in our cities around the United States
to close and go there to take advantage of that particular economic
advantage.
No, we must be able to say that when we trade, Americans are going to
be the beneficiaries; not just those in the high-tech jobs, but those
in the lower skilled jobs have to be protected as well.
I believe that our president, as other presidents, should have the
right to negotiate trade contracts, and it should not be the House or
the Senate that is going to dot every ``i'' or cross every ``t''. But
when it comes to Americans losing their jobs, losing their pensions,
losing their homes, merely because business has gone, we should be able
to tell the president, you do not negotiate any treaty or contract
without protecting American workers, without protecting the
environment, without protecting human rights. We cannot let the free
marketplace dictate the principles we believe in as a country.
So I believe that when the president is ready to sit down with us,
Republicans and Democrats, we can work out fast track. Nobody is
against it because it gives the President authority. People oppose it
because it does not spell out the human rights and the rights of
workers, which is just as much a part of our prosperity as it is to see
that the stock market has improved as a result of the stability that
the President has brought.
I do not know why these matters are brought up on the eve of
elections. I do not know who we want to embarrass. I do not know why we
just entertain vetoes. This thing is just too important to allow it to
be treated in a partisan way.
For that reason, I do not know why it is on the calendar now. I have
no idea what the politics is behind it. You certainly cannot have
something like this be approved without bipartisan support. You
certainly need the leader of the free world and the President of the
United States working with you. But I suspect you have taken some poll
somewhere and you think this gives you an advantage someplace come
November.
I hope that you are not right, but I still believe that you should
not be taking legislation like Social Security, tax cuts, and God knows
what else you are going to try to do before we get out of here, and try
to negotiate these things just before an election. It is important for
the country, but it is important for Americans, Democrats and
Republicans, it is important for the President, and I hope that soon we
will be able to work a little more closely together.
Mr. Speaker, I yield the balance of my time to the gentleman from
California (Mr. Matsui), the ranking member of the Subcommittee on
Trade, and ask unanimous consent that he be permitted to yield blocks
of time.
The SPEAKER pro tempore (Mr. Hastings of Washington). Is there
objection to the request of the gentleman from New York?
There was no objection.
Mr. CRANE. Mr. Speaker, I yield three minutes to the distinguished
gentleman from Oregon (Mr. Smith).

{time} 1615

Mr. SMITH of Oregon. Mr. Speaker, I thank the distinguished gentleman
for yielding time to me.
Mr. Speaker, I continue to hear this question, why, why now? Why not
next year? I should not have to remind members of the Committee on Ways
and Means that next year we have a chance to revisit the Uruguay Round,
1999. There are many, many problems that we have in trade around the
world. I should not have to advise the Committee on Ways and Means
members of what they are, but let me just tick them off.
We have lost, in agriculture, 30 percent of our markets in Asia. We
have been excommunicated from markets in the European Union. We have
difficulty with phytosanitary problems getting into Japan, and all of
that in the face of disasters in this country for agriculture, of
floods, of droughts, and of course, of lost revenues to the tune of
some $9 billion.
If there was ever a time that we ought to be reaching out for
markets, it is now, it seems to me, especially in the face of the
Uruguay Round. Without fast track, we do not have tools to sit down at
the table and to discuss these problems that I have just identified
around the world.
I can tell the Members, having traveled halfway around the world with
my Committee on Agriculture, that the rest of the countries are smiling
and chortling at us. I just left a representative from New Zealand who
said, ``You mean you do not have fast track? You are not going to
trade? You are not going to to be involved? We thought we were allies.
We are going to go into the Uruguay Round without you having fast track
and the tools to trade?'' He was smiling at us.
The facts are that this agreement is unlike any other that we have
ever looked at. It is not like NAFTA, it is not like GATT. It is
different because, especially in agriculture, for the first time in
history, by the way, and I thank the gentleman from Texas (Mr. Archer)
and the gentleman from Illinois (Mr. Crane) of the Committee on Ways
and Means for allowing agriculture to be included, not only in the
consultation process, as the agreements move along, but before anything
is finally penned, the Committee on Agriculture gets a chance to look
at every word of the agreement. If it is no good for agriculture, it
cannot pass. If agriculture opposes any agreement, it cannot pass this
body. For the first time, we have generated an opportunity for
agriculture to be at the table when we negotiate agreements. It is
outstandingly important that we do that.
I think this is almost humorous, except it is true. This side does
not want to give their president fast track. Our side wants to give
their president fast track authority. I think the point remains that
really no president negotiates trade agreements.
We are a Nation. We are a Nation and a leader in trade. We should be
a leader in fast track. Giving this president authority is what I want
to do, because I know that trade agreements can be looked at, can be
consulted by Congress as we move along, so that gives me safety and
that gives me comfort, because I know it will be done properly.
Please, please understand, this is the most important vote for
agriculture that we will have in many, many years. Understand, this is
the time we stand up for trade.
Mr. MATSUI. Mr. Speaker, I ask unanimous consent to yield 10 minutes
of my time to the gentleman from Washington (Mr. McDermott), a member
of the Committee on Ways and Means, in support of the bill, and that he
in turn be permitted to control that time.
The SPEAKER pro tempore (Mr. Hastings of Washington). Is there
objection to the request of the gentleman from California?
There was no objection.
The SPEAKER pro tempore. The gentleman from Washington (Mr.
McDermott) will control 10 minutes.

[[Page H8778]]

The Chair recognizes the gentleman from California (Mr. Matsui).
Mr. MATSUI. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume.
I rise in opposition to H.R. 2621, reluctantly, Mr. Speaker. Today's
exercise in this legislation soils our national trade policy with the
mud of partisan politics. It shows a disdain for the legislative
process, and it threatens to disrupt international markets and quite
possibly our national economy.
I would first like to make absolutely clear that I support granting
the President fast track negotiating authority that he needs to enter
into trade agreements. Fast track authority is essential to maintain
U.S. economic leadership by opening foreign markets to American
agriculture, manufactured goods and services. I supported it in 1988, I
supported it last year, I intend to support it in the future. But I
will not, however, support it today.
This debate, Mr. Speaker, is not about fast track. This debate is
about partisan politics. The fast track bill that we are considering
today is not scheduled and will not pass in the Chamber of this House,
but it is, rather, an attempt to embarrass members of my party. I will
tell the Members, I will not participate in any effort to do damage or
defeat any of my colleagues by using trade policy as a tool.
When the Republican leadership decided to bring fast track up in the
waning days of this Congress, there was little attempt to disguise the
motivations, the political motivations, behind it. In fact, the
chairman of the Republican Congressional Campaign Committee was quoted
in the Washington Post on July 20, 1998, specifically naming one of my
Democratic colleagues, with the clear threat to use this vote against
him in the upcoming election.
In addition, Willard Workman, a senior official of the U.S. Chamber
of Commerce, suggested that he would rather see fast track brought up
to lose, which it will, so that he could make an issue out of it in the
November election. It is personally surprising to me that one of the
Nation's premier business lobbying organizations would display such a
reckless attitude about fast track for the sake of perceived partisan
advantage.
As I said, however, today is not about passing fast track. We all
know that. This bill is virtually identical to the one that was shelved
last year. Since then, there has been absolutely no effort to refashion
this legislation.
Many of us, including the President, worked very hard last year to
pass it, but we could not muster the bipartisan support needed. The
sensible and rational thing to do, if we want to pass it, would be to
make changes to add additional support. But that simply has not
happened. If the Republican leadership sincerely wanted to pass this
bill, it would have made the necessary changes to broaden the base of
support on the floor of the House.
Our colleagues have modified this bill to take care of agriculture,
or at least perceived to take care of agriculture. There has really
been no effort to reach out to Members in other areas of this
legislation. For example, there has been no discussion on labor and the
environment, about language that would implement and expand the
implementation if the bill is finally passed, or other bipartisan
changes that could get a majority for a good fast track bill.
In fact, this bill under consideration actually limits the
President's negotiating authority, compared to the bill that President
Reagan and President Bush had, which had flexibility, the law that
expired.
While political points may be scored to defeat fast track on the
floor today, Mr. Speaker, it will have serious and negative
consequences. When coupled with our failure to pass MFN funding,
funding for the United Nations, and loose talk about impeachment, this
body sends a dangerous message to investors in the markets in Asia,
Russia, and Latin America. A signal such as the defeat of fast track
today is further evidence that the U.S., or at least this Congress, is
not serious about international leadership.
Just as significantly, what happens here also sends a new signal that
American trade policy is used for partisan advantage, and that strong
bipartisanship in the area of free and international trade no longer
exists.
I will tell the Members, we all know that the votes are not there for
passage of this legislation. This is brought up only for partisan
advantage. That is not the way to use trade policy in America.
Mr. Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.
Mr. CRANE. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume.
Mr. Speaker, in response to our distinguished minority leader on the
Subcommittee on Trade, I would remind him that there are important
contents in the Archer amendment to H.R. 2621. They deal not just with
agriculture.
There is one, for example, that insists that the President, with
respect to any trade agreement implemented under trade authorities
procedures, submit to Congress a report describing the extent to which
the parties to that trade agreement have in effect laws governing
exploitative child labor.
There is a new provision on agriculture, a special 301 procedure for
identifying in a report trade barriers and countries that deny fair and
equitable market access, and that impose unjustified sanitary and
phytosanitary standards against U.S. agricultural products.
One month after the report is issued, USTR would be required to
identify priority foreign countries against which it would initiate
section 301 unfair trade practice investigations, resulting in possible
trade sanctions against the offending country.
It also requires that the President establish a task force to review
conditions along the U.S.-Mexico border relating to housing, labor, the
environment, and other relevant issues.
Mr. Speaker, I would remind my colleagues on the other side of the
aisle of a statement that was made in this Chamber back in January.
``We all know in every way in life change is not always easy, but we
have to decide whether we are going to try to hold it back and hide
from it or reap its benefits. Remember the big picture here. While we
have been entering into hundreds of new trade agreements, we have been
creating millions of new jobs. So this year we will forge new
partnerships with Latin America, Asia, and Europe, and we should pass
the new African Trade Act. It has bipartisan support. I also renew my
request for the fast track negotiating authority necessary to open more
new markets and create more new jobs, which every president has had for
two decades.''
That was President Clinton in his State of the Union message here.
Mr. Speaker, I yield 2 minutes to our distinguished colleague, the
gentleman from Texas (Mr. Delay).
Mr. DeLAY. Mr. Speaker, fast track would pass tonight if the
President would honor his commitments and get his party to vote for it.
Who said, ``I will also renew my request for the fast track negotiating
authority necessary to open new markets and create more new jobs, which
every president has had for two decades?'' Who has traveled across the
world promising to support fast track?
Who said in Santiago, Chile, earlier this year, that ``The benefits
for American workers and companies and consumers for expanding trade
should make, in my judgment, a clear case for fast track authority. I
will continue to work hard with Congress to build support for fast
track''? Bill Clinton.
President Clinton was once the strongest supporter of fast track.
Now, for political reasons, he has withdrawn that support. It is
troubling that Bill Clinton has already concluded that he does not have
the strength to win this vote, and it is astounding that he has
withdrawn his support for this measure. I think that is a shame. I
believe that every president must have the tools to do the job.
Our workers need trade agreements that create jobs for Americans. Our
businesses need them so they can sell their products overseas. Our
consumers need them so they can spend more money on their family and
less money on border taxes.
The only way we can get these trade agreements is to give the
President fast track authority. It is a shame that so many Democrats
have played politics with trade. It is sad that so many Democrats have
relied on the politics of fear and isolation. It is a scandal that the
President has misled the American people about his commitment to
support fast track, when negotiating trade agreements is one of his
most important responsibilities.

[[Page H8779]]

A vote against fast track is not only a vote of no confidence in this
President, it is also a vote of no confidence in the world economy. A
vote for fast track is a vote for free trade and continued engagement
with our trade partners. I ask Members to vote for fast track.
Mr. MATSUI. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume.
Mr. Speaker, I just hope that the gentleman from Illinois has picked
up some votes with the major changes he made in the legislation. I
suspect not, but I just hope he picked up a few votes, because he gave
up so much.
Mr. Speaker, I yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from California (Mr.
Fazio).
Mr. FAZIO of California. Mr. Speaker, regrettably, I, too, rise to
say I cannot vote in favor of fast track today. Many of my colleagues
know that the gentleman from California (Mr. Matsui), the gentleman
from Maryland (Mr. Hoyer), a number of us, helped lead the effort to
gain support among Democratic Members in order to win a fair and
bipartisan fast track proposal in the past.
Unlike some, my support for strong and fair trade policies for this
country has not changed when the person in the White House has changed.
It has been consistent under both Republican and Democratic Presidents.

{time} 1430

We rallied the troops last year because we knew the necessity to
grant the President fast track authority. Fair and timely fast track
ensures, in my view, a continuation of United States engagement and
leadership on the international scale that it must be.
But I must say that, unfortunately, today the timing of this vote has
little to do with granting the President fast track authority or
reasserting American primacy in international markets. It has to do
instead, I am afraid to say, with politics. It is not fair, it is not
timely, and I think it lays the predicate for further defeats, if we
are not careful, when we have all our forces coming together to bring
fast track to a successful conclusion in the next Congress.
Mr. Speaker, I think the International Monetary Fund issue is where
this Congress should concentrate its fire. We have seen a lack of
leadership in this House on this issue, and we do have in the world
monetary system a sickness we have got to address. I hope that this
majority, during the next several weeks, will find within itself the
ability to put at the top of the list of priorities fully funding that
agency, with the reforms that have been worked out in the House
Committee on Banking and Financial Services.
But until we find that kind of consensus on IMF, a meaningless,
politically driven vote today on fast track, which I fear has never had
a chance of succeeding, does nothing but set back the cause that we
have all been associated with in the past.
I am sad to take the position I do. I look forward to the day when we
can put a coalition together with some modifications in this that
broaden the base of support for fast track in place and pass it, but it
is not going to be today.
Mr. CRANE. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume.
One more quote, Mr. Speaker, to our distinguished colleagues across
the aisle. ``In the last 5 years we have led the way in opening new
markets with 240 trade agreements that remove foreign barriers to
products bearing the proud stamp, `Made in the U.S.A.,' Mr. Traficant.
Today record high exports account for fully one-third of our economic
growth. I want to keep them going, because that is the way to keep
America growing and to advance a safer, more stable world.'' President
William Clinton in this Chamber in January of this year.
Mr. Speaker, I yield 2 minutes to the gentlewoman from Connecticut
(Mrs. Johnson), our distinguished colleague on the Committee on Ways
and Means.
Mrs. JOHNSON of Connecticut. Mr. Speaker, I rise in strong support of
this bill, and I regret that my colleagues on the other side of the
aisle keep talking about this as political.
The truth is the last time we had this vote, the Democrats were only
able to mobilize about 40 votes in support of giving the President the
authority he needs to be at the table to negotiate markets for
American-made goods. The fact is that, as a party, they do not believe
that America's standard of living depends on selling American-made
goods into other people's markets.
Yet, our growth in recent years is directly the result of our success
in ever-growing foreign markets. Indeed, foreign trade creates jobs.
Foreign trade raises our standard of living. And this vote is simply
about this Nation's interest, the national interest, in being at the
negotiating table so that we can negotiate access for American-made
goods into foreign markets.
Because it is merely about selling, merely about selling our goods to
others, it is about jobs. It is about standard of living. Ninety-five
percent of the customers in the world are outside of America. And while
we have diddled, while Congress has not been able to give the President
authority he has traditionally had, Canada has negotiated 10 percent
tariff cuts on their goods into the Chilean market and we have lost
customers.
Last year, Europe sold more goods into South America than they ever
have in history; and for the first time in history, they sold more
goods into that market than the United States did because they have
been at that table negotiating agreements to reduce tariffs on European
goods. So they have taken customers from American manufacturers, now in
droves.
Yes, not being at the table costs jobs, closes us out of markets.
Being there is our future and our children's future. Vote ``yes'' on
fast track authority.
Mr. Speaker, I rise in strong support of H.R. 2621, which would
continue the 20-year history of granting the president the authority to
negotiate trade agreements that then must be approved or rejected by
Congress. With 95 percent of the world's consumers living outside our
borders, we need to take advantage of new markets in which to sell our
goods. America has the greatest workforce in the world, but to give our
workers opportunity and security, we need to give them the chance to
sell their products overseas.
My home state of Connecticut is an excellent example of how the
global economy is transforming domestic markets. 124,000 jobs in
Connecticut accounted for the approximately $8 billion of goods our
state exported last year. Had fast track been in place, those numbers
would have been even higher, because additional markets would be open
to us. Instead, because we have not been at the table and a part of
agreements that has been negotiated, we are losing customers to
competitors in other countries. Why? Simply because they are at the
negotiating table and have made trade agreements that exclude us.
In 1993, the year before NAFTA went into effect, Connecticut exports
to Canada totaled $1.4 billion. This number grew to $1.8 billion in
1997--a 28 percent increase. Exports to Mexico have increased from $336
million to $530 million over that same period--a 57 percent increase.
Increased exports, means increased numbers of jobs. And export-related
jobs pay on average 13 to 17 percent more.
Connecticut companies like the toy manufacturer Lego have seen
exports rise at tremendous rates--Lego's exports to Mexico have
increased by 300% since 1995. Their main competitors from China do not
have the benefits of tariff reductions that the U.S. negotiated under
NAFTA, giving Lego the competitive advantage in that market.
Exports account for a third of America's economic growth. Business'
ability to create jobs at home depends increasingly on raw ability to
sell goods in foreign markets. And yet, how much we sell in other
markets depends on our ability to negotiate trade agreements reducing
tariff barriers to those markets. If we continue to let other nations
forge trade agreements without us, they will continue to take customers
from us and to take market share that will be very hard to win back.
We must restore the Presidents' power to be a negotiating force in
shaping the international markets of the future. Without fast track
authority, we are simply not at the negotiating table and countries are
reluctant to negotiate, knowing that Congress could demand unilateral
changes to any negotiated trade agreement at a later date. Let's not
tie our negotiators' hand by denying them traditional authority because
it makes hammering out international agreements--already an extremely
difficult process--virtually impossible.
I also want to make my colleagues aware that this legislation
reauthorizes the Trade Adjustment Assistance (TAA) program which will
expire on September 30th. This necessary and important program assists
American workers and firms who have been adversely affected by import
competition. TAA plays a vital role in protecting working families,
retaining a skilled and productive workforce, and allowing domestic
companies the opportunity to adjust to foreign competition. It is a
unique public-private sector partnership that saves and creates jobs.

[[Page H8780]]

The global economy will grow at three times the rate of the U.S.
economy. A vote for fast track today is a vote of confidence in our
workers and a vote for America's future. I urge my colleagues to
support H.R. 2621.
Mr. McDERMOTT. Mr. Speaker, I yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from
Tennessee (Mr. Tanner).
(Mr. TANNER asked and was given permission to revise and extend his
remarks.)
Mr. TANNER. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman from Washington (Mr.
McDermott) for yielding me this time.
Mr. Speaker, I rise today in support of the fast track authority, as
imperfect as it may be. I will relate why. I think this may well be one
of the most important issues we face as a Nation since the end of the
Cold War.
During this century, most of the standing that this country has
enjoyed in the world was really defined by military alliances. During
the Cold War, it was who was on whose side, either the East, U.S.S.R.
or the West, the United States. I believe in the next century the
Nation's standing in the world will be judged primarily by trading
alliances. I think in this global economy which we are definitely in we
have to remain engaged.
It is not a hard question. If one believes, as I do, that we can grow
more food in this country than we can consume, we can make more stuff
than we can buy and sell to each other, we must have some means by
which we sell this to somebody else, or it is an economic fact of
capitalism that whoever is engaged in that surplus production is going
to lose their job. That is not a political argument. That is an
economic fact of capitalism.
Now, I regret very, very much that this bill is up today. We, some of
us on our side of the aisle, worked our heads off last November to try
to get the votes to pass this. I think we were within three or four
votes when the bill was pulled. I have not seen, quite frankly, the
same effort applied to bring this bill to the floor today.
As I said, I think this is one of the most important votes this
Congress will take since the end of the Cold War, and I regret very
deeply and very much the circumstances under which we are considering
it.
Nevertheless, I intend to support it, because I think it is that
important to the country. I hope after it fails today, which I assume
that it will, that we can get together and do something for the
country, not our political agendas.
Mr. CRANE. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself 30 seconds.
Mr. Speaker, I have another quote for everyone that, interestingly
enough, is germane to our current situation in the Florida Keys. ``And
I think we should say to all the people we are trying to represent here
that preparing for a far-off storm that may reach our shores is far
wiser than ignoring the thunder until the clouds are just overhead.''
That was a reference to some of the economic problems with our
trading partners in Asia, and again part of the State of the Union
message by President Clinton in this body in January of this year.
Mr. Speaker, I yield 2 minutes to the distinguished gentleman from
New York (Mr. Houghton).
(Mr. HOUGHTON asked and was given permission to revise and extend his
remarks.)
Mr. HOUGHTON. Mr. Speaker, I rise in support of fast track. I was not
ready for the vote the last time, because I thought that there were
some things that we could do as far as protection of our jobs, as far
as the environment, but I voted on it. It may not be the appropriate
time now. I do not know when an appropriate time is.
But I will tell my colleagues the thing that I worry about. This is
not just an intellectual discussion here in this Chamber. We are living
in a real world, and the world is passing us by, particularly now with
the emphasis of the Asian flu.
I have taken groups down to Chile, to Argentina, to Mexico, to other
parts of the world, all privately sponsored, and the one thing they ask
is, ``When are you going to give the President the authority to
negotiate with us, not just on a bilateral but a multilateral basis?''
Mr. Speaker, I think it is so important that we do that. Time is
important. It is not just an intellectual argument or a legal argument.
It is an argument that has to do with business expansion. And countries
and institutions and industries are passing us by, and I think it is
very important we look at that.
Another thing I think is important we look at is separate the two
economic issues. People say we have to protect our jobs. Therefore, we
cannot have fast track. But protecting our jobs, there are things we
can do through 301, super 301, section 201 of the Trade Act.
But to protect our jobs by not allowing our salesmen to go out and
sell our products is crazy. Ninety-six percent of the customers of this
world are outside of this country. We have got to reach them. Time is
against us. We must pass this legislation.
Mr. MATSUI. Mr. Speaker, I yield 2\1/2\ minutes to the gentleman from
Maryland (Mr. Hoyer).
Mr. HOYER. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman from California (Mr.
Matsui) for yielding me this time, a gentleman who has been one of the
great leaders on this issue on our side of the aisle.
Mr. Speaker, I rise as someone who supported NAFTA, who supported
GATT, who has voted for fast track, and who was one of the 42 Democrats
ready to vote for fast track, which was not brought to the floor just
about a year ago.
I rise as someone who is going to vote ``no.'' I rise lamenting the
fact that this issue has been so politicized, an issue that the
chairman of the Committee on Ways and Means rightfully said is critical
to this country.
There has been no bipartisan discussion on fast track this year as
there was last. I rise in opposition to this being brought to the floor
because I think it hurts this effort; it does not help it. The
gentleman from Texas (Mr. DeLay), the majority whip, came to the floor
and intimated that Bill Clinton, the President of the United States,
had withdrawn his support. President Clinton has shown more courage on
trade than any president under whom I have served or with whom I have
served.
This issue should not go forward now. Why? Because it is critical
that we pass fast track. And I am going to support it next year. I will
tell my friends, I am voting ``no'' now, and next year I will be asking
a lot of ``noes'' to vote ``yes.'' I think that may get us to a
majority. I am not sure, because my colleagues on the Republican side
of the aisle have put this in the context of putting at risk this issue
5 weeks before an election for political purposes solely. That is the
only reason this bill is on this floor right now.
The chairman said we ought to resist the seductiveness of
protectionism. I agree with that. Let me repeat. The chairman said it
is a shame that we do not resist the seductiveness of protectionism. I
agree with that. Let me also say it is a shame that we have not
resisted the seductiveness of political advantage in bringing this bill
to this floor this day.
There is no one on this floor who believes this bill is going to pass
today. Not one. Not on the Republican side and not on our side. And
even if it did, there is no one on this floor that believes that it
could get through the United States Senate. So the only thing that the
Republicans are doing is perhaps making it more difficult for us in
February or March of next year, in a bipartisan way, coming together on
behalf of America, not on behalf of Republicans or Democrats but on
behalf of a more competitive, economically vibrant America, to pass
this legislation to empower our President to negotiate.
Mr. Speaker, I hope others will join me in voting ``no'' today and
``yes'' next year when we have an opportunity to pass this legislation.

{time} 1645

Mr. CRANE. Mr. Speaker, I yield 2 minutes to the distinguished
gentleman from Ohio (Mr. Portman).
Mr. PORTMAN. Mr. Speaker, this is a bizarre debate today. I guess the
bottom line is, if you are for fast track, you think this legislation
as presented to the House today makes sense, vote for it. Then we can
pass this thing. If all the Members who have come up here and said that
they are for free trade truly are for free trade and are sincere about
it, we can pass this thing.
This is a bizarre debate in another respect. For years Ronald Reagan
and

[[Page H8781]]

George Bush got fast track authority from a Democrat Congress. They
went out and they negotiated agreements that were in the interest of
this country. Now we have a situation where President Clinton is coming
before a Congress that is dominated by Republicans, and the Republicans
are willing to give him fast track authority to negotiate on behalf of
our country to open up foreign markets. Yet the Democrats are not
giving it to their own President. It has only lapsed twice in history,
in 1988 and again in 1993. This is the longest lapse in duration by
far.
It has been 6 years since this President has had full fast track
authority. We need to provide it. Thirty percent of our growth in our
economy is directly related to exports. We have the freest market in
the world. We need to knock down the barriers in these other countries.
We have a whole slew of multilateral agreements that are being
negotiated over the next couple of years. We have to be at the table.
The fact is, we are not going to be taken seriously either by
individual countries in our negotiations on a bilateral basis or by the
rest of the world on our multilateral negotiations unless the President
has the authority under fast track to bring an agreement to this
Congress for an up or down vote.
Remember, we retain our right to turn down any agreement we do not
like. So this is not even about specific trade policy issues. This is
about allowing the American economy to move forward. We cannot stick
our heads in the sand. We are living in a global economy. We need to
have America out there as a leader in that global economy to make it a
freer economy, to help with regard to jobs and exports in this country.
I urge my colleagues, forget the politics. Forget the Republicans and
the Democrats. Do what is in your heart. If you really believe in free
trade, vote for fast track today.
Mr. MATSUI. Mr. Speaker, I yield 1 minute to the gentlewoman from
Ohio (Ms. Kaptur).
Ms. KAPTUR. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman for yielding me the
time.
Just this week Levi Strauss announced the layoff of 6,395 U.S.
workers at 11 plants. Kodak has announced plans to lay off up to 14,000
workers, and hundreds of workers at Huffy Bicycle in Celina, Ohio have
just gotten the pink slip.
By voting no on extending fast track authority today, this House has
the opportunity to redefine U.S. trade negotiating policy from one
which gives away the store to one which establishes an international
trade regime of fair and reciprocal trade with our trade competitors.
Just look at the evidence on agriculture. The consultation provisions
included in this bill have no practical effect. They mean nothing. Just
with our NAFTA trading partners on this continent, what had been a
surplus has now turned into a $2 billion negative balance, adversely
impacting our agricultural trade sector. Existing trade agreements
adversely affect U.S. farmers by lack of inspection on food safety,
surges in agriculture imports, an inadequate trade dispute resolution
system, and no way to hedge currency fluctuations.
Overall since the Trade Act of 1974, where fast track was first
approved, our trade deficit has moved from $9 billion to $220 billion.
Vote no on fast track. Stand up for the U.S. standard of living.
By voting no on every Fast Track authority today, the House has the
opportunity to redefine U.S. trade negotiating policy--from one which
gives away the store--to one that establishes an international trade
regime of fair and reciprocal trade agreements between our nation and
our trading competitors.
Look at the evidence on agriculture provisions: The consultation
provisions in the modifications made to H.R. 2621 in regard to
agriculture issues have no practical effect. Just with our NAFTA
trading partners, what has been a surplus imports rose by $3 billion
and exports by only $1 billion--a $2 billion negative impact on our
agricultural trade balance. Take the Florida tomato industry, for
instance. In 1991, Florida had 300 tomato producers. In 1995, there
were only 75.
The problems existing trade agreements have created that adversely
affect U.S. farmers include: Lack of inspection of food imports; Surges
in agricultural imports; An inadequate trade dispute resolution system;
and Currency fluctuations.
Overall, since the Trade Act of 1974, implementation of fast track,
the U.S. has suffered a negative merchandise trade balance. From $9
billion in 1976 to an estimated $220 billion in 1998.
The problem is not trade but our trade policy. Our trade policy
serves the needs of nominally American multinational corporations whose
business visions and plans are global in scope and which maintain no
national allegiance. Our trade policy has failed America's small
businesses families, America's working families, and America's
consumers.
When a multinational conglomerate moves a factory overseas, the local
grocery doesn't go with it. The auto parts store loses its customers.
Small supplier companies lost their customer. American small business
hurts. Real wages for American working people have fallen since 1973.
Consumers pay as much for an Arrow shirt made in Thailand as for the
same shirt made in the U.S.
Fast Track is not required for good trade agreements. It is required
to get bad trade deals through Congress.
This Administration has negotiated 220 plus trade agreements without
fast track. The fast track bill we consider today actually puts limits
on the President's negotiating options rather than giving him a free
hand to negotiate.
Our trade balance with MERCOSUR countries has steadily improved since
1990 (from -$3.2 billion to +$9.2 billion in 1996) without a free trade
agreement. MERCOSUR countries have an average tariff of 14%.
China is touted as the great new market for American exports. The
average annual income in China is $2,200. China has many tariffs on
consumer goods of 40% or higher. Imports to China have to survive an
obstacle course of non-tariff barriers including import regulations
that are not even published. China demands technology transfers to
accompany the importation of high-value-added goods in order to develop
domestic competition.
NAFTA's promises have proved illusory. Our trade surplus with Mexico
has become a $16 billion trade deficit. NAFTA has eliminated 400,000
job opportunities in the U.S. The labor and environmental side
agreements have provide toothless and unworkable. Just this week Levi
Strauss announced the layoff of 6,395 workers at 11 plants and Kodak
has announced plans to lay off up to 14,000 U.S. workers; 100's at
Huffy Bicycle in Celina, Ohio.
NAFTA has failed Mexico. The Mexican standard of living has been cut
by 50% Maquiladoras have increased not decreased and their employees
live in squalor. Most U.S. exports to Mexico turn around and come back
as imports. The Mexican market for U.S. exports has been a
disappointment.
The solution is a U.S. trade policy that demands reciprocal treatment
of labor and environmental issues on a par with market access and
tariff issues.
Vote no on fast track!!!
Mr. CRANE. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume.
I would simply like to remind all of the colleagues in this Chamber
that the gentlewoman's concern about that escalation of our imports is
not an invalid one. As we all know, yesterday we vastly increased the
import of skilled labor because we lack labor in this country to meet
all of the job requests.
Mr. Speaker, I yield 1\1/2\ minutes to the gentleman from Nebraska
(Mr. Bereuter).
(Mr. BEREUTER asked and was given permission to revise and extend his
remarks.)
Mr. BEREUTER. Mr. Speaker, I rise today in strong support of fast
track negotiating authority.
Today's vote is quite likely to be the most important vote of the
105th Congress, and it could not come at a more important time. Forty
percent of the world's economy is in recession. The Asian financial
crisis has spread from Thailand to Indonesia, to Korea, to Russia, and
it now stands on Brazil's doorstep. If Brazil succumbs to this crisis,
Argentina, Mexico and the United States are not far behind.
With many countries retreating from their promises of trade
liberalization and financial modernization, this is a crucial moment
for the world's economy and for world growth. A setback for fast track
in the 105th Congress, be it last year or this year, is a setback for
United States leadership for trade liberalization. It is a setback for
the appropriate and necessary trend toward the establishment of market-
oriented economies throughout the world.
Mr. Speaker, as one who also supports fundamental reexamination and
reform of the international financial architecture, I believe that fast
track negotiating authority for the executive

[[Page H8782]]

branch is very much relatedly of paramount importance in this time of
global financial crisis and perhaps a slide toward global recession.
The ability of the United States executive branch to initiate and
conclude bilateral regional and global trade agreements is absolutely
crucial for worldwide economic growth.
I believe that the President of the United States and a majority of
Members here understand that. Protectionists in this country want to
make this fast track vote a referendum on international trade, on GATT
and NAFTA. This Member says, let it be a fair reform under fair rules,
a fair referendum.
I urge my colleagues to support fast track legislation for the
President.
Mr. McDERMOTT. Mr. Speaker, I yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from
Texas (Mr. Bentsen).
(Mr. BENTSEN asked and was given permission to revise and extend his
remarks.)
Mr. BENTSEN. Mr. Speaker, I rise in support of the fast track
legislation. I supported it last year. I think it is the right thing to
do. I think the future of our economy is directly tied to trade.
But I think it is a mistake to take this bill up today. The chairman
of the Committee on Ways and Means talked about the delicate markets
that we face right now. Everybody knows this bill is going to fail. So
here we have a situation where the House of Representatives is going to
vote down fast track trading authority. We have been incapable of
mustering support for the IMF recapitalization. We look like we are
probably doing away with the fiscal responsibility that started just a
few years ago through the highway bill and through the tax bill. So as
the world financial situation worsens and starts to affect us, America
appears to be turning inward, at least if we look at the House of
Representatives. I think that is a terrible mistake.
The gentleman from Texas (Mr. DeLay), my colleague, and the chairman
of the Subcommittee on Trade quoted the President in his State of the
Union address he gave earlier this year. They did not quote the part
where he talked about the IMF. And the fact is, you all cannot get it
out of your own conference. The votes are here to pass the IMF bill
between our side and your side, but you cannot get it out of the
political debate in your own conference.
The fact that we are having this vote today, it is not about trade.
It is not about good policy, although I think fast track is good
policy. It is about politics. That is what it has come down to. Maybe
that is the way end of sessions are. It is all about politics. We are
going into an election.
The problem is, the people out in the country are looking at this and
they are looking at the House and they are saying, they cannot do
anything. They are a paralyzed body. But even worse, the markets around
the world look at it and say, they cannot do anything. The United
States is paralyzed. And that just undermines confidence and increases
contagion further throughout the world.
Who pays for that? The American worker that we are all talking about
today.
It is a real shame that the House is taking this up when they know it
is going to fail. It is going to make the United States look bad. I
will vote for it, but I think it is a big mistake.
Mr. Speaker, I rise in support of this legislation to grant the
President fast-track authority to negotiate international trade
agreements because I believe that expanded trade is good for our
economy and good for American workers. However, I strongly disagree
with the majority's decision to play politics with this issue by
scheduling this vote today when it is clear the votes are not there to
pass this bill. This decision undermines this nation's long history of
bipartisanship on trade issues, poisons the long-term prospects for
such legislation, and in the short-term risks further destabilizing
world markets already experiencing the greatest instability and
weakness in 50 years. The decision to hold this vote today puts
partisan politics ahead of international leadership, to the detriment
of our own economy and the world economy.
Let me be clear. I strongly support extending fast-track authority to
the President. In anticipation of last year's vote, and after
discussion with constituents, including labor and industry, as well as
government officials and economic and trade experts, I announced that I
would vote in support of the fast-track legislation. I did so because I
believe that expanded trade, through agreements that reduce foreign
trade barriers and open new markets for American products, is vital to
growing our economy, raising our standard of living, and creating high-
skilled, high-wage jobs. However, I announced my support only after
having secured from the President a commitment to significantly expand
our nation's trade adjustment assistance programs to help those who are
hurt by trade. While I believe that trade helps our economy as a whole,
we must recognize that some industries and some workers are hurt by
trade, and we need to put in place a comprehensive trade policy that
seeks to maximize the benefits and minimize the harm. I remain strongly
committed to an economic policy that includes free and fair trade that
reduces foreign trade barriers to American products, while ensuring
that all Americans share in the benefits of trade through trade
adjustment assistance and retraining programs.
While I agree philosophically with the intent of this legislation, I
believe it is short-sighted and dangerous for the majority to hold this
vote today. Global markets are looking to the United States for
stability and guidance as global financial markets move through this
difficult era. As Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan noted in his
testimony to the House Banking Committee on Wednesday, world leaders,
including the U.S. Congress, must pay very close attention to the
potential harm of the global financial crisis to their own countries.
In a time when we see contagion in Asia, a collapse of the Russian
economy and the economic turmoil in Latin America, we simply cannot
take our vote on fast-track lightly.
By voting on this bill today, which has no chance for passage, this
body is taking a very irresponsible action that places short-term
political goals ahead of assuring global markets of our nation's
commitment to financial security and free markets. The end result of
this politically motivated effort will only make passage of fast-track
even less likely during the next Congress. While I will vote ``yes'' on
final passage, it is only with the most reluctance and hesitation.
Mr. CRANE. Mr. Speaker, I yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from
Florida (Mr. Shaw), our distinguished colleague on the Committee on
Ways and Means.
Mr. SHAW. Mr. Speaker, I thank the chairman for yielding me the time
to speak on this most important piece of legislation.
So much has been said on both sides, by Members on both sides of this
issue and on both sides of the aisle, about what is happening in the
world economy today. And some of those things, when you really zero in
on them, are rather frightening.
All this legislation does is to give the President the authority to
go to the bargaining table to work out some type of a trade agreement,
free trade agreement. And then, with the expectation and the knowledge
and the fact that that particular treaty has to come back to this body
and to the Senate for ratification. We in no way empower the President
to do anything. We simply give him the guarantee of an up-or-down vote
on whatever he might negotiate.
Now, for most of the Members that would seem so logical, but politics
has gotten into this thing in an incredible way and an incredibly bad
way. The unions are out there negotiating or trying to lean on their
Members to vote against the fast track authority, when the fact is and
the bottom line is that the higher-level jobs stay here in the United
States, and those are the type of jobs that these unions want to
attract to the United States. I never could understand that exact
reasoning.
I think most important, even if you are not a free trader, the rest
of the world is becoming a free trader. We are not there. The rest of
the world is moving ahead. We are standing still in a protectionist
situation. This is what this is all about.
If we were able to pass fast track within the next hour, hour and a
half, that would probably be one of the most important votes that we
could take in this session of the Congress that show that we are moving
ahead. How can the strongest, largest economy that has ever been on the
face of this earth be afraid of free trade?
We are the world's greatest exporter, the largest exporter in the
world. Our jobs depend upon it. With all of the problems that are going
on in the other economies, let us pull together and pass fast track
today. Let us give the President the authority that he needs to move us
ahead in the world economy.

[[Page H8783]]

Mr. MATSUI. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume,
just to mention to the gentleman, if you want to pass fast track, all
you have to do is get the law that expired in 1994, which we passed in
1988, put it on the floor, and you will probably have 250 votes. But
you do not want to do that because you really do not want this bill to
pass. You want to use it for partisan advantage.
Mr. Speaker, I yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from Oregon (Mr.
Blumenauer).
Mr. BLUMENAUER. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman for yielding me
the time.
This is a sad moment for me because I came to Congress believing in
enhancing the United States role in a global economy. I represent a
State which has prospered mightily from trade. I have enjoyed working
with my colleagues the gentleman from California (Mr. Matsui), the
gentleman from New York (Mr. Rangel) and with members on the other side
of the aisle like the gentleman from Illinois (Mr. Crane), the
gentleman from California (Mr. Dreier) and the gentleman from Arizona
(Mr. Kolbe) in the development of a bipartisan trade policy.
Last year I was part of an effort, and we came close, there were
maybe 210 Members who were willing to vote. But because we were not
quite close enough, the Republican Speaker and the administration
pulled it back.
Now, in an increasingly partisan atmosphere, the Republican
leadership has recklessly endangered our progress and will produce not
just fewer Democrats, there will be fewer Republicans that will vote
for this bill than we claim to have had last year.
It will undercut our progress on environment and labor. It is a
blatant partisan effort that will freeze some of the positions on both
sides of the aisle. It toys with Members who really do care about this
issue. And by producing today fewer Republicans, fewer Democrats, we
are going to send a negative economic signal both at home and abroad.
Most sadly, it shatters the bipartisan trade leadership efforts that
Members have worked so hard on on this floor.
I will personally work to restore that bipartisan coalition, work to
build bridges, listen to and deal with the legitimate concerns Members
have. But this failure that is going to occur today does not underscore
the weakness of this President. It talks about the recklessness of the
Republican leadership that is not going to be able to produce the same
amount of votes that they claimed last year. I am not going to dignify
this political act with a yes vote. I will vote present, and I urge
others to do similar or vote against it.
I thank the gentleman for yielding me the time.
Mr. CRANE. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume to
remind our distinguished ranking minority member that there was
obviously something substantive in this bill when he voted for it in
committee. I am sorry that the gentleman changed his position with the
passage of time, because we need that kind of important bipartisan
support.
Mr. Speaker, I yield 2 minutes to our distinguished colleague, the
gentleman from Minnesota (Mr. Ramstad).
Mr. RAMSTAD. Mr. Speaker, I thank the distinguished chairman for
yielding the time to me.
Mr. Speaker, if ever we needed to put statesmanship ahead of
partisanship, it is here and now. We can move forward, remaining
engaged in the global marketplace, or we can turn backward and isolate
ourselves, driving a stake into our economy and saying goodbye to
thousands of lost jobs.
As has been said before, the world economy will move forward with or
without us. Our trading partners will continue to negotiate and enter
into new trade agreements which grow their businesses and create new
jobs in their countries.
Look at the last 20 major trade agreements enacted in this hemisphere
since fast track expired. Where is the United States? Left out of all
20 major agreements. Around the world, believe me, Mr. Speaker, major
exporting nations are hoping that Congress votes down fast track
authority tonight.

{time} 1700

Our competitors win if the world's largest economy is excluded from
trade negotiations, pure and simple. As a Minnesotan and a member of
the Subcommittee on Trade, I have seen firsthand the value of exports
and increased trade to U.S. workers. My State of Minnesota is the 12th
largest exporting State. The Twin Cities, which includes the Third
Congressional District, is the eighth largest metropolitan area in
terms of exporting in the Nation. Eight percent of Minnesota's gross
State product is exported to other nations. Minnesota's exports over
the last five years have grown 150 percent. Jobs have increased 25
percent.
But, Mr. Speaker, we cannot sit still. We must pass fast track to
continue to grow our economy. Farmers in Minnesota and the rest of the
Nation need the expanding markets in Latin America and Asia. Our high-
tech manufacturers need them. Intellectual property needs them. Fast
track is needed to break down the barriers to those critical markets.
The gentleman from New York (Mr. Houghton) told us that 96 percent of
the world's consumers live outside the United States. We cannot ignore
them. Let us not leave America's workers, farmers, consumers and
businesses behind. Let us put statesmanship ahead of partisanship. Let
us pass fast track and keep America competitive.
Mr. MATSUI. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume. I
just might mention to the chair of the subcommittee that we did not
even bring this bill to the committee nor subcommittee. We just brought
it right to the floor because you were so anxious to make a political
point.
I might add also last week in Congress Daily AM, ``One senior
Republican aide appeared to view the bill as a loser, indicating that
the leadership's decision to press is based upon political
calculations. `The decision to do it is to show business who is in the
camp of business and who is in the camp of labor.' ''
That is a great way to pass legislation. You know this bill is not
going to pass. All this rhetoric about how we really need fast track is
just that. It is rhetoric. This is not a debating society. This is to
pass good legislation. But you are incapable of doing it because you
folks do not know how to compromise. We passed NAFTA. We passed GATT.
We passed the MFN China. You cannot pass legislation, because you just
do not know how to compromise and make deals. That is the problem. You
like to just talk about it.
Mr. Speaker, I yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from California (Mr.
Becerra).
Mr. BECERRA. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman for yielding me this
time. I would agree with everyone who has said that we need free trade.
I would agree with everyone who says that we need to give the President
fast track authority to negotiate free trade agreements. But we need
free trade that offers fair treatment for America's workers and offers
protection of our environment. And we need a bill to vote on for fast
track authority that is not encumbered by politics.
Everyone here, as has been said before, knows that this bill is not
going to pass. If you believe it will, then you should stand up here
and say that you are willing to put your month's paycheck behind that.
Yet we are five days away from the end of this fiscal year. On day six,
we would have to shut the doors of government down because we do not
yet have a budget in place to allow us to operate the government for
the next fiscal year beginning October 1. Were it not for a short-term,
stopgap, emergency continuing resolution that passed this House that
allows us to operate until October 9, we would be preparing to close
all of the doors of government down, from our parks to our Defense
Department to our Department of Justice, in five days.
Today we are taking time to discuss fast track authority when we know
it will fail, when we are five days away from closing down the end of
the fiscal year and only one of the 13 appropriations bills that we
need to have a full budget for the next fiscal year has been sent to
the President for his signature. Why are we doing this? We know what is
going to happen. October 9 will come and we still will not have those
12 other appropriation bills passed. We are not doing our work. We know
this will not pass. It is clear six weeks away from an election, a
point is to be made.

[[Page H8784]]

That point could have been made without jeopardizing the future of free
trade for this country, of good fast track authority for the President.
It is unfortunate that politics again has taken over this House and
has doomed what should otherwise be a good opportunity to have free
trade authority and fast track authority for this President.
Mr. CRANE. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume. I
would remind our colleagues that job relocation has always been a
component of trade. Because of NAFTA, the Department of Labor estimated
that we did lose 125,000 jobs, but only 10,000 of those people took
advantage of the NAFTA retraining benefits. That was over the span of
three years. We create more than 125,000 jobs every two weeks. We have
been, primarily because of the advancement of free trade.
Mr. Speaker, I yield 2 minutes to the distinguished gentleman from
Michigan (Mr. Camp).
(Mr. CAMP asked and was given permission to revise and extend his
remarks.)
Mr. CAMP. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman for yielding me this
time. I would say to my colleagues from rural districts, this fast
track bill has some of the most important pro-agricultural language in
any bill you will vote on this year. A vote for fast track is a vote
for United States farm families.
A provision in our fast track bill not included in any other version
that has passed the House before in the 1980s or any other time,
Special 301 for agriculture, requires the Trade Representative to place
a much higher focus on our Nation's farmers every year, initiating
cases against those countries with barriers to U.S. agricultural
products. There is no doubt about it, our farmers are hurting this
year. Why? Part of it is weather. In my own congressional district we
have had half the rain of a normal year. But a lot of it also has to do
with international conditions. South American countries had a bumper
crop this year, pushing worldwide crop prices down. The Asian economic
crisis pushed prices down further, because Asian demand has plummeted.
The lack of demand is cutting U.S. agricultural exports by $2 billion
or more, according to USDA estimates.
But we need to be able to tell our farmers in 1998, ``We're going to
help you, we're going to help you increase your share in international
markets when a strong dollar or weak demand are working against us. We
are going to help you get good prices and a fair farm income.''
Trade is one of the most important tools we have to increase farm
income. Last year our farmers exported $57 billion in agricultural
products. With a $21 billion trade surplus last year, farmers made the
largest dent in our trade deficit of any industry. Special 301 for
agriculture helps address trade barriers. Under Special 301, when the
U.S. Trade Representative makes their annual report on trade barriers,
they must identify as priority countries those nations whose
agricultural trade barriers have the most harmful impact on U.S.
agricultural products. After identifying those countries, USTR is
required to negotiate removal of the discriminatory barriers. If
negotiations are unsuccessful, the U.S. can take retaliatory action
under 301.
I am pleased to have worked on this provision with the gentleman from
Minnesota (Mr. Gutknecht). I urge support of the bill.
Mr. MATSUI. Mr. Speaker, I yield 1 minute to the gentleman from Texas
(Mr. Edwards).
Mr. EDWARDS. Mr. Speaker, as a Democratic supporter of fast track, I
say here today that the Republican leadership of this House has killed
the possibility of fast track's passage for years to come.
Let us be clear about what has happened and let us be honest about
what has happened. Republicans have enough votes right now today to
pass fast track without one single Democratic vote. You know that and I
know that. But you also know you cannot do that, because there are a
lot of Republicans not supporting fast track. So what you have done
basically is to say, ``We can't pass it on our own,'' and then you
gleefully let your leaders go out and say this is a great vote to have
right before the election because it will give Democrats grief, and
then you make no real effort to put together a bipartisan bill, and
then have the audacity to have some Members come to the well of this
House and blame the defeat of this on Democrats. I would say that is
disingenuous.
I want fast track to pass. I think it is the right thing to do. But I
hope that every American farmer and rancher and every American business
that understands the importance of fast track knows that the Republican
leadership today is putting the nail of death into the coffin of fast
track's passage.
Mr. CRANE. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume.
One more quote:
``As we enter the 21st century, the global economy requires us to
seek opportunity, not just at home but in all of the markets of the
world. We must shape this global economy, not shrink from it.''
That again is President William Clinton in this Chamber in January of
this year.
Mr. Speaker, I yield 1\1/2\ minutes to the gentleman from Virginia
(Mr. Davis).
Mr. DAVIS of Virginia. Mr. Speaker, this is not a bipartisan bill?
This is a bill that just a few months ago the President would have
signed and many of you voted for it in committee and would vote for it.
I am really disappointed in some of my colleagues on the other side
of the aisle. What I hear them saying is they are more concerned about
protecting some of their Members from a controversial vote that splits
their coalition than in passing fast track. Frankly as one of the
Republicans who voted for IMF funding over objections from some of my
leadership, I do not think it is statesmanship, I do not think it is
the right direction for the country, and I do not think you are giving
cover to anybody by voting ``no'' on this or fooling anybody.
But meantime, the world goes on. Dozens of treaties are being
negotiated around the world between countries while America simply sits
on the sidelines. Chile, the fastest growing economy in the western
hemisphere, has new trade agreements with every country in the western
hemisphere except for Cuba and the United States. Their markets now buy
more from European countries than from the United States because we
have not been able to sit down and negotiate agreements with them
because we sit idly by in the House waiting for, I guess what people on
the other side would wait for an opportune time, which I gather now is
sometime after the election when they believe their coalition is not
split.
Our experience with amendable trade agreements goes way back to
Smoot-Hawley and shows that it does not work. We need fast track
legislation. This is the longest expiration that we have had in
history. With 95, 96 percent of world consumers living outside the
United States, it is important that the surpluses that we have in this
country, whether it is computers, whether it is food and agricultural
products, that we be able to sell these at a fair price and penetrate
other markets. Without this, we cannot move on.
A ``no'' vote today just kisses this off to six months or a year from
now. In the meantime, American consumers suffer by paying higher prices
and American exporters lose jobs.
Mr. MATSUI. Mr. Speaker, I yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from
Minnesota (Mr. Oberstar).
Mr. OBERSTAR. I thank the gentleman for yielding me this time. Mr.
Speaker, we in Minnesota and Michigan's iron ore and mining industry
and the lower lake steel mills must never forget the harsh lessons of
the 1970s and 1980s. We paid a terrible price for unfair trading
practices in steel and iron ore. We lost 330,000 jobs in the basic
steel industry in America, a 57 percent reduction in jobs, 450 plants
closed, nearly 10,000 jobs permanently lost in Minnesota's iron ore,
mining and taconite industry due to subsidized imports of steel from
Japan, Korea, Europe and Brazil.
Our domestic industry since then has modernized, spent $50 billion in
new plant and equipment, producing the highest quality steel in the
world. Our productivity stands at four man-hours per ton. Our plants
give the best quality steel at the lowest cost. Yet steel imports have
surged in May, June and July this year, 113 percent up from Japan, 90
percent up from Korea, 32 percent up from Russia, Ukraine and

[[Page H8785]]

others. From Latin America and the Caribbean, imports stand at 4.7
million tons for the first seven months of this year alone. We are on a
pace toward 36 million tons of steel imports in America, 26 percent of
domestic consumption. Layoffs are already happening in basic steel and
in the iron ore mining industry in Minnesota and Michigan.
I say no fast track in the face of unfairly traded steel, dumped in
the U.S. market at subsidized prices with the label ``Japanese steel at
Russian prices imported from Latin America.''
Mr. CRANE. Mr. Speaker, I yield 1\1/2\ minutes to the gentleman from
Illinois (Mr. Manzullo).
Mr. MANZULLO. Mr. Speaker, they get up at the crack of dawn and they
work 18 hours a day. They take care of their animals. They cultivate
their crops. They repair the roofs of their barns that have been torn
off by savage winds. They are preparing to go into the field, to
cultivate the corn, to harvest it, to sell it. Harvest time is the time
to pass fast track. Because without fast track, American farmers have
lost 78 million bushels of corn in sales to Chile and three other Latin
American countries to the Argentinians. Because Argentina has an
agreement with those four Latin American countries and we do not.

{time} 1715

Let us talk about the people. Let us talk about the farmers who are
directly suffering as a result of the President's failure to lead the
Nation in adopting fast track. They are the ones that are suffering.
Them. The ones who work all those hours. And to the men and women at
the Neon plant in Chrysler, they could not sell 4000 Neons to Chile.
Mexico sold those Neons to Chile because Mexico has a free trade
agreement with Chile and the United States does not. Four thousand
automobiles could have been manufactured in this country, and they were
not because we do not have fast track.
Mr. Speaker, it is the people that count.
Mr. McDERMOTT. Mr. Speaker, I yield 2\1/2\ minutes to the gentleman
from Iowa (Mr. Boswell).
(Mr. BOSWELL asked and was given permission to revise and extend his
remarks.)
Mr. BOSWELL. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman for the opportunity
to come and speak this afternoon, and I welcome the opportunity to
finally see a vote on fast track. I deplore the games that have been
played with American farmers and others who depend on trade.
Since last summer I have fought to include child labor provisions in
the fast track legislation. Like many of my colleagues, I have lived
outside the country for 9 years of my life, and I have seen firsthand
some of the miserable conditions, some of the rotten conditions under
which some children have to work. As the one true leader of the world
stage, I believe the United States must be concerned about those who
are least able to protect themselves, the children.
Mr. Speaker, I have worked with the administration and leaders from
both sides of the aisle to have fast track legislation that will
consider child labor in countries with which we negotiate under fast
track. This bill make an important first step in this direction. As of
last night, and I thank my colleagues, as of last night the bill
requires the President to focus on the laws governing the exploitative
labor and submit to this body a report on the Nation's child labor
laws.
I might share with my colleagues that the amendment that I had tried
to bring before this body did much the same thing. It said a country
which we would deal with would have a standard for child labor, and,
second, that they would not force their own standard, not saying what
it would be. I think this accomplishes much the same thing.
So, Mr. Speaker, I claim that partial victory and I feel very good.
Last year I worked very closely with the administration to support my
child labor language, and the President did support my efforts and
agreed to my language, and I have a letter here that affirms that, that
precedes the fact that we made this effort.
This fast track bill gives farmers a fair shake in fast track
negotiations. The legislation requires the trade representative to
identify countries that deny fair and equitable market access to U.S.
agricultural products. Also, before entering into negotiations that
reduce United States tariffs on agricultural products the President
must consult with the agricultural committees of the House and Senate.
Involving the ag committee is a very good addition to the process.
Make no mistake, fast track is an important part of the long solution
for the world economy. What our agricultural community needs in the
short term is to fully fund the IMF. I have always supported fast
track, and I have always supported provisions that contemplate child
labor. Today I declare a partial win and am pleased to vote for fast
track. Both of these are important measures.
Mr. CRANE. Mr. Speaker, I yield 1 minute to our distinguished
colleague, the gentleman from California (Mr. Calvert).
Mr. CALVERT. Mr. Speaker, I rise today in support of fast track trade
legislation.
For the last several years the majority in Congress has eliminated
the deficit, produced tax relief for the first time in 16 years and
reformed welfare. The result has been a strong American economy. And
Congress today has its role to play again. We cannot allow the current
global economic crisis to slow U.S. economic growth any further.
By denying the President the ability to negotiate fast track trade
agreements we are hurting the long term prosperity of our country. We
in Congress must send a strong and clear signal to our citizens and the
world that we are willing to make the tough decisions today to secure
prosperity for our children.
Mr. Speaker, I urge all my colleagues to support fast track
legislation. It is the right thing to do. As was mentioned, 95 percent
of the customers are outside of the United States. Keep our country
strong, support fast track.
Mr. MATSUI. Mr. Speaker, I ask unanimous consent to yield 2
additional minutes to the gentleman from Washington (Mr. McDermott) who
is a member of the Committee on Ways and Means and that he in turn be
permitted to control that time.
The SPEAKER pro tempore (Mr. Hastings of Washington). Is there
objection to the request of the gentleman from California?
There was no objection.
Mr. MATSUI. Mr. Speaker, I yield 1 minute to the gentleman from
Illinois (Mr. Davis).
(Mr. DAVIS of Illinois asked and was given permission to revise and
extend his remarks.)
Mr. DAVIS of Illinois. Mr. Speaker, the American people oppose fast
track by a 2-to-1 margin because they see existing trade agreements
that do not do enough to protect living standards or to keep our food,
air and water safe. Some Members of this body feel that because we are
in an economic boom like we have never seen before that the American
people should support fast track to give our industries an even
stronger economic boost. But while the rich of America are enjoying the
good times of economic prosperity, I am constantly reminded in my
district that there are no good times to be poor, but some times are
worse than others.
Now we understand the question is not whether we should trade. Of
course we should. There is no turning back from our global economy. But
we also must understand that how we trade makes a big difference.
Mr. Speaker, I heard an old African proverb that says when elephants
fight it is only the grass that gets trampled. Do not let this fast
track further trample the lives of every day people. I ask that we vote
against fast track and vote to save decent jobs for the American
people.
Mr. CRANE. Mr. Speaker, I yield a minute and a half to our
distinguished colleague, the gentleman from Minnesota (Mr. Gutknecht).
Mr. GUTKNECHT. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman for yielding this
time to me.
Mr. Speaker, I just want to say that some of the debate I have heard
so far today on the floor of the House is almost embarrassing. We have
literally heard Members say:
I would have voted for this bill 6 months ago, and I will vote for it
in January, but I cannot vote for it now.
Mr. Speaker, it almost gives hypocrisy a bad name even here in
Washington.

[[Page H8786]]

This is a very important vote, and as some of my colleagues have
already pointed out, many of our farmers are in the middle of the
harvest right now, and, frankly, we need to make sure that that harvest
has a market.
As my colleagues know, a lot of people have criticized the farm bill
and they say farmers are going broke today. Well, of course they are.
We have lost $5 billion worth of exports. Trade was at record high back
in 1996, and so was farm income, and it is no coincidence. Exports have
dropped, and so has farm income. We cannot eat all that we produce here
in the United States. Trade is critically important to us, and I want
to call attention to something that the gentleman from Iowa (Mr.
Boswell) said just a minute ago and the gentleman from Michigan (Mr.
Camp) said earlier as well:
This bill has in it super 301 language so that our government is now
going to be responsible for enforcing the trade agreements that we
have. Heretofore we have required that the trade groups have actually
had to enforce them.
In the end, Members, this is a debate between those who believe that
America can compete in a world marketplace and those who believe that
America cannot. I, for one, am not willing to give up on America's
farmers or America's workers because I believe that America can and
will and must compete in a world marketplace.
Mr. McDERMOTT. Mr. Speaker, I yield 1\1/2\ minutes to the gentleman
from Texas (Mr. Stenholm).
(Mr. STENHOLM asked and was given permission to revise and extend his
remarks.)
Mr. STENHOLM. Mr. Speaker, I rise in strong support of fast track
legislation. Fast track authority will ensure that the agricultural
trade success story does not reach an untimely end and that we maintain
our position as a leader in the global economy.
But it is not the esoteric language of economics and trade ratios
that motivate me on this issue. It is people and especially the people
of west Texas who I am privileged to represent. My farmers and ranchers
are hurting, and so are all the people who have business related to
agriculture. In the absence of recent trade progress, my constituents
have lost ground and see their incomes decrease by 30 percent. They
need a ray of hope that markets will soon open up and allow them to
keep and expand jobs and care for their families.
Mr. Speaker, H.R. 2621 would renew the authority necessary to
renegotiate new trade agreements aimed at achieving these objectives.
To those who oppose this legislation, that is all we are talking
about is sending our negotiators back to the table.
To the Republican leadership I say that I sincerely hope in the
process of making the judgment to bring this bill to the floor; today
they have done everything in their power to make sure this measure
succeeds. If this was a reckless gamble on their part, I fear the
message that failure will send to our trading partners around the
world.
To my colleagues on the Democratic side of the aisle who support free
trade but have been frustrated about the process, let me say I
understand their frustration, but it is time to put people above
politics. Our constituents who need jobs, who need opportunities, look
at our partisan squabbling as just so much childishness. Adults are
expected to know that there comes a time when it does not matter who is
at fault. They just have to take the circumstances they have been given
and try to do what is right.
Mr. Speaker, I appeal to my friends on both sides of the aisle to
vote yes for fast track.
Mr. Speaker, I rise in strong support of fast-track legislation on
behalf of the farmers and ranchers and other producers of America. This
legislation is far more important than any short-term political gain or
benefit to either side.
U.S. agricultural trade is a great success story. Our agricultural
exports have increased nearly $20 billion since 1990 to $57.1 billion
in 1997. Sixty percent of this expansion was due to the rising volume
of high-value exports, such as beef, poultry meat, and horticultural
products. Bulk commodities, especially grains and soybeans, accounted
for the rest of the expansion as both volume and prices rose in 1995-
1996. How did this tremendous growth occur? Because of the trade
agreements negotiated under previous fast-track authority.
Fast-track authority will ensure that the agricultural trade success
story does not reach an untimely end, and that we maintain our position
as a leader in the global economy. Future export prospects for U.S.
agricultural products depend, in large part, on our ability to maintain
and expand market access, ensure fair competition, and further level
the international playing field for U.S. producers and exporters.
But it's not the esoteric language of economics and trade ratios that
motivate me on this issue; it's people, and especially the people of
west Texas whom I am privileged to represent. We have heard a lot today
from folks on the other side of this issue about workers and jobs and
what trade agreements mean for them. That is my concern precisely. My
farmers and ranchers are hurting, and so are all of the people who have
businesses related to agriculture. In the absence of recent trade
progress, my constituents have lost ground and seen their incomes
decrease by 30 percent. They need a ray of hope that markets will soon
open up, allowing them to keep and expand their jobs and care for their
families.
H.R. 2621 would renew the authority necessary to negotiate new trade
agreements aimed at achieving these objectives. Any trade agreement
reached under fast track would still require congressional approval.
Fast track legislation simply says that we give our negotiators the
authority they need to be at the table in upcoming trade negotiations
in the World Trade Organization, Latin America, Asia, and elsewhere.
Without fast-track authority, the U.S. will miss an important
opportunity to help write the rules that will govern trade in the 21st
century. Our farmers and ranchers, as well as other business exporters,
will be left out in the cold.
To the Republican leadership I say that I sincerely hope in the
process of making the judgment to bring this bill to a vote today, you
have done everything in your power to make sure this measure succeeds.
If this was a reckless gamble on your part, I fear the message that
failure will send to our trading partners around the world.
To my colleagues on the Democratic side of the aisle who support free
trade but have been frustrated about the process by which this bill has
come to the floor, I say that I understand your frustration. But it's
time to put people above politics. Our constituents who need jobs, who
need opportunities, look at our partisan squabbling as just so much
childishness. Adults are expected to know that there comes a time when
it doesn't matter who is at fault--you just have to take the
circumstances you've been given and try to do what's right.
Regardless of what you think about how we got to where we are today,
we are past the point of arguing about whether this is the right time
to vote on fast track. The time is here; the bill is before us. We must
make a choice.
I appeal to my friends on my own side of the aisle to rise above the
circumstances into which we were thrust and reaffirm our commitment to
the hard-working men and women of our districts who count on us to keep
their best interests at heart.
I ask all Members to put politics aside and pass this legislation.
Vote for the American farmer and rancher, the small business man and
woman. Vote yes for fast track.
Mr. CRANE. Mr. Speaker, I yield 2 minutes to our distinguished
colleague, the gentleman from Nebraska (Mr. Barrett).
Mr. BARRETT of Nebraska. Mr. Speaker, I obviously rise in support of
H.R. 2621.
Mr. Speaker, I know that everyone is aware of the economic distress
out there on our farms and our ranches. Fast track, of course, is one
of the much needed responses to that situation.
This fall, if we fail to pass it and if we adjourn without having
extended fast track, if the legislation does fail, I think the finger
of blame can be directed, of course, straight at the White House for
failing to rally the number of Democrat votes needed to pass.
Agriculture is dependent on its export markets, and it is the
responsibility of Congress and the administration to make sure that
those markets are maintained and expanded. We need lower foreign
tariffs, we need to stop the use of foreign trading enterprises to
block or underbid our U.S. ag exports, and of course we need fast track
to get this done.
For those who argue an imperiled Bill Clinton should not be granted
fast track authority, they might be looking at the trade issue with
blinders on. It will be the trade experts at the table, not the
President, and if history is any gauge, the next round of GATT will not
be completed for years. Bill Clinton will be out of the picture by
then.
This could be a good day for agriculture and other industries
dependent on exports, and I hope it is. I hope enough Members muster
the courage to

[[Page H8787]]

ignore the pleadings of labor unions and protectionists who want us to
live in the past ignoring the global marketplace and limiting future
economic growth. U.S. businesses and industry cannot survive without
fully participating in the global marketplace, and of course we need
fast track to negotiate that full and fair participation.
I urge my colleagues to support H.R. 2621.
Mr. MATSUI. Mr. Speaker, I yield 1 minute to the gentleman from Ohio
(Mr. Brown).
Mr. BROWN of Ohio. Mr. Speaker, the message we send to the world
today by voting no on fast track is crystal clear. The primary focus of
the next generation of trade policies will be in support of worker
rights, strong environmental laws and solid food safety regulations.

{time} 1730

Future trade agreements coming from this Congress will mean better
wages in developing countries, and improved environment, better food
safety and increased workers' rights. Existing trade agreements have
all too often eroded our living standards, undermined clean air and
water laws, and continued to depress wages from workers all over the
world, from Nike workers in Indonesia, to GM workers in Mexico, to
metal workers in Lorraine, Ohio.
Vote no on fast track.
Mr. CRANE. Mr. Speaker, I yield 1\1/2\ minutes to the gentleman from
Kansas (Mr. Ryun).
Mr. RYUN. Mr. Speaker, while the majority of Americans are enjoying
an unprecedented level of economic prosperity, natural disasters and
low farm commodity prices are hurting farmers nationwide.
I have seen firsthand the devastating effects facing farmers in my
state. The farmers near LeRoy, Kansas, must sell their wheat, milo,
corn and soybeans at record low prices, primarily because export
markets for these products have been shut out. Farmers simply cannot
survive under these conditions.
The correlation between fast track authority and the recent decline
in farm prices is unmistakable. When U.S. presidents have had fast
track authority, commodity prices have remained stable. However, prices
have sharply declined for these products since 1996 when fast track
authority expired.
Approval of fast track is a vital step in relieving the burden that
has fallen so heavily on the backs of American farm families. It is
wrong. It is absolutely wrong for us to prevent our hard-working
farmers from earning a living and feeding their families while they
allow us to feed our own.
Mr. Speaker, I encourage my colleagues on both sides of the aisle and
the President to stand up for American farmers and approve fast track
authority.
Mr. MATSUI. Mr. Speaker, I yield one minute to the gentleman from
Pennsylvania (Mr. Klink).
Mr. KLINK. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman for yielding me time.
Mr. Speaker, I cannot believe what I am hearing: If we do not have
fast track authority, we cannot negotiate a trade agreement. Yet dozens
upon dozens of trade agreements have been negotiated by this
administration without fast track authority, including a giant
international telecom agreement. That is the fact of the matter.
The question here is whether we as Members of Congress have a say in
what is done. And I have to go back to NAFTA, because there were many
of us in this chamber that had concerns about the environmental
measures, about the labor law measures, about the fact that increased
drugs would come here. We wanted to insert language into the agreement.
We could not do that. We were concerned about the violence and the
assassinations in Mexico and wanted to put some language in to deal
with that. We wanted to deal with the problem of their indigenous
population. Right after NAFTA passed, they had a revolution. We did not
have an opportunity to deal with that.
The question is whether we here in Congress want to have a say or
whether we just want to have an up or down vote on every trade
agreement.
Do not give up what is your duty. We as Members of Congress are to
have a say in the commerce of this Nation. Fast track flushes that
away.
Mr. CRANE. Mr. Speaker, I yield 1\1/2\ minutes to the distinguished
gentleman from California (Mr. Cunningham).
Mr. CUNNINGHAM. Mr. Speaker, I would like to commend the gentleman
from Texas (Mr. Stenholm). I think of all the debate today, that he was
very rational. He asked both sides to take a look at this and come
together, instead of the partisanship from either side. I laud the
gentleman.
I was undecided. I have been treed, I have been lobbied, but never
threatened, because I said I did not know if I was going to vote for
this bill, and I came here today to listen, and I am appalled.
I would tell my friend from California, I am appalled, because when
we sit down, the thing we talk about that we hate the most about this
job is the partisanship at times. And I want to tell you, this debate
has sickened most of us on this floor, that when you want to talk about
an issue and you are well rehearsed in unison partisan attacks on the
Republicans, it sickens this debate.
I grew up in Missouri. I have friends that have farms that are having
to work second and third jobs just to hang onto their farms. I have got
ranchers in California from whom you can buy a cow for about $500,
about one-third of the value that it should be. They are dying.
The most important thing that I hear today is that this is the most
important vote that we can cast in this body for our farmers and our
ranchers and our small business people. But yet we would rather stay up
here and say the Republicans are only doing this to embarrass the
President.
This gentleman is not doing that. I came to this floor to listen to
an honest debate, and I am sorry and saddened by the debate that has
taken place today.
Mr. MATSUI. Mr. Speaker, I yield one minute to the gentleman from
Rhode Island (Mr. Kennedy).
Mr. KENNEDY of Rhode Island. Mr. Speaker, I want to thank the
gentleman for yielding me this time.
Mr. Speaker, I want to say to my colleagues in this House that I had
the opportunity this past year to go down to Reynosa, Mexico. I went
into the maquiladora section. I went to several maquiladora sections. I
went in unannounced to factories and introduced myself to the workers.
Most of the workers were women, most of them were 14 and 15 years old.
Most of them, I would say 90 percent of them, worked six days a week,
and at the end of the week they had $47 to take home. I went to
neighborhood after neighborhood, and all I saw were mud floors. No
indoor plumbing.
So I say to myself, it is fine to talk about this global economy and
the need for trade, but the fact of the matter is, as Martin Luther
King said, we are all going to be affected by the same web of
mutuality. If we do not insist on standards for our brothers and
sisters in Mexico, believe me, we are the next ones on the chopping
blocks.
In my state of Rhode Island, we have already seen our workers lose
jobs and benefits because of the depressing aspect that NAFTA has had
on our workers' conditions here in this country. Vote no on fast track
authority. Let the Congress decide how to enforce the status.
Mr. CRANE. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume.
Mr. Speaker, I would say to my colleague that in my lifetime as a
child before World War II, I was child labor at the farm. We got paid
10 cents an hour, worked 10 hours a day to make a dollar, six days a
week, and we were ecstatic. We had no indoor plumbing and had no
electricity either. But we made a tremendous transition upward
nationwide from that time. That was in the State of Indiana, I might
remind the gentleman too.
Mr. Speaker, I yield 1\1/2\ minutes to the gentleman from Michigan
(Mr. Upton).
Mr. UPTON. Mr. Speaker, what is fast track? Fast track allows the
President to negotiate trade agreements with other countries. Does
Congress lose its right to approve those treaties, those agreements?
No, they do not. Absolutely not. This body, this Congress, will then
vote yes or no based on the merits of the trade agreement that may be
negotiated.
I would like to think that every Republican and every Democrat in
this body does in fact care about jobs. Let

[[Page H8788]]

me tell you about some of the jobs in Michigan, an exporter, by the
way, to the tune of $38 billion in exports last year.
I visited a multinational company recently that showed me a letter
from their general manager down in Chile. That letter talked about the
importance of Chile's market, their leadership, the gateway to a very
important market in the world. That general manager in that letter
asked that the Michigan company stop sending goods manufactured in
Michigan and change to their facility in Canada.
Why? Well, Canada, thanks to their free trade agreement, their
strategy, their trade agreements they have been able to reach because
they had fast track, do not have to pay tariffs on their goods going
down to Chile. That is right. That same good produced in Canada has an
automatic 11 percent discount compared to the same product manufactured
in Michigan. We cannot do that. Why? We do not have fast track. This
bill allows that to happen.
We see this happening time and time again across the country. Without
fast track, there are incentives in fact for companies to send their
manufactured goods from other countries.
Mr. McDERMOTT. Mr. Speaker, I yield two minutes to the gentleman from
Ohio (Mr. Sawyer).
(Mr. SAWYER asked and was given permission to revise and extend his
remarks.)
Mr. SAWYER. Mr. Speaker, the chairman of the Committee on Ways and
Means got it exactly right. This is a very fragile time. And while I am
inclined to support this bill, that fragility makes this measure at
this time a foolhardy exercise that could greatly damage our economic
strength in the world.
Make no mistake about it: American prosperity depends on the success
of our trading arrangements. Today the world's balance of power is
defined less in military terms than it is as a matter of economic
strength. Trade negotiations are as important to our economic future as
the Soviet arms talks were to our national security in an earlier era.
But subjecting fast-track legislation to certain defeat today is not
only bad politics, it is bad and dangerous policy. It sends a reckless
message to securities markets everywhere.
Our inability to work out an orderly agreement for trade negotiating
authority can do real damage in real time to already fragile markets,
including our own, and to economies around the world. Moreover, it
damages the worthwhile goals of people on both sides of the measure
before us. It works toward no constructive resolution of legitimate
concerns over labor and environmental standards that are within our
grasp.
Negotiating authority is important because our prosperity is tied to
market opening global trade, and I believe we must move forward. But
playing reckless politics with this issue is a dangerous exercise, and
those who brought it to the floor will bear the burden for its defeat
and whatever consequences it has throughout the world.
Mr. CRANE. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume.
Mr. Speaker, I would like to pass on another quote two to our
colleagues this evening. ``I think we should seek to advance worker and
environmental standards around the world. I have made it abundantly
clear that it should be part of our trade agenda. But we cannot
influence other countries' decisions if we send them a message that we
are backing away from trade with them.''
Again, President Clinton in January of this year in this chamber.
Mr. Speaker, I yield one minute to the gentleman from Washington (Mr.
Nethercutt).
Mr. NETHERCUTT. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman for yielding me
time.
Mr. Speaker, if American agriculture does not grow, it will die. That
is what Secretary Glickman has said, and he is absolutely right.
The reason I am supporting this fast track bill is because it has the
tremendous potential for our agriculture exports to grow and prevent
American agriculture from suffering more than it already has this year.
This bill has an agriculture component that allows an ag trade
representative to sit at the table at all trade negotiations and to
report back to Congress the effort that such negotiations have on
agriculture. We in Congress get to vote on these final trade bills. We
get to vote no if they are no good, and I would not hesitate to vote
no. I trust my friends on the left would not either.
What is interesting is we have heard today people say, let us fund
IMF with $18 billion. What is surprising is those proponents would
trust a non-American entity with an $18 billion sort of unstructured
commitment, but not trust the President of the United States or this
administration to negotiate a trade bill.
If you support agriculture, vote for fast track.
Mr. MATSUI. Mr. Speaker, I yield two minutes to the gentleman from
Ohio (Mr. Traficant.)
(Mr. TRAFICANT asked and was given permission to revise and extend
his remarks.)
Mr. TRAFICANT. Mr. Speaker, this is not a free trade bill. This is
not even a trade bill. This is a process bill, an accelerated process
on how we are going to handle the trade agreement. And, once again,
Congress is going to turn the powers over to the White House.
So I have a couple questions. The first one is, if our policy on
trade is so good, why do we not follow the Constitution and have the
Senate ratify it with a two-thirds vote? And another question, maybe a
street question: If our trade policy is so good, why does China not do
it? Why does Japan not do it? I want you to think about that.
You know, it really gets to me when we talk about all of this. China
is building missiles with American dollars, Japan is building schools
with American dollars, Mexico is building factories with American
dollars. America is building prisons and passing out training vouchers.
Now, I have heard all of this about all these great jobs you are
producing. We are shipping jobs overseas and we are not even keeping
score.
So I just want to say this to the Congress: An America that buys much
more than they sell year in and year out is an America that is facing
economic and military disaster.

{time} 1745

If this policy is so good, let two-thirds of the United States Senate
ratify it and let it earn its merits through the constitutional
process.
I would just like to say one other thing. Even a flea market charges
table space. American policies are subsidizing foreign workers and
American policies are downsizing American workers. Members can give me
all the statistics on jobs they want, but we are flipping a lot of
hamburgers in America. People are worried sick about their jobs.
Mr. CRANE. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume.
Mr. Speaker, I would like to remind my colleague, again, the
gentleman from I think it is Poland, Ohio (Mr. Traficant), I would like
to remind him that we have been at full employment for now 3 years in a
row, and that the fastest growing component of our national economy has
been trade. It has been the most productive. That is what we are
putting at risk when we contemplate terminating international trade
agreements.
I would remind my colleague also that the Constitution says that on
trade issues we are the ultimate judge. Under fast track, we are still
the ultimate judge. We make the input all along the way, we look at the
final product, and then we vote it up or down, so it is exclusively
within our jurisdiction. I would urge the gentleman to reconsider his
misguided policy.
Mr. Speaker, I yield 2 minutes to my distinguished colleague, the
gentleman from Arizona (Mr. Kolbe)
Mr. KOLBE. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman for yielding time to
me.
Mr. Speaker, I would like to respond to a few of the arguments that I
have been listening to in this debate today. One, of course, that we
have heard over and over again is about how trade and trade agreements
are going to drive down incomes, they are going to drive down wages.
It is ironic that argument should be raised today. Here on the front
page of the Washington Post, ``Poverty rate fell, incomes rose in 1997.
Income for the typical American household rose at a rate nearly twice
that of inflation in 1997, and income and poverty figures

[[Page H8789]]

returned to the levels that the Nation hasn't seen before the last
recession,'' more than a decade ago.
So it is just false. We have had a 3,000 percent increase in trade
over the last 35 years, a tremendous increase in the last 7 to 10
years. It is absolutely false to say that income levels are falling,
that jobs are being lost. How can they argue that jobs are being lost
when 6 million jobs have been created in the last few years, and
unemployment is at the lowest possible rate? We have to be putting our
heads in the sand, imagining things, to say that employment has been
lost.
The second argument I want to raise is one we have heard a lot of on
the floor the last several years, why we need to provide the funding
for the IMF. I happen to believe that is important. I do think part of
our world responsibilities is to have this funding to maintain
stability in currencies.
However, I would like to ask my colleagues who urge us to vote for
IMF, and then turn around and vote against fast track, how do they
think these countries are ever going to generate the economy, the
wherewithal, to repay the loans they get from the IMF? Or do they just
believe there should be international welfare, that we should shell
this money out, but those countries are never going to be able to have
the income in order to make the repayments to the International
Monetary Fund? It is another phony argument.
Finally, there is the political argument that somehow this is just
being done for political reasons. There is politics that are being
played. This President said last year he was for IMF, or for fast
track. He said in his State of the Union speech this January he was for
it. Now he is against it, but next January he will be for it again. If
he was not off raising funds today, if he was here in the United States
campaigning, if he was here in Washington campaigning for this, we
might be able to pass this today.
I urge my colleagues to vote for this. Vote for America. Vote for our
future. Vote for fast track.
Mr. MATSUI. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume.
Mr. Speaker, I might just point out to the gentleman, my very dear
friend from Arizona, that the President does not oppose fast track. The
President advised the gentleman's membership in the early summer of
this year that the votes were not there. He knew the votes were not
there. The votes are not going to happen. They will not have 218 votes.
The President was right about this.
We are bringing this up for no reason at all except for political
advantage. The gentleman saw the quotes in the newspapers from various
Members, including the chairman of the Republican Campaign Committee.
Mr. Speaker, I yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from the State of
Oregon (Mr. DeFazio).
Mr. DeFAZIO. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman for yielding time to
me.
Mr. Speaker, I have heard some interesting things. I guess we could
call it election year hyperbole. Somehow this legislation, fast track,
is going to be the salvation of our failing family farms. Can they hang
on for 5 or 10 years until the next hypothetical trade agreements
brought forward under fast track? I don't think so.
Guess what, the last two agreements that came forward under fast
track screwed the farmers in America. They were promised the world, but
when it came down to whether the banking sector or the aerospace sector
or the computer sector got favorable treatment in those agreements, and
something had to be traded off, what got traded off? Agriculture.
This is about a process that includes plausible deniability. That
means there are a lot of people here who do not want to take
responsibility for what is happening in America. They can say, you
know, I had concerns about NAFTA. I knew there were problems with some
parts of NAFTA. I knew there were problems with labor agreements, they
were kind of weak, and we lost a lot of jobs there, and wages have gone
down on both sides of the border. Yes, I had some real concerns about
those environmental provisions. I really did not think they would clean
up the border, which is one of the largest and fastest growing
hazardous waste sites in the world. But I had to vote up or down, and I
could not sacrifice 2 years of secret negotiations, and we will fix
those things later.
That is what we hear every time an agreement comes forward under fast
track. Are Members going to blow up three years of careful secret
negotiations, just because they have a minor concern about their
farmers or about the environment or about American workers? No. The
herd here most times said, gee, I would have liked to do something, but
I could not. Why could they not? Because they gave away that authority
at the beginning.
Do not give away that authority ever again. Have Members not learned
from our past mistakes? Can we not learn from a $200 billion a year
trade deficit? Can we not learn from a race to the bottom in terms of
wages and the environment?
If we cannot learn, then hopefully the election year shenanigans
here, this will help family farms, it is not going to do a damned thing
for family farms, and the Members know that.

Announcement by the Speaker pro tempore.

The SPEAKER pro tempore (Mr. Hastings of Washington). The Chair will
remind Members they should avoid profanity.
Mr. CRANE. Mr. Speaker, I yield 1\1/2\ minutes to the gentlewoman
from Maryland (Mrs. Morella).
(Mrs. MORELLA asked and was given permission to revise and extend her
remarks.)
Mrs. MORELLA. Mr. Speaker, I rise in support of the bill. I do not
know why all this rhetoric, because this legislation is, at its
essence, a simple and straightforward proposition.
The bill would give the President the authority to have a straight up
or down vote on legislation implementing the trade agreements which he
negotiates. It is the same authority which previous Congresses have
granted to every U.S. president, Republicans and Democrats, since 1974.
Presidents need this authority in order to assure their negotiating
partners that a deal is a deal. Why would anyone negotiate with someone
who could not stand by the deal to which they agreed? Why would a
national leader invest enormous time, energy, and prestige in a
negotiating process in which the other party kept coming back to
renegotiate the deal?
I just want to point out that in the last 10 years, about 70 percent
of U.S. economic growth has been generated by the exporter of goods and
services. In my own State of Maryland, our exports to Mexico, just as
an example, have increased by 82 percent since the passage of the
NAFTA. Overall, Maryland's exports have increased by almost 130 percent
since 1987.
Expanded trade has opened markets, created opportunities for
exporters, created jobs, strengthened the State economy, and raised the
living standards for all Marylanders and throughout the country. We are
not even debating a trade agreement, we are only proposing to allow the
President an up or down vote on whatever deal he may reach.
Fast track authorization will give the President the opportunity to
negotiate the strongest and most beneficial agreement possible. If
Members do not like the agreement, we can vote against it. But to deny
the President fast track authority is to prejudge and agreement before
it is made.
Mr. MATSUI. Mr. Speaker, I yield 1 minute to the gentleman from
Minnesota (Mr. Minge).
Mr. MINGE. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman from California for
yielding time to me.
Mr. Speaker, I am troubled by the circumstances in which fast track
is coming up this afternoon. I am afraid that we are bringing this
agreement up at this time, not so much to promote fast track as to
promote wedge issues, and to claim that it is going to accomplish
things going far beyond what it actually can accomplish in the short
term.
I represent an agricultural area. I recognize the importance of
trade. But I would also like to remind my colleagues that we just
finished dealing with the International Monetary Fund. What happened? A
very modest increase in funding, far below what the President
requested, and no up or down vote on the actual $18 billion that are
needed for IMF.
Perhaps even more important than something that is long-term or an
intermediate term advantage opportunity for agriculture is what are we

[[Page H8790]]

doing in the short term. We ought to be bringing that up for a vote
this afternoon. We need to respond to the agricultural crisis that
confronts America, and do it promptly.
Mr. CRANE. Mr. Speaker, I yield such time as she may consume to the
gentlewoman from Connecticut (Mrs. Johnson) for a brief colloquy.
Mrs. JOHNSON of Connecticut. Mr. Speaker, I would like to ask for
clarification by the chairman of a provision which concerns negotiating
objectives for trade in civil aircraft.
Is it the chairman's understanding that H.R. 2621 explicitly retains
the legislated negotiating objectives contained in the Uruguay Round
Agreements Act and the accompanying Statement of Administrative Action
for trade in civil aircraft?
Mr. CRANE. Mr. Speaker, will the gentlewoman yield?
Mrs. JOHNSON of Connecticut. I yield to the gentleman from Illinois.
Mr. CRANE. Mr. Speaker, that is my understanding.
Mrs. JOHNSON of Connecticut. Then, I would ask the chairman, shall
the USTR understand that such intent is confirmed in legislation, and
ensure that the legislated objectives will continue to constitute the
principal U.S. negotiating objectives in future negotiations?
Mr. CRANE. That is correct.
Mrs. JOHNSON of Connecticut. Mr. Speaker, I thank the chairman for
his support of this provision, which is necessary for the continuing
international competitiveness of aerospace companies and the jobs they
support.
Mr. CRANE. I thank the gentlewoman.
Mr. Speaker, I yield 1 minute to our distinguished colleague, the
gentleman from Maryland (Mr. Bartlett).
(Mr. BARTLETT of Maryland asked and was given permission to revise
and extend his remarks.)
Mr. BARTLETT of Maryland. Mr. Speaker, I am strongly supportive of
expanded free and open trade, but this bill is not the way to get
there. It is unconstitutional. I have here a press release from the
U.S. Chamber of Commerce to the media in my district, chastising me for
not supporting this bill. They make my point. Listen.
``* * * noted that with fast track, negotiators would be able to
close deals.'' The President and his negotiators closed the deal. Where
is the Congress? We would become merely a rubber stamp, clearly in
violation of the Constitution.
I am all for free and expanded trade. This is not the way to get
there, at the expense of our Constitution. If we do not understand it,
the U.S. Chamber understands it. The President and his negotiators
would close the deal.
Mr. MATSUI. Mr. Speaker, I yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from
Indiana (Mr. Roemer).
(Mr. ROEMER asked and was given permission to revise and extend his
remarks.)
Mr. ROEMER. Mr. Speaker, thank my good friend, the gentleman from
California (Mr. Matsui) for yielding time to me.
Mr. Speaker, I rise today on the floor, recognizing the importance of
trade and growth in our economy, and rise as a free trader. I have
supported GATT, I have supported normal trade with China, I have
supported the Caribbean Basin Initiative. I have also supported African
trade.
But I also rise, Mr. Speaker, as a fair trader. These initiatives
were both free, to get into new markets, and fair. This proposal, fast
track, is more of NAFTA. It is free trade, but it is not fair to our
working people, to the people with families and jobs, particularly in
the Midwest.

{time} 1800

NAFTA lost Hoosiers 17,000 jobs. NAFTA created a $40 billion deficit
between the U.S. and Mexico when we had a surplus before, and fast
track is more of NAFTA.
Let us defeat this bill, but let us work together in a bipartisan way
for growth and trade. Let us work on improving education and training
for displaced workers. Let us work on trade fairness, and let us work
on trade enforcement and implementation.
Trade is important. Trade should be bipartisan. But trade has to be
fair. This program will not be fair to working Hoosiers, it will not be
fair to families, and it will not be good for America.
I encourage my colleagues to defeat fast track.
Mr. CRANE. Mr. Speaker, I yield 1 minute to the gentleman from
California (Mr. Hunter).
Mr. HUNTER. Mr. Speaker, I have a graph here that shows the G7, that
is the big nations of the world, the big western democracies and their
net exports to Mexico before and after NAFTA. That includes the United
States.
We call this chart ``Find the dummies,'' because it is apparent that,
after NAFTA, every one of the big nations, Canada, France, Germany,
Italy, UK and Japan, all continue to do well with Mexico with respect
to trade, except the United States. The United States immediately fell
into an enduring $15 billion trade deficit.
The first rule of business is one does not give their money to poor
business managers. The Clinton trade team consists of poor business
managers.
Not this President, not this time.
Mr. MATSUI. Mr. Speaker, I yield 2 minutes to the gentlewoman from
California (Ms. Pelosi).
Ms. PELOSI. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman for yielding.
Mr. Speaker, as we all know, fast track authority will establish the
framework for our trade relationship for the next 10 years. As such, it
is critical to the importance that this accord places on the
environment.
Therefore, I reluctantly oppose this bill, because it limits the
administration's ability to address concerns regarding protection of
the environment and bilateral regional and other trade agreements.
To the extent that the environment is mentioned at all in the pending
legislation, it is in a restrictive way. San Francisco, the city which
I represent, is a city which is built on trade and continues to thrive
on it. We appreciate the value of free trade. We also understand that
the environment and the economy are inextricably linked. We believe
that the environment must be central to any fast track legislation.
My colleagues have mentioned that other presidents have had this
authority. Indeed, I have voted for it in the past. Under previous fast
track authority, the President had the discretion both to negotiate and
to include in trade bills that were brought to Congress under fact
track environmental, labor and human rights terms that the President
deemed appropriate. That the President deemed appropriate. This bill
removes the ``appropriate'' standard.
The legislation passed by the House Committee on Ways and Means also
limits the discretion of the negotiators to achieve results only on
matters that are directly related to trade.
One important aspect of addressing global environmental degradation
is through attention to production process methods. If we are to slow
environmental damage, we must deal with the way items are produced as
well as with consumption. Will production process methods be included
under the administration's interpretation of ``directly related to
trade"?
In addition, there are many other reasons why, and I will submit that
with my full statement, but, in addition, unless we give the
environment more value by including it in fast track, we are
squandering the comparative value U.S. business has in leading the
world in the development of production environmental technologies. To
ignore the connection between the environment and the economy is to be
on the wrong side of the future.
I urge my colleagues to vote ``no.''
Mr. Speaker, I rise in opposition to H.R. 2621, the Fast Track
legislation before the House today. I am disappointed that the
Republican leadership has chosen to bring before the House a failed
fast track proposal which does not address pressing issues in the
global economy. Fast track authority will establish the framework of
our trade relations for the next ten years. As such, it is a defining
moment for the importance we accord the environment. This fast track
bill would relegate this important issue to secondary status in trade
agreements and would only ensure that it remains of secondary status as
we move into the next century.
Not one of the concerns raised about this fast track proposal last
year has been remedied in the bill before us today. This fast track
bill limits the Administration's ability to address concerns regarding
protection of the environment in bilateral, regional, and other

[[Page H8791]]

trade agreements. To the extent that the environment is mentioned in
the pending legislation, it is in a restrictive way.
San Francisco, which I represent, is a city which was built on trade
and continues to thrive on it. We appreciate the value of free trade.
We also understand that the environment and the economy are
inextricably linked. We believe that the environment must be central to
any fast track legislation.
Under previous fast track authority, the President had the discretion
both to negotiate and to include in trade bills that were brought to
Congress under fast track environmental, labor or human rights terms
that the President deemed ``appropriate.'' H.R. 2621 removes the
``appropriate'' standard and the Administration's discretion is limited
to making the language necessary only for the operation or
implementation of the trade agreement. The Administration would now be
precluded from achieving more than allowed under the legislation and
prevented from having those provisions considered under fast track.
The legislation passed by the House Ways and Means Committee also
limits the discretion of the negotiators to achieve results only on
matters that are ``directly related to trade.'' Serious questions are
already being raised about how ``directly related to trade'' will be
defined. It is my understanding that there is no legislative history to
define this phrase.
One important aspect of addressing global environmental degradation
is through attention to production process methods. If we are to slow
environmental damage, we must deal with the way items are produced, as
well as with consumption. Will production process methods be included
under the Administration's interpretation of ``directly related to
trade?''
Serious questions have also been raised about the implications of
language in H.R. 2621 purportedly designed to ensure that foreign
governments do not waive their existing domestic environmental, health,
safety or labor measures in order to give themselves a competitive
edge. The language in the bill unfortunately precludes action to
encourage strengthening such standards. Perhaps of even more immediate
harm, however, is that it does not address a government's failure to
enforce existing standards. In addition, H.R. 2621 only addresses
foreign governmental policies and practices. Private sector actions to
limit environmental protection are not addressed. Finally, countries
with no existing environmental standards fall completely outside this
provision.
My constituents and I are also concerned with the consequences of a
provision in the fast track bill which would essentially allow
derogation or waiver of existing domestic laws if such actions are
``consistent with sound macroeconomic development.'' Under this
provision, it appears that countries could indeed lower their
environmental standards to gain a competitive edge, as long as this
action is consistent with their macroeconomic development.

As many of our Republican colleagues have recently expressed concern
about the lack of transparency in the functioning of the International
Monetary Fund (IMF), I believe they should be supportive of promoting
transparency in the functioning of the World Trade Organization (WTO).
While ``transparency'' is appropriately one of the negotiating
objectives outlined in the legislation, it is essential that procedural
transparency be expanded to the WTO both in the trade negotiation
process and in the dispute settlement process. Benchmarks must be
established by which transparency can be gauged. There must be expanded
access to documents by those who are interested in the dispute
settlement process. And, we must insist on ensuring the ability of non-
governmental groups to participate.
I would also note my concern that while we are promoting transparency
in other countries, the fast track legislation takes a step back from
transparency in this country by granting the President new authority to
allow for the classification of trade reports when deemed appropriate,
rather than employing previous language allowing classification only
when necessary to protect national security or trade secrets.
Environmental issues in the global economy have very real
consequences not only for people in the developing world, but also for
people here in the United States. Concerns about the quality of the air
we breathe and the water we drink have now been compounded in the
public eye by concerns about the safety of the food which we eat. As
international trade is increasingly the norm, we must ensure the right
to safeguard American consumers in international trade agreements.
Standards worldwide should be elevated; we cannot encourage a ``race to
the bottom''. In addition, unless we give the environment more value by
including it in fast track, we are squandering the comparative value
U.S. business has in leading the world in the development and
production of environmental technology.
H.R. 2621 is not the appropriate tool which to enter trade
negotiations for the Twenty-First Century. I urge my colleagues to vote
no on this flawed bill.
Mr. CRANE. Mr. Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.
Mr. MATSUI. Mr. Speaker, I yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from
Florida (Mr. Stearns).
(Mr. STEARNS asked and was given permission to revise and extend his
remarks and to include extraneous material.)
Mr. STEARNS. Mr. Speaker, I reluctantly rise to oppose fast track,
and I want to thank the gentleman from California (Mr. Matsui) for
yielding me this time.
Mr. Speaker, the Florida Fruit and Vegetable Association has
basically come out against the fast track vote we are having here
tonight. Earlier, I was on the House Floor with the Florida Farm Bureau
Federation, where they also opposed this fast track vote.
Farmers in my district are still opposed to the authority that we are
proposing tonight to give to the President with fast track, regardless
of the last-minute deals, because of the failure of this administration
to live up to their promises from the last fast track authority.
For example, my tomato growers have written that, ``The President
could have taken real steps to fix the problems for Florida's tomato
growers and other winter or seasonal vegetable growers associated with
the failures of the NAFTA agreement, yet nothing has happened.''
Mr. Speaker, President Clinton even wrote to Congress before NAFTA
was approved to state that he ``was permanently committed to ensuring
NAFTA was enforceable and effective to protect the U.S. vegetable
industry against price-based import surges from Mexico.''
Mr. Speaker, despite these promises, the administration has failed to
protect the winter vegetable industry; and, in fact, the onslaught of
vegetables coming into Florida has hurt our industry terribly.
For these reasons, and for the reasons outlined in the two letters I
put in the Record, I oppose fast track at this time.
Mr. Speaker, I submit the following letter for the Record:
Florida Fruit &

Vegetable Association,

Orlando, FL, September 25, 1998.
Hon. Cliff Stearns,
U.S. House of Representatives,
Washington, DC.
Dear Congressman Stearns: This is to advise you on behalf
of the Florida Fruit and Vegetable Association and its
membership that we continue to be opposed to the enactment of
fast-track legislation. Our opposition is based on continuing
concerns over current and potential trade agreements on
import-sensitive agricultural products, the inadequacy of
import relief remedies, country of origin labeling, and other
issues. We accordingly ask you to vote ``no'' when the fast-
track bill comes to the House floor later today.
We greatly appreciate your on-going support of Florida
agriculture.
Sincerely,
Michael J. Stuart,
President.

Mr. MATSUI. Mr. Speaker, I yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from New
Jersey (Mr. Pascrell).
Mr. PASCRELL. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman from California (Mr.
Matsui) for yielding.
Mr. Speaker, I rise to discuss a matter which is of great importance
to my district and the Nation as a whole. This measure before us should
be defeated. It seeks to extend fast track authority for 4 years. As
such, it sets our national trade policy as we approach and then enter
the 21st century.
No one doubts the fact that we live in a global economy. No one
doubts that if we are to retain our preeminent position in the world we
must lead from a position of economic strength.
For me, global leadership in the arena of international trade means
that fair trade should not be subordinated to the notion of free trade.
There is very little reciprocity in our trade agreements. We must trade
with other nations on an equal footing.
Mr. Speaker, with such an horrific Asian economy, those goods are
going to be flooding our markets in the next 2 months, 3 months, 2
years. The ships are coming into San Francisco ports now full with
foreign goods. They are leaving half filled with our goods. They will
leave with a quarter filled by the time this Asian crisis really hits
our shores. This is the worst time to have fast track.

[[Page H8792]]

The proponents of fast track argue that we need it based on what they
perceive as the successful NAFTA policy. They point to the creation of
311,000 jobs. I take exception to this figure and cite an alternative
one which states we have lost 600,000 jobs because of NAFTA.
Now is not the time for fast track. Fast track is about jobs. It is
about time that we stopped exporting our jobs. It is time that we
protect our jobs. And it is time that we had fair trade agreements
instead of the ones that have been placed before us.
Mr. Speaker, I urge my colleagues to defeat fast track resoundingly.
It is not enough if we just slam it down with a few votes. We need
total victory here, because we need a fair trade policy.
Mr. MATSUI. Mr. Speaker, I yield 1 minute to the gentlewoman from
Connecticut (Ms. DeLauro).
Ms. DeLAURO. Mr. Speaker, I rise in opposition to fast track. Today's
legislation could be an opportunity to make a new beginning, to define
a progressive role in trade for the next century for America. But this
bill does not do this. It is a step backward.
We are not divided here today on the benefits of free trade. We
embrace it. We are divided on how to best achieve it to compete in the
global economy. I believe this fast track proposal turns its back on
hard-working Americans. It will not defend small business owners and
workers from the threat to their security posed by our trading
partners' cheap labor and low standards. It does precious little to
move away from the pattern of lost jobs, reduced labor, and lower
living standards seen under NAFTA.
American families are struggling every single day to make ends meet.
America has the opportunity and the responsibility to ensure that
American values define the international market and that our citizens
build solid futures.
Let us show that the Congress of the United States cares about and
understands America's hopes and fears for the future. Vote ``no'' on
fast track.
Mr. MATSUI. Mr. Speaker, I yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from
Indiana (Mr. Visclosky).
(Mr. VISCLOSKY asked and was given permission to revise and extend
his remarks.)
Mr. VISCLOSKY. Mr. Speaker, I also want to express my appreciation to
the gentleman from California (Mr. Matsui) for yielding me the time.
Mr. Speaker, I rise in opposition to fast track, given the experience
historically we have had with NAFTA. We have had 124,000 jobs certified
as having been lost because of NAFTA.
I would remind my colleagues the math works out to 72 workers a day
since the inception of NAFTA have lost their jobs. Before the end of
business today, 72 more American citizens are going to be certified as
having lost their job because of NAFTA.
I rise in strong opposition to fast track.
But in fairness to the other side, there are potentially some reasons
why Members might want to vote for it. The average real hourly wage in
1973 was $12 an hour. In 1997, it was $12.28, about 1 penny a year
increase. If Members think that is enough for the American workers they
represent, maybe they do want to vote for fast track.
If Members think that every household in America ought to have two
workers for what one worker could provide in 1950, then fast track is
for them. Thirty percent of American households in 1950 had one worker.
Today, 53 percent need two workers.
If Members think it is a good idea to have a trade deficit with
Mexico and other countries instead of trade surpluses, this is the
thing for them. In 1993, we had a trade surplus with Mexico of $1.7
billion. Today, our deficit is $14.5 billion.
If Members think we ought to not have a strong steel industry in
America, fast track is for them. We had a 100,000 ton steel surplus
with Mexico in 1993. We have a 2.2 million ton deficit today.
Health care, if Members do not think workers need health care
benefits or pensions or need a job, fast track is for them. I grew up
in a neighborhood, I grew up in an America believing that the next
generation should be better off. That is what we should be about. Those
are the negotiations we ought to undertake to make sure that every
American worker, every worker worldwide, has an improved standard of
living.
Mr. Speaker, I rise today to voice my vehement opposition to Fast
Track legislation. The last president to have Fast Track used it to
give us the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA). Since January
1, 1994, when NAFTA went into effect, our country has lost 124,000 jobs
as a result of NAFTA. That breaks down to a loss of 72 jobs each day.
72 American citizens each day watch their jobs move out of this country
and out of their communities. Before we leave tonight, an additional 72
Americans will be unemployed.
But its not just a problem of losing jobs. America's workers are
seeing a sharp decline in their quality of life thanks to NAFTA and
unfair trade. If you don't care about workers' quality of life, then
vote for Fast Track.
The average real hourly wage for working Americans in 1973 was $12.00
per hour. In 1997, the average real hourly wage for working Americans
was $12.28 per hour. That is an increase of one penny per year. One
extra penny to pay bills, buy shoes for your children and put food on
the table. If your family can survive on an annual raise of one extra
cent per hour, then Fast Track is for you.
30% of American households in 1950 had two people working outside the
home. Today, 53% of all families have two incomes. Two Americans today
must work to make the equivalent of one income in 1950. If you believe
that two adults in every household should have to work in order to
support a family, then Fast Track is for you.
Our neighbor to the South, Mexico, is one of our largest trading
partners. In the fiscal year prior to NAFTA, FY 1993, the U.S. had a
trade surplus of $1.7 billion with Mexico. In FY 1997, the U.S. had a
$14.5 billion trade deficit with Mexico. If you think that we ought to
increase our trade deficits with other nations, then Fast Track is for
you.
In 1993, The American steel industry saw a trade surplus with Mexico
of 100,000 tons of steel. In 1997, the steel industry saw a trade
deficit with Mexico of 2.2 million tons. If you think that we need to
put the American steel industry out of business, laying off hundreds of
thousands of U.S. steelworkers, then Fast Track is for you.
Because of jobs lost to NAFTA, many of our citizens have had to take
lower-paying jobs with no benefits and no pensions. If you think that
our citizens are not entitled to have a job that provides health
benefits for themselves and their children, then vote for Fast Track.
If you think that the hard working men and women of this country do not
deserve a pension for their retirement years, then, yes, Fast Track is
for you.
If it is fine with you that at the end of this day, at the end of
this debate, 72 more people will be without work and unable to provide
for their families, then vote for Fast Track. If you can live with the
fact that you have sent American industry to foreign lands to make a
profit without regard to workers' safety, human rights or the
environment, then please, vote for Fast Track.
The American Dream has always promised that the next generation would
have a better life, not a lower standard of living. American workers
should not have to lower their standard of living just to compete with
foreign workers who make $3.00 a day. If you want to sacrifice the
American Dream for the working people of our nation, then vote for Fast
Track.
I can't do that. I can't support raising hourly wages by a penny a
year. I can't support forcing more and more households to rely on two
incomes. I can't support turning trade surpluses into deficits. I can't
support denying health insurance and pensions to workers. I can't
support undercutting worker safety, human rights or the environment. I
can't support sacrificing the American Dream for the workers of
America. I cannot and will not support Fast Track.
Mr. CRANE. Mr. Speaker, I yield 1 minute to the distinguished
gentleman from Iowa (Mr. Latham).
Mr. LATHAM. Mr. Speaker, I rise today in strong support for fast
track. As a representative from the State of Iowa, the importance of
this to everyone in agriculture cannot be overestimated.
It is imperative that we have fast track. There are trade agreements
going on today, negotiations that are going on around the world, and we
are not at the table because we have not seen fit to trust this
administration to give the authority to make agreements. We have got to
be at the table with these agreements. It is essential for long-term
growth.
I am very saddened today to see people who, as a matter of principle
in the past, have supported fast track but today have decided they are
going to play a shell game and let somebody else off the hook, let them
vote ``yes'', because they are going to cover them and vote ``no.''

[[Page H8793]]

This is for the interest of the entire country. We have to pass fast
track for agriculture, for the rest of trade in this world, and for
this country for jobs here, for economic prosperity. We have to do it,
and we have to do it today.
Mr. MATSUI. Mr. Speaker, I yield 1 minute to the gentleman from
Maryland (Mr. Cardin).
(Mr. Cardin asked and was given permission to revise and extend his
remarks.)

{time} 1815

Mr. CARDIN. Mr. Speaker, I had hoped that we were going to have a
real debate on fast track where we would have a chance to reach a fair
compromise on the issue. Instead we are going through a political
exercise. That is regrettable.
In today's world, fast track should give the President the ability to
negotiate international standards on labor and environment. But, no,
this legislation restricts the President's ability to negotiate
international standards on labor and environment. Negotiating strong
international standards on environmental and labor issues will help
American manufacturers, producers and farmers. It makes no sense to
restrict the President's negotiating ability in this area unless you
want to help foreign companies with cheap labor and poor environmental
records.
For this reason, Mr. Speaker, I must oppose the fast track
legislation that we have today. I would hope that in the future, there
will be a real effort by the Republican leadership to work on a fast
track bill that could pass this House, that will give the appropriate
authority to the President.
Mr. CRANE. Mr. Speaker, I yield 2\1/2\ minutes to the gentleman from
California (Mr. Dreier).
Mr. DREIER. Mr. Speaker, there is never a good time for a good trade
bill. There is always a filing date or an election or the prospect of
some other political development taking place. There is always an
excuse not to proceed with a good trade bill.
I had the great privilege last fall to travel with the President
throughout South America. The President stood up in country after
country and talked about the fact that one of his top priorities was to
get fast track negotiating authority through so that we could, in fact,
embark on these very important trade agreements.
Mr. Speaker, this is a bipartisan bill. It was reported out of the
Committee on Ways and Means with a very strong bipartisan vote. It was
worked on long and hard by the President of the United States last fall
as we moved towards that November 13 vote. And as has been said time
and time again, the President, in his State of the Union message,
talked about it being a priority this year and, on July 23, said that
he believed that the Congress should vote on fast track when we can get
the votes for the bill.
Now, with that strong bipartisan spirit here, I am convinced that
there is a very strong will to implement fast track negotiating
authority and to pass this measure. But what are our priorities? We
continually hear Members talk about the fact that it is a top priority,
Democrats and Republicans alike, many Democrats with whom I have been
privileged to work over the past several years on this issue. But what
are the priorities?
There are political priorities. There are political interests with
which we are having to contend. There are partisan interests, and there
are special interests. Quite frankly, we have special interests on our
side, too. This is not an easy vote. We have got the Buchananites, Ross
Perot. There are people who are opposed to this. But we have a
responsibility to place the national interest ahead of those political
interests, ahead of those partisan interests and ahead of those special
interests.
Mr. Speaker, it is very, very important that we move ahead, because
we are having this vote as we look at the serious problem that exists
in the Pacific Rim. We are not going to find a perfect time to do it,
but it seems to me that this is the right time because the right time
is today.
Cast a vote in favor of fast track so that we can do this for
American workers and American consumers and the global economy.
Mr. CRANE. Mr. Speaker, I ask unanimous consent for an additional 5
minutes for a special bipartisan purpose.
The SPEAKER pro tempore (Mr. Hastings of Washington). Is there
objection to the request of the gentleman from Illinois?
There was no objection.
Mr. CRANE. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume,
and I yield to the distinguished and talented service of Mary Jane
Wignot. She has served on the professional staff of our Committee on
Ways and Means during development of landmark trade legislation, such
as the Omnibus Trade and Competitiveness Act of 1988 and the
implementing bills for NAFTA and the Uruguay Round agreements.
There are few individuals in this country who know more and have
contributed more to the development of U.S. trade policy than Mary Jane
Wignot. Her wise counsel and drafting skills have been absolutely
essential to the success of these historic bipartisan initiatives. I
want to salute her and wish her all the best as she returns to her home
town of Boston to continue her career.
I yield to the gentleman from New York (Mr. Rangel).
Mr. RANGEL. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman for yielding to me.
I, too, pay tribute to a remarkable individual that took the reins
after one of our Members left, but she has given 24 years of her life
to this committee and to her work and in every policymaking issue
concerning trade, she was there from the negotiations of the Kennedy
and Tokyo rounds and the formulation of the Trade Act of 1974.
She has worked on the trade agreements of 1979, the Omnibus Trade and
Competition Act of 1988, and the NAFTA and Uruguay Round implementing
bills in her capacity with the committee. These are the many projects,
some of the many projects on which Mary Jane has brought her
intellectual ability and sound judgment to bear.
Her devotion to excellence has epitomized the finest in bipartisan
tradition that has characterized trade making policy over the last 20
years. At the end of this session she will retire, but we still know
that she will be missed. To say that she will be missed is a gross
understatement. We owe so much to her dedication and the fact that she
has worked well with Republicans and Democrats. She has enjoyed her job
and we all, staff and Members, have truly enjoyed working with her.
Mr. ARCHER. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume.
Let me add my comments about the service that Mary Jane Wignot has
had in helping our committee work through so many trade issues for so
many years. I think from almost the first time that I can remember
trade deliberation on the Committee on Ways and Means, I looked out at
the witness table and there Mary Jane was. And she always gave
professional information that was always, at least in my memory,
accurate, and helped us get through many, many trade issues over the
years.
It is people who are so dedicated, who work such long hours and who
do so on a nonpartisan, professional basis that make this Congress a
truly enjoyable and fulfilling place to serve.
So, Mary Jane, I wish you well. We are losing a great resource when
you leave. But I know that you will go on to help some other
organization or many other people the rest of your life. Good luck.
Mr. MATSUI. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume.
I just have to say that Mary Jane Wignot has been on the Committee on
Ways and Means staff now since 1974, 24 years, but before that, many
Members do not know this, but there was an office called the Special
Trade Representative's office, and she actually virtually opened that
office in 1964 with, believe it or not, the former Secretary of State;
at that time he was the special trade representative, Christian Herter.
That goes back an awful long ways in most of our memories.
There are so many nuggets, jewels on this Capitol Hill. She is a
Vassar graduate, cum laude. She was graduated from the London School of
Economics at the University of London, Columbia University in New York,
the International School of International Affairs. She is really just
an outstanding individual, and she has toiled in Washington for 34
years, 24 years on the Committee on Ways and Means. She served with
Chairman Mills, Chairman Ullman, Chairman Rostenkowski, and Chairman
Archer.

[[Page H8794]]

I would say that her loss to all of us and our committee and perhaps
even in this body will probably be one of the major losses we have,
probably more than all of the Members in this institution, because she
is the institutional memory. She is the one who helped develop
international trade policy in America for the last 30 years.
So, Mary Jane, we love you, and we are going to miss you a lot.
The SPEAKER pro tempore. The Chair advises Members that the gentleman
from Texas (Mr. Archer) has 4\1/2\ minutes remaining; the gentleman
from California (Mr. Matsui) has 4\1/2\ minutes remaining; and the
gentleman from Washington (Mr. McDermott) has 2\1/4\ minutes remaining.
Mr. McDERMOTT. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself the balance of my time.
Mr. Speaker, I have served 15 years in the State legislature and 10
years in the United States Congress, and this is a sad day because it
is the most amateurish, inept legislative effort I have ever seen to
try and pass a tough piece of legislation. There is no question that
the Republicans have poisoned the fast track debate with partisan
politics that will do honor to Ken Starr.
If the Republicans were serious about promoting America's global
leadership and stabilizing the global economy, they would have
replenished the International Monetary Fund months ago. Instead, the
future of America's commitment to the IMF remains unclear to this day
and so does the future of the international economy.
It would be easy for me to vote no today, to reject this vote for
what it is, a political game to be debated on a day of pure
partisanship. However, I feel strongly that collectively we have to
rise above the partisan games of the majority and do the right thing
for our Nation's economy.
This Congress simply should not play games with an issue that is
difficult enough to pass without petty politics. So I will rise above
the Speaker's games and support the promotion of the American export
economy, but I am deeply disheartened that this bill will fail today
because the Republicans have allowed political avarice to damage
support for what must be a bipartisan issue. You have made the future
passage of this bill infinitely more difficult by bringing it out this
way and ramming it. You know you have not got the votes.
I learned in the State legislature 25 years ago, if you do not have
the votes, do not come to the floor with it, because you will never get
it passed if you keep doing that kind of thing.
This is a bad day for the United States economy. You should not do
this kind of thing without consulting and building the broad base that
trade should have in this country.
This is not a partisan issue. It is not Republican. It is not
Democrat. You have to work together when you are dealing in the
international arena. I sat at the table at the State dinner in Brazilia
and had Brazilians say to me, boy, we are glad you have not passed fast
track because we want your President weak. Now, that is not what we
want, whether that President is a Democrat or a Republican.
I voted for every piece of free trade legislation. We have to, if we
are going to be a strong country.
Mr. MATSUI. Mr. Speaker, I yield such time as he may consume to the
gentleman from California (Mr. Farr.).
(Mr. FARR of California asked and was given permission to revise and
extend his remarks.)
Mr. FARR of California. Mr. Speaker, I urge my colleagues to vote no
on this bill.
Mr. Speaker, I rise today to discuss a very important issue: fast
track authority.
Fast track has been the subject of much debate and discussion, not
just inside the Beltway but across the country. In my own district,
many of my constituents have told me that they will benefit from new
trade agreements reached with fast track; others have said that fast
track ignores important global issues such as labor standards or
environmental pollution.
``Fast Track'' sounds simple. Just give the President the authority
to negotiate a trade treaty agreement and bring the end product back to
Congress for an up or down vote. Sounds logical, doesn't it?
But it's not that simple. Here's the reason why: Political battles
are won by listening to, and acting on, the concerns of those who have
a vote in the outcome. I have one vote. My constituents want me to use
it wisely, looking out for the best interests of the Central Coast of
California. They want me to think globally and act locally.
Acting locally means protecting existing American jobs--local jobs
dependent on reciprocal export markets for American products and goods.
When you think about it, our economic future in agriculture and tourism
depends on a healthy local economy.
Look at agriculture. The Central Coast has been a world leader in
specialty crops and one of our strongest specialty crops have been
fresh cut flowers. The flower and foliage industry in California ranks
number one in the United States with $702 million in sales in 1996,
holding a 22% share of the U.S. market. But we're losing nurseries and
jobs to foreign imports. Colombian flowers that are allowed into the
United States without any tariff are our biggest competition. No other
flower growing country has that privilege.
The President has done nothing to right the wrongs created by the
1991 Andean Trade Pact, which put Central Coast flower growers at a
severe disadvantage to Colombian fresh flower imports. The President
has the legal authority to stop the closure of American nurseries that
raise fresh cut flowers. But he is not using that authority because he
is listening to the State Department, rather than American workers.
So why should the President be given more authority to make more
deals for more South American imports when he doesn't protect American
interests under existing law?
I support free trade. But free trade can't exist unless it is based
on fairness. Fair trade means making deals for the United States that
do not put our working men and women, our manufacturers and producers,
and our quality of life at risk.
Chile is a beautiful country. I have traveled there and met with
political, labor and business interests. They import three times more
U.S. goods than they export, with the exception of agriculture. Making
Chile a full trading partner with Canada, U.S. and Mexico will only
jeopardize more American jobs in the fresh cut flower industry, in
addition to our fishing and wine industries on the Central Coast.
So I will continue to oppose Fast Track unless we can see the
following: (1) Lift the ``free entry'' of Colombian flowers to the U.S.
marketplace. Treat Colombian flowers as all other flower imports are
treated, with equal tariffs; and (2) protect the environmental and
labor safeguards as strong as banking and security safeguards.
Some people would say that my ``no'' vote on fast track is
inconsistent with, or contradictory to, my ``yes'' vote on NAFTA four
years ago. I disagree.
Four years ago, the NAFTA vote was on legislation implementing a
trade agreement negotiated by the President under fast track authority.
This year's vote will not be on implementing a trade agreement but on
renewing the power of the President to negotiate such agreements.
When NAFTA was voted on, the fast track authority granted to the
President did not contain instructions to him to include in the trade
agreement provisions relating to the rights of laborers or meeting
certain environmental standards. Knowing these issues were a concern to
many members of Congress, the President negotiated sidebar agreements
to supplement the underlying document. With these sidebars in place, I
was convinced NAFTA would, in the long run, be a good thing for the
United States. The underlying agreement would open up new markets to
our producers and the added-on sidebars would help drive our trade
partners to stronger labor and environmental protections.
Although I must oppose the fast track legislation before Congress
today, I have and will continue to support free trade. I will continue
to examine each trade agreement reached with fast track authority on
its individual merits, keeping in mind the need to think globally but
act locally to protect American jobs on the Central Coast.
Mr. EVANS. Mr. Speaker, I rise today in opposition to granting fast
track negotiating authority. I oppose this legislation because of the
adverse effects that the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA),
which was negotiated under ``fast track'' authority, has had upon
working American families.
There is no question that NAFTA's track record has had an adverse
effect on U.S. wages. This country has lost over a quarter of a million
jobs. In my home state of Illinois, 23 companies have moved to Mexico
as a result of NAFTA. Instead of the old, failed ``fast track'', we
need a trade negotiating authority that gives the President the tools
to negotiate trade agreements that reflect the wishes of most
Americans--fair, responsible trade that protects the environment,
working families and public health.
We have must to lose with this vote. U.S. taxpayers have invested
billions to establish and maintain one of the safest food supplies in
the world. Yet we undermine consumer protection by allowing foods to be
imported from countries where health and safety standards

[[Page H8795]]

either do not exist or are not enforced. Under NAFTA, food imports from
Mexico and Canada have dramatically overburdened the Food and Drug
Administration's ability to adequately inspect food imports. More and
more we hear of illnesses caused from foreign foods. We need to make
international bodies and foreign governments with weaker standards
accountable if we are to protect the health of all Americans. Granting
fast track authority will only threaten the safety of our food supply.
As a respesentative from the Corn Belt, I understand our farmers are
struggling through tough times with commodity prices that are the
lowest they've been in years. However, trade negotiations take years.
Our farmers need immediate relief. We should be looking at ways to put
money in their pockets where they most need it and ways to help our
trading partners get back on their economic feet. Fast track is not the
cure-all to the farm crisis, it is, at the moment, a distraction.
Without labor, food safety, and environmental provisions in the fast
track legislation, we have no guarantee that these issues will ever be
addressed. I am not willing to risk the health and safety of my
constituents on an authority that cannot safeguard their well-being.
Let fix the problems we have with unfair trade negotiations; let not
add to them. I urge all my colleagues to vote no on fast track.
Mr. BERMAN. Mr. Speaker, I rise in reluctant opposition to fast
track. Last year I strongly supported a similar fast track proposal,
and I continue to believe that the fast track mechanism is necessary to
ensure that new trade agreements don't become loaded up with special
interest provisions in the normal legislative process.
But I simply cannot support legislation that is being brought to the
House floor for blatantly political purposes, to divide Democrats less
than two months before an election. And I do not think it is
appropriate to tie the President's hands at the negotiating table--to a
much greater extent than Democratic Congresses tied the hands of
President's Reagan and Bush--when the Administration is not involved in
the process.
It's clear that the Republican majority is not serious about passing
this bill. Last year, members from both parties worked together to
generate for fast track. This year, the majority made no effort to
collaborate with the minority. This unwillingness to approach
Democratic supporters of fast track exposes the Republican majority's
true motivations--to score political points, not to pass the
legislation.
It is irresponsible to bring up fast track knowing that it's going to
fail. This will make it even more difficult to pass next year, and send
an unfortunate signal to the international community that the United
States does not want to remain engaged in the global economy. Such a
signal couldn't come at a worse time, given the financial turmoil in
Russia and parts of Asia.
International trade is clearly good for the American economy. Since
1992, almost 40 percent of our nation's total economic growth has been
the direct result in international trade. Companies involved in
exporting have expanded employment nearly 20 percent faster than firms
serving only domestic markets, and jobs related to exports pay about 15
percent above the national average. New trade agreements--completed
with fast track authority--would extend the benefits of trade to even
more workers, consumers and companies.
But our trade policy--like foreign policy in general--must be based
on bipartisan cooperation and consensus, not partisan politics. For
that reason--and that reason alone--I intend to oppose this fast track
legislation.
Mr. STARK. Mr. Speaker, I rise today in opposition to H.R. 2621, a
bill to allow fast track procedures for trade agreements. NAFTA is a
recent example of why Congress should not approve this fast track
authority.
NAFTA proves that trade agreements do not necessarily beneift all
workers. Our experience with NAFTA demonstrates that ``side
agreements'' are not enforceable and labor, the environment and public
safety are all at risk. Large corporations benefit from trade
agreements like NAFTA. NAFTA enables these companies to exploit our
most valuable resources for their own bottom line. For these reasons, I
vehemently oppose granting fast track negotiating authority to the
president.
In any trade agreement, the people deserve to know--and have us
debate--the terms of trade expension. I am not satisfied that the terms
before us in this fast track authority are satisfactory and I am
certain that the benefit doesn't go to the workers in my district.
Estimates show that the number of jobs foregone in the U.S. because
of NAFTA-induced imports is over 400,000. In my home state of
California, 38,406 jobs were lost directly because of NAFTA, according
to a narrow Commerce Department formula. This is nearly 10 percent of
the total U.S. jobs lost because of NAFTA. Workers in California
qualify for a significant portion of the Trade Adjustment Assistance
(TAA)--California is one of the top six states where the most workers
are certified for TAA.
Multinational corporations export not only products but also business
operations cross the border; they exploit Mexican workers for a
fraction of the United States labor costs. American workers lose decent
paying jobs. Mexican workers get work with subsistence wages. The
corporations benefit at the expense of human labor.
There are 981,302 Mexicans working in abhorrent conditions in
Maquiladoras, making an average wage of $30-$35 for a 48 hour week as a
direct result of NAFTA. These workers live in shacks made of cardboard
and wood. I cannot grant a fast track trade negotiating authority if
fair labor practices will not be protected.
The environmental loses through NAFTA as well. The Administration
promised greater environmental protections along the border regions
where industry was expected to grow as a result of NAFTA. Well, we have
experienced greater industry growth along the Southern borbers, but as
far as environmental protection goes, it was just another promise
broken.
Hazardous waste coming into the United States increased 30 percent in
1995. In that same year, well water in U.S. border communities had
sulfate concentrations of nearly twice what is considered safe for
drinking water. Not only does the U.S. laborer lose through NAFTA, but
so does the vulnerable child and grandparent who drinks polluted well
water.
NAFTA does not ensure inspection standards for produce, agriculture
and livistock. NAFTA has crippled border inspections and the U.S. does
not have the manpower to inspect everything that comes across its
borders. Frozen fruit imports have increased by 45 percent and frozen
vegetable by 31 percent since NAFTA, but there has been no increase in
inspection.
A 1997 GAO report shows that commercial passenger vehicles from
Mexico are not being inspected regularly. The ones that have been
inspected have been placed out of service for serious safety violations
such as steering or brake problems, according to the Federal Highway
Administration. Fifty-four percent of the commercial passenger vehicles
that pass through our southern borders do so through California. These
unsafe vehicles are endangering the passengers as well as the safety of
those on the streets and highways of California.
Negotiating authority with the right terms-allowing US workers to
share in the benefit and promoting economic growth in environmentally
sound ways worldwide--is my bottom line. Without that before us, I will
vote ``no'' on the Reciprocal Trade Agreement Authorities Act of 1997.
Mr. PAUL. Mr. Speaker, today, the House is asked to vote to approve
H.R. 2621, a fast-track procedure under which international agreements
might be approved as far into the future as October 1, 2005. The ``fast
track'' procedure requires the President to submit draft international
agreements, implementing legislation, and a statement of administrative
action for congressional approval. Amendments to the legislation in
Congress are not permitted once the bill is introduced and committee
and floor action votes may consist only of ``yes'' or ``no'' votes on
any potential agreement as it is introduced.
The fast-track procedure bill, in addition to creating an extra-
constitutional procedure by which international agreements become
ratified, sets general international economic policy objectives, re-
authorizes ``Trade Adjustment Assistance'' welfare for workers who lose
their jobs and for businesses which fail, and creates a new permanent
position of Chief Agriculture Negotiator within the office of the
United States Trade representative. The bill would reestablish the
President's extra-constitutional ``executive authority'' to negotiate
``side agreements'' such as those dealing with environmental and labor
issues. Lastly, the bill ``pays'' the government's ``cost'' of free
trade by increasing taxes on a number of businesses which recently
benefitted by a favorable judgment in federal tax court.
The Constitution clearly allows for international agreements and
clearly specifies the means by which they are to be accomplished.
Treaties, quite clearly are to be negotiated by the President with
advice and consent of the Senate and can only become effective upon
being ratified by a two-thirds majority of the Senate. The
Constitution, however, does not expressly confer authority to make
international agreements other than by treaties and, of course, the
tenth amendment specifies that ``powers not delegated to the United
States by the Constitution nor prohibited by it to the States, are
reserved to the States, respectively, or to the people.'' To ignore or
allow the one branch of the federal government to delegate it's powers
to others destroys the liberty-protecting ability inherent to the
Constitutional separation of powers.
Congress does have, amongst its enumerated powers, regulation of
commerce with foreign nations. Imposing import tariffs, quotas, and
embargoes, however economically detrimental to the macro economy of the
United

[[Page H8796]]

States, are, at least, amongst powers delegated to Congress by Article
I of the Constitution. Regulating commerce, of course, refers to
enacting domestic laws which effect voluntary exchanges between trading
partners who happen to be citizens of different governments.
International agreements between the governments of those trading
partners cannot be construed to escape the stringent treaty
ratification process established by the document's framers just by
suggesting Congress has the power to enact domestic regulation
regarding foreign commerce. If this were an allowable justification for
bypassing the constitutionally-mandated treaty process, Article I
Congressional powers would almost completely undermine the necessity
for the Constitutionally-mandated treaty process. Treaties regarding
everything from international monetary policy to military policy would
suddenly become ``ripe'' for the ``treaty-making'' power of the
President and Congress. Instead, a bright line process exists whereby
entering into agreements with foreign nations under which the U.S.
government will do ``X'' if the government of Ruritania does ``Y'' must
be understood to constitute an international agreement and, as such,
require the more restrictive treaty process.
Moreover, because international courts regard ``treaties'' and
``agreements'' as equally binding on signatory governments, a stronger
case is made that they must be made subject to the same constitutional
process. Insofar as H.R. 2621 ignores the lake of a congressional role
in the international treaty process and instead attempts to make
Congress an integral part of a procedure for which it lacks any
constitutional authority, this bill can be opposed on constitutional
grounds alone.
Even if the procedure advocated by the bill were able to survive what
should always be the Congressman's initial threshold of
constitutionality, the bill contains provisions which will likely
continue our country down the ugly path of internationally-engineered,
``managed trade'' rather than that of free trade. As explained by
economist Murray N. Rothbard:

[G]enuine free trade doesn't require a treaty (or its
deformed cousin, a `trade agreement'; NAFTA is called an
agreement so it can avoid the constitutional requirement of
approval by two-thirds of the Senate). If the establishment
truly wants free trade, all it has to do is to repeal our
numerous tariffs, import quotas, anti-dumping laws, and other
American-imposed restrictions of free trade. No foreign
policy or foreign maneuvering is necessary.

In truth, the bipartisan establishment's fanfare of ``free trade''
fosters the opposite of genuine freedom of exchange. Whereas genuine
free traders examine free markets from the perspective of the consumer
(each individual), the mercantilist examines trade from the perspective
of the power elite; in other words, from the perspective of the big
business in concert with big government. Genuine free traders consider
exports a means of paying for imports, in the same way that goods in
general are produced in order to be sold to consumers. But the
mercantilists want to privilege the government business elite at the
expense of all consumers, be they domestic or foreign.
Fast track is merely a procedure under which the United States can
more quickly integrate and cartelize government in order to entrench
the interventionist mixed economy. In Europe, this process culminated
in the Maastricht Treaty, the attempt to impose a single currency and
central bank and force relatively free economies to ratchet up their
regulatory and welfare states. In the United States, it has instead
taken the form of transferring legislative and judicial authority from
states and localities and to the executive branch of the federal
government. Thus, agreements negotiated under fast track authority
(like NAFTA) are, in essence, the same alluring means by which the
socialist Eurocrats have tried to get Europeans to surrender to the
super-statism of the European community. And just as Brussels has
forced low-tax European countries to raise their taxes to the European
average or to expand their respective welfare states in the name of
``fairness,'' a ``level playing field,'' and ``upward harmonization,''
so too will the international trade governors and commissions be
empowered to ``upwardly harmonize,'' internationalize, and otherwise
usurp laws of American state governments.
The harmonization language in last year's FDA reform bill constitutes
a perfect example. Harmonization language in this bill has the Health
and Human Services Secretary negotiating multilateral and bilateral
international agreements to unify regulations in this country with
those of others. The bill removes from the state governments the right
to exercise their police powers under the tenth amendment to the
constitution and, at the same time, creates or corporatist power elite
board of directors to review medical devices and drugs for approval.
This board, of course, is to be made up of ``objective'' industry
experts appointed by national governments. Instead of the ``national''
variety, known as the Interstate Commerce Act of 1887 (enacted for the
``good reason'' of protecting railroad consumers from exploitative
railroad freight rates, only to be staffed by railroad attorneys who
then used their positions to line the pockets of their respective
railroads), we now have the same sham imposed upon worldwide consumers
on an international scale soon to be staffed by heads of multilateral
pharmaceutical corporations.

Lastly, critics of the bill convincingly argue that language within
H.R. 2621 regarding ``Foreign Investment'' would establish new rights
for foreign investors and corporations and new obligations for the
United States. H.R. 2621 attempts to eliminate artificial or trade-
distorting barriers to trade-related foreign investment by reducing or
eliminating exceptions to the principle of national treatment; free the
transfer of funds relating to investments; reduce or eliminate
performance requirements and other unreasonable barriers to the
establishment and operation of investments; seeks to establish
standards for expropriation and compensation for expropriation,
consistent with United States legal principles and practice; and
provide meaningful procedures for resolving investment disputes. It is
argued that H.R. 2621 will congressionally activate the nearly
completed Multilateral Agreement on Investment which covers 29
countries and forbids countries from regulating investment or capital
flows and would establish new rights for foreign investors and
corporations and new obligations for the United States. The MAI
requires governments to pay investors for any action that directly or
indirectly has an equivalent effect of expropriation. The MAI would be
enforceable through international tribunals similar to those of the
World Trade Organization without the due process protections of the
United States.
Because H.R. 2621 enacts an unconstitutional foreign policy
procedure, furthers our nation down the internationally-managed (rather
than free trade) path, sets general international economic policy
objectives, re-authorizes ``Trade Adjustment Assistance'' welfare for
workers who lose their jobs and for businesses which fail, potentially
undermines U.S. sovereignty through MAI, and preserves the President's
executive authority to negotiate ``side agreements.'' As such, I must
oppose the bill.
Ms. DeGETTE. Mr. Speaker, after close review of this legislation, I
have decided to oppose the ``Reciprocal Trade Agreement Authorities
Act'' otherwise known as fast track trading authority. This proposal
includes environmental, labor, and food safety standards as merely
negotiating objectives, without any accompanying legislation or side
agreements that directly address these issues. My greatest concern is
that the health and safety of American families will be jeopardized in
future trade accords if these issues are not made a much higher
priority.
I believe that free trade is good for our economy. There are,
however, certain precautions that need to be taken to ensure that free
trade agreements do not undermine other principles that our country
holds dear, such as a clean environment. One of the potential problems
with trade agreements is that they create pressure on neighboring
governments to relax environmental regulations in an effort to lure
manufacturers across borders, thereby allowing these companies to
profit by polluting and abusing natural resources. Congress must also
make sure that there are sufficient labor protections when we make our
trade agreements so that we can protect against multinational
corporations moving production to other countries with lower labor
costs. Lastly, we need to make sure that our trade agreements do not
compromise our food safety standards. This is a real threat,
particularly to our children who are often more severely affected by
contaminated food than adults.
I am a proponent of free trade; I am as even stronger proponent of
fair trade. Our priority should be to forge a sound trade policy that
helps, not hurts, the working people of this country. While we address
our concerns, we can still achieve strong free trade accords. The
Executive branch has negotiated hundreds of agreements without the
benefit of fast track, and will continue to do so if fast track
authority is not renewed.
In my view, the administration's latest set of initiatives to protect
labor and environmental issues in trade agreements are insufficient. If
these issues are truly a priority, I believe the administration would
have worked more aggressively to include them earlier on, instead of
presenting a few feeble objectives in the eleventh hour of this debate.
The new initiatives to make World Trade Organization activities, such
as the settlement of international trade disputes, more open to the
public, and to issue reports on worker conditions in other countries
might prove valuable but they certainly do not offer enforceable
protections. We must insist on negotiating authority that ensures trade
pacts contain enforceable food safety, environmental, and labor
provisions.

[[Page H8797]]

What we need is a concrete strategy to improve workers' rights and
protect the environment in developing countries, while at the same time
negotiating effective trade agreements. I do not believe that this
version of fast track meets these vital goals.
Mr. LIPINSKI. Mr. Speaker, free trade advocates say that NAFTA has
nothing to do with fast track. That's not true. NAFTA has everything to
do with fast track.
NAFTA was negotiated under fast track, and look at what NAFTA has
brought us. The evidence is clear. America has lost hundreds of
thousands of jobs. And not only has it brought us a $16 billion trade
deficit with Mexico, it's brought us lower wages, weaker consumer
protections, and a dirtier environment. It's rolled back all of the
advances we made this century and brought us back to the 19th century.
Instead of leading us into the 21st century, it's dragging us down.
That isn't sound public policy, no matter how you look at it.
Free trade advocates say that the economy is booming. That may be
statistically accurate, but let's take a closer look at what NAFTA has
meant for American working families. Although the U.S. economy grew at
a robust 4 percent in 1994 and productivity increased by about 2
percent, American workers did not share in these gains. The wages of
American workers have continued to fall since NAFTA was implemented. In
NAFTA's first year, American workers saw the sharpest one year drop of
their real hourly wages. The real median wage fell by over 2 percent,
continuing a 20 year downward trend.
The evidence shows that not only did we lost American jobs, the
American working men and women have seen a reduction in their wages as
well. So what does NAFTA mean for American workers? The evidence shows
NAFTA means stagnant incomes and falling wages for working Americans.
Face the facts.
If we cut through the economic rhetoric that the free trade advocates
use to cloud the debate on fast track and NAFTA, the question we have
before us is actually quite simple--do we want to sacrifice American
jobs at the altar of free trade? For myself, the answer is very
simple--no.
That's why I opposed NAFTA. That's why I opposed fast track back in
1991, and that's why I am so strongly opposed to this fast track bill.
Free trade advocates want the American people to believe that those
of us who oppose fast track are ignorant of the new international
economy and are pursuing an ``America-last'' strategy. They think we
are protectionists, as if it were some kind of dirty word. Well, if
trying to protect American jobs, the American standard of living and
American working families makes me a protectionist, then I will gladly
wear that label.
The majority of Americans want fair trade. The majority of Americans
don't want fast track stripped of labor and environmental protections.
When I'm back home in the Third Congressional District of Illinois,
every working man and woman tells me that thy don't want fast track.
They don't want any more NAFTAs. They're tired of exporting American
jobs instead of American products. Perhaps if some folks were to spend
more time talking to Main Street instead of Wall Street, they would
hear the same thing. Some folks seem to have lost sight of the fact
that we work for the American people.
In reality though, this isn't a debate between so-called
``protectionism'' and free trade. It's a debate to shape America's
future in the global economy, and to make the global economy work for
us--not the other way around.
Mr. Speaker, this fast track legislation just won't work. It's just
going to give us more NAFTAs. Instead of leading us into the 21st
century, this fast track legislation will pull as back. Instead of
rebuilding the American dream for working families, it will tear it
down. That's why I am so strongly opposed to this bill. I will vote
``no'' on fast track, and I strongly urge all of my colleagues to do
the same. Let us listen to Main Street, not Wall Street, because it's
the working men and women of America that makes America so strong.
Mr. BERRY. Mr. Speaker, I rise today as a proponent of expanded trade
opportunities for Americans. I support renewal of traditional trading
authority for the President, and I will vote today in favor of H.R.
2621.
My vote today should not be an indication that I agree with the
process that led us to vote at this time. In fact, I strongly disagree
with the timing of this vote. I disagree with those Members who claim
that we are voting on fast track today solely because fast track is a
good idea. If the majority party wanted to pass fast track we could
have voted on it last November; or January, February, March, or any
other date before now. Likewise, we could vote on this next spring when
we all return. The timing of this vote will jeopardize this much needed
legislation from eventually passage.
I have worked for a long time and very hard for passage of fast
track. I have colleagues on both sides of the aisle who are committed
to expanding international trade, and they too have worked tirelessly
for fast track. But today, some of these champions of trade are
compelled to vote ``no'' on this crucial bill--not because it is a bad
bill, but because of its terrible timing. People are playing politics
with the global economy, and I find that shameful. At this precarious
time we should be more prudent. The timing of this vote sends a signal
to the world's economies that the United States is not ready to engage
them in the marketplace. The timing of this vote sends them a message
that we are preparing to move to a protectionist stance and that we are
willing to stifle global economic growth.
I am prepared to vote ``yes'' on this critical legislation because I
am so strongly committed to expanding trade opportunities for
Americans. I only wish that the leaders of the majority party were
prepared to show an equal commitment to this principle--and less of a
willingness to play politics with our future.
Ms. BROWN of Florida. Mr. Speaker, I am very concerned about this
Fast Track legislation. The way I see it, NAFTA has eroded 100 years of
U.S. workers fighting for safety rights, worker protection, and fair
wages and hours. There can be no serious global trade legislation
without protection for workers and for the environment. For instance,
we need to know that rain forests will not be destroyed or that women
and children will not suffer from increased poverty and a violation of
human rights.
And I need to know that Florida farmers will not suffer. What has
NAFTA done for Florida? No oranges from Florida have gone to Mexico;
however Mexican tomatoes have flooded the U.S. market.
We now have a history with NAFTA. We have lost good jobs.
Corporations move and unemployed workers left behind get jobs paying
less. The skilled jobs that once moved black workers into the middle
class are gone and cities have lost an important tax base. At the same
time, workers in rural America are suffering.
This is wrong. All citizens must be lifted with the economic tide--we
are all in the same boat. I will work to see that we all can do better
in this new global economy. I am especially concerned about our working
men and women. Our workers want answers to important questions:
(1) How will American workers integrate into the global community?
(2) Where will corporate investment be made? (3) How will global trade
affect the balance of power between worker and management? (4) How will
global trade affect our rural farmers and the global environment?
Our workers deserve reasonable answers to these questions.
Ms. HARMAN. Mr. Speaker, I rise in strong support of the pending
measure granting the President fast track consideration of trade
agreements he negotiates with our foreign trading partners.
As many of my colleagues know, despite pressure from the
Administration, former President Carter, and many of my business
constituents, I voted against NAFTA. But fast track is not NAFTA. But
fast track is not NAFTA. Indeed, as I explained to a business audience
in my district last fall, fast track is not a debate over NAFTA or
whether what is negotiated will even resemble NAFTA.
I can appreciate the concern that the fast track process may result
in a trade agreement certain interests can't support and perhaps can't
defeat. But I am more concerned that the lack of fast track authority
will mean that even good trade agreements cannot be negotiated because
our trading partners will not want Congress to amend them.
I represent California's 36th Congressional District--which I call
the aerospace center of the universe. Over the course of the last
decade, the district has seen thousands of defense-dependent jobs
disappear. But the local economy has rebounded--rebounded by
diversifying and applying the high technology skills of South Bay
workers to solving transportation problems, to cleaning up the
environment, to developing advanced communications satellites and the
infrastructure and software to support them, and to making advances in
medical technologies adapted from Cold War programs.
Future growth, indeed the continued existence of these industries,
depends on finding foreign markets. Diversification and access to
foreign markets are the strategy for saving the defense industrial base
that won the Cold War. Without trade, this industrial base would be far
weaker today, and fewer high skilled workers would be employed. Most
important, our ability to ramp up in times when our nation's security
is threatened would be gravely jeopardized.
Trade benefits the non-defense sectors in my district as well: from
toys to wet suits to automobiles. Most of our growth in manufacturing
and service jobs in the last decade is trade-related.
Mr. Speaker, creating trade opportunities is an integral part of
keeping a strong defense

[[Page H8798]]

production base at home and for keeping a strong local economy vibrant.
Fast track is an essential tool in this effort.
I urge my colleagues to support this important measure.
Mr. FAWELL. Mr. Speaker, I rise today in support of H.R. 2621 and the
extension of Fast Track trade negotiating authority. Study after study
has shown that free trade benefits America by increasing exports,
creating higher wage jobs, giving U.S. consumers more choice and lower
prices, and keeping U.S. industries competitive. Since its original
enactment in 1974, each president has benefitted from fast track
authority, and has used this negotiating tool to advance U.S. economic
and foreign policy interests. Without fast track, U.S. trade
negotiators are put in the position of negotiating a treaty and then
having it altered by the ``535 Secretaries of State'' residing in the
Capitol. These alterations often make the agreement unacceptable to the
other parties. For this reason, the U.S. has not been a party to over
20 free trade agreements which have been negotiated since fast track
authority lapsed in 1994.
The partnership created under fast track between the president and
Congress, enhances our ability to shape the rules of international
trade and lead on multilateral initiatives that benefit U.S. businesses
and workers through our entry into trade agreements. Without free
trade, our ability to influence nations in other areas of critical
interest to the United States, including human rights, the environment,
and drug trafficking would be diminished. To influence these nations,
we need to increase contact and trade, we cannot turn inward. Clearly,
we need to reinstate fast track authority to restore our presence
worldwide. Only with this authority can America retain and strengthen
its trade status and its leverage with foreign nations to influence
their labor, environmental, and other policies.
In addition, fast track helps American businesses and workers. Tariff
rates in the United States are already among the lowest in the world.
Fast track authority will give the president the ability to negotiate
trade agreements with other nations, to lower their tariff rates. This
will greatly increase the number of American goods that can be exported
to these foreign nations. Treaties negotiated under fast track
procedures will break down trade barriers and expand our exports,
creating American jobs and providing a more secure economic future for
America. You can be assured, Mr. Speaker, that while we debate the
merits of fast track authority, Canada, Japan, and the countries of the
European Union are negotiating free trade agreements with America's
trading partners.
Our nation should be able to take full advantage of the advances
which free trade status and fast track authority offer. I urge my
colleagues to support H.R. 2621, and reinstate fast track authority for
workers, for business, for America.
Mr. COYNE. Mr. Speaker, I rise in opposition to this legislation.
I oppose H.R. 2621 because I think that it would produce trade
agreements that contain inadequate labor and environmental protections.
I believe that trade agreements negotiated under the terms of this fast
track authorization bill would destroy U.S. jobs and drive down
American workers' wages.
Mr. Speaker, the United States is a world leader in terms of military
power, diplomatic influence, economic vitality, technological
innovation, and popular culture. As the richest and most powerful
nation on earth, the United States enjoys a unique position of
leadership--and provides us with the ability and opportunity to
influence countries around the globe.
This country must be a leader in terms of worker rights and
environmental standards as well. Our labor and environmental standards
have a positive influence on labor and environmental laws and
regulations around the world. We can and should promote labor rights,
workplace safety, and environmental stewardship in developing nations.
By doing so we help both American workers and foreign ones. Moreover,
failure to do so places our workers and their employers at a
competitive disadvantage in the global marketplace. Consequently, I
strongly believe that any trade agreements that we reach with
developing countries should promote worker rights and environmental
protection in those countries.
I believe that responsible trade agreements can benefit this nation
and its workers, and that giving the President carefully crafted ``fast
track'' negotiating authority can promote such agreements.
Consequently, in considering this legislation reauthorizing the
administration's fast track negotiating authority, my decision on
whether to support or oppose this fast track bill has been based upon
the legislation's treatment of labor and environmental issues. I have
concluded that this bill does not provide that adequate labor
protections and environmental standards will be included in trade
agreements negotiated under its fast track authority. Consequently I
oppose this legislation.
I urge my colleagues to vote against this fast track legislation, and
to work with me to develop fast track legislation that does a better
job of promoting America's trade interests.
Mr. COSTELLO. Mr. Speaker, today, the Republican leadership is up to
their old tricks again. Their plan to consider fast track trade
authority not trivializes this important debate. The Republican
leadership is playing a game with electoral politics--creating
political havoc prior to the mid-term elections. We should be focusing
on passing the appropriations bills and addressing health care
legislation and education issues and true Social Security reform. We
should put this bill away until we are ready to include binding
provisions and enforcement mechanisms to protect worker rights, food
safety and the environment.
I oppose this fast track legislation. When we considered granting the
President fast track trade authority last year, I was opposed to that
plan. Today, I have the same reservations. Presumably, one of the main
reasons for fast track authority is to expand the North American Free
Trade Agreement (NAFTA). NAFTA has cost hundreds of thousands of
American jobs and failed to improve environmental conditions along the
U.S.--Mexican border. I did not support NAFTA then, and I will not
support expanding it now.
NAFTA resulted in a loss of almost 17,000 jobs in Illinois and
420,000 jobs nationwide. U.S. workers who found new employment after
their jobs moved to Mexico took an average pay cut of $4,400.
Unfortunately, this proposal will result in more disastrous impacts on
U.S. workers. Workers will have reduced bargaining power under this
agreement as employers use threats of moving jobs to lower wage-paying
nations in order to lower worker contract demands. This fact track
legislation provides absolutely no protection for American workers.
Further, this proposal fails to address necessary environmental
standards. Since the passage of NAFTA, the degradation of the
environment along our border with Mexico has escalated. By not
requiring other nations to increase their environmental standards, we
are putting American products, which are subject to stronger
environmental rules, at a disadvantage in the competitive marketplace.
I am also concerned about food safety. Food-borne illness is on the
rise around the world in part because of the ``globalization'' of the
food supply. Imported food is over three times more likely to be
contaminated with illegal pesticide residues than food grown in the
U.S. Stronger pro-consumer language in any fast track legislation would
correct this oversight, however, the provisions of this fast track bill
would greatly restrict the United States' ability to protect the public
from unsafe food. I am not convinced that this bill provides adequate
consumer protections that we, as consumers, expect and should demand.
I also believe that trade agreements should be subject to moral and
ethical standards. There are 1.3 billion people around the world living
on less than $1 a day. This fast track legislation does not include
provisions to reduce child labor or decrease poverty and inequity
throughout the developing world. U.S. trade policies and negotiations
should seek to change this unfortunate reality.
This is not the right fast track legislation; it is irresponsible to
bring this bill up now. We put our credibility with our trading
partners at risk because this fast track bill does not have the support
of the majority of this Congress. Trade policy and its domestic and
international consequences is too important to be used as a political
football.
The bottom line is that this bill fails to address human rights, food
safety, environmental regulations, or protect American workers. I
cannot support this bill, and I urge my colleagues to vote no on fast
track.
Mr. VENTO. Mr. Speaker, I rise today in opposition to a measure that
would trade away my right to represent the interest of my constituents.
This fast track legislation would place a straight jacket upon my
ability to advocate for the people of Minnesota without the minimal
safeguards that address key issues of concern. Let me be clear, I am
for trade, but I am not in favor of surrending and limiting the
opportunity to influence trade agreements the United States
administration appointees shape. The Constitution in fact preserves our
role in the Congress to shape trade agreements, and this fast track
measure takes the wrong track in surrender of such congressional role
to the Administration and bureaucrats.
I am especially concerned that this legislation today is being used
as a political pawn by the Republican majority. Trade policies, and our
role in shaping those policies, are much too important to be thrown
away merely on the basis of eve-of-the-election politics. We should
stop the rush for fast track, and open this floor for real debate on
the role of our country in the global economy.
Despite what you may hear from proponents of this legislation, trade
expansion will not die without fast track negotiating authority. Of the
200 plus trade pacts this Administration has

[[Page H8799]]

made over the past six years, all but two were considered without fast
track procedures. 198 agreements didn't need such power. This is
essentially the same fast track legislation that was opposed last year
by labor, consumer, and environmental groups. No matter how you
repackage it, fast track in this form is a bad deal for Americans. Our
job in Congress is to represent our constituents, not to shift our
power and limit our voice on key trade agreements, especially as our
global economics become more integrated.
I understand the benefits of trade on our national and local
economies. However, we need to use our economic leverage and market
power to ensure that the rights and interests of our farmers, workers,
environment and public health are advanced in our trade agreements.
These are the very elements which have contributed in shaping one of
the greatest economies in the world. Why should we lower the standards
and protections that provide the foundation of our economy and U.S.
prosperity? Trade pacts today have too often been the Trojan horse
which undermines progress in these emerging areas of environmental
policy, worker rights, health and safety standards.
I fear that new trade agreements without a prerequisite to address
these specific concerns will just represent a high tide which carries
American jobs to foreign shores and creates a lower common denominator.
Some will capitalize on the growth of the emerging global economy and
the expansion of trade, no matter the human indignity upon which it
rests, and others will be displaced by downsizing, new technology, and
offshore production. I, therefore, will not negotiate away my ability
to advocate for my constituents' interests, jobs, wages, and
livelihoods. My rejection of this process isn't the end of the issue,
but rather a vote for Congress to insist upon a new negotiation
framework and reclaim its proper role--a direct role in the trade
agreements that will determine the policy and economic interface
between the United States and our trade partners.
We have the ability and the responsibility to guide and set our
economic and trade policy, keeping in mind the core values that have
sustained our nation as the world's most successful economy; the basic
human rights, social justice, safety and health, worker rights and the
safeguarding of the environment. For that reason, I oppose this fast
track legislation, and encourage my colleagues to do the same. It isn't
a solution but the wrong track--a detour on the economic policy path to
a sound global economy.
Mr. SKAGGS. Mr. Speaker, a year ago, when I announced my decision to
support fast track trade negotiating authority, I told my constituents
that I was supporting it because I believe strongly that good jobs
depend on expanded trade--especially for a state like Colorado that is
a leader in high tech and agricultural exports.
Over my twelve years in Congress, I have talked with workers,
farmers, managers, and CEOs whose jobs depend on being able to sell
their goods overseas. To expand U.S. exports we must make trade
agreements to open foreign markets to the goods and services produced
by Colorado's and America's workers.
One-third of our economic growth in recent years has come from
exports. Our economy is in the eighth year of a steady expansion, with
low inflation, and unemployment at such low levels that economists
consider it to be ``full'' employment. I am convinced that the long-
term health of our economy depends on continuing to lower barriers to
our exports and expand opportunities to sell our goods.
For the United States to retreat from the policy of trade
liberalization, which has been a major source of worldwide economic
growth since the end of World War II, would have enormous consequences
for this country and for the rest of the world.
What is essential in the long-run is a sustainable, centrist,
bipartisan, and reliable coalition for a progressive trade policy.
Playing political games with this issue won't succeed in the short-
run--few believe there are enough votes to pass this measure today. But
far worse, pushing today's vote on Fast Track will cause positions to
harden and so will diminish the chances of achieving a centrist
consensus on trade over the long-run. And trade policy simply has to be
bipartisan if it is to be effective or reliable.
Sadly, the Republican leadership seems more interested in scoring
pre-election political points in making real improvements in the world
trading environment. If they really wanted to sustain a bipartisan
coalition in support of a progressive trade policy, they would not be
bringing Fast Track up today.
A Republican aide is quoted as saying that the decision to bring this
to a vote, regardless of its chance of passage, was ``to show business
who is in the camp of business, and who is in the camp of labor.''
That's the sort of maneuver that severely damages the prospects for a
national consensus on trade.
I can't vote for Fast Track today, because I choose not to be part of
an effort to manipulate this important issue for partisan advantage a
few weeks before the election. I will vote ``present'' to protest this
cynical treatment of an issue that is so important to America's
continued prosperity.
Mr. DICKS. Mr. Speaker, I am very disappointed with the reasons that
the leadership has brought this legislation to the floor this
afternoon. Both sides of this debate--and both parties--know very well
that there are not enough votes to pass this bill today, a bill that I
believe is extremely important for the future of our country. Rather,
this legislation is being used as a political tool with the sole
purpose of trying to embarrass the President. I believe that this is
wrong, and I think that the leadership on the other side should have
worked with the Administration in good faith to gain the votes to pass
this bill instead of using such an important and inflammatory political
issue simply for partisan gain.
Despite the actions of the other side, I support reextending fast
track negotiating authority to the President for certain trade
agreements. I believe that this authority is necessary to ensure that
the United States remains a global leader on free trade, and to enable
the President to continue to work to open foreign markets to American
goods.
Trade is critical to Washington state, which is our nation's leader
in per capita goods exports. In fact, one in every four jobs in my
state is directly or indirectly dependent on exports--almost 740,000
people--and this figure is expected to increase to one in three by
2005.
These are not low wage service jobs that have been generated from the
growth of trade in my state. These are high-wage jobs--jobs that pay 46
percent more than the overall state average. We are talking about
thousands of union Machinists making airplanes at the Boeing Company,
we are talking about software developers at Microsoft, we are talking
about mill workers that fabricate aluminum at Kaiser, chip makers at
Intel, and workers at Weyerhaeuser that produce lumber and wood
products for export.
Trade is not just important to big companies; in my state, there are
many more small businesses than big ones that depend on international
trade. There are many small companies that supply machine and airplane
parts that go into the aircraft that we sell overseas, thousands of
farmers that grow apples and wheat, and countless small, family-owned
mills that process timber and sell the products in Asian and other
overseas markets.
Fast track negotiating authority is critical to the continued
prosperity of the Pacific Northwest. A second Information Technology
Agreement, one of the Fast Track priorities of this Administration, is
important for the many high tech companies in the Puget Sound area.
Further negotiations on intellectual property, a principal negotiating
objective of the bill, will also help these companies to fight software
piracy, which costs the industry billions of dollars each year. Future
agricultural agreements will also help open markets for Washington's
farmers.
Many Fast track opponents are arguing that the only reason for
considering this bill at all is to enable the President to expand NAFTA
to Chile and beyond. In actuality, negotiating a comprehensive trade
agreement with Chile--a more economically developed country than
Mexico--is only a small part of the Administration's trade agenda. This
agenda also includes expanding current trade agreements to achieve
reduced foreign tariffs on U.S. high technology products and services
(some of which currently exceed 30 percent), greater protection of
American intellectual property, improved access to foreign government
procurement activities, and elimination of barriers against U.S.
agricultural products. With 30 percent of our recent economic growth
tied to exports, and these export-related jobs paying between 13 to 16
percent more than the average national wage, it is imperative that we
actively pursue trade agreements that open foreign markets to America's
products and services. It is important not to forget that more than 95
percent of the world's population lives outside the United States.
Mr. Speaker, despite my dissatisfaction with the reasons for which
this legislation is under consideration today, I will vote in favor of
the bill. In my judgment, fast track negotiating authority is too
important to my district, my state, and my country for me not to
support it.
Mr. CUMMINGS. Mr. Speaker, I rise today in support of the United
States Congress and in opposition to fast track.
I am going to be brief because what I have to say is straight
forward: fast track may have been right in the past, but it is clearly
wrong for the present and wrong for the future.
There was a time then international trade agreements were little more
than the terrain of bean-counters: the fees applied to the importing
and exporting of goods.
Today, however, these agreements have expanded well beyond bean-
counting, and even beyond trade into the realm of finance and
investment.

[[Page H8800]]

Such agreements directly impact the meat and potatoes of what our
work in Congress is all about: worker rights, the environment, economic
equality, human rights, food safety, even health care and education
spending.
Therefore, we, the Members of Congress, must have a voice in the
direction of these international agreements.
I did not become a United States Representative to act as a rubber
stamp.
Rather, I came here to represent my constituents by using my voice to
debate and to amend as I see fit legislation that has a direct bearing
on their lives.
And, to those among us who argue that the United States needs fast
track to participate in the international global economy--I ask for
one, just one example from the last four years during which time we did
not have fast track that the United States has not had a seat at the
table in an international trade, investment or finance negotiation?
Anyone? I thought not. Because there are no examples. We have never
been kept from the table and we will not be left out in the future.
For all these reasons, Mr. Speaker, I continue my opposition to fast
track by voting against this bill.
Mr. KLECZKA. Mr. Speaker, I rise today to express my strong
opposition to giving fast track trade negotiating authority to the
president. Not only is this bill a bad deal for working men and women,
but it prevents Congress from doing its job.
Let me start out by saying that I am very concerned that we are even
having this debate today. The Republican leadership has brought this
bill to the floor with little interest in promoting a sensible trade
policy for our nation. Instead, the bill before us today has the sole
intent of embarrassing President Clinton and forcing Democrats to cast
a tough political vote before an election.
Last year, fast track was pulled from the House calendar because
there were not enough votes for passage. Since that time, no effort has
been made to address the concerns of those who opposed fast track. The
Republican leadership tinkered around the edges to add a few more
provisions to make the vote even more difficult for some members, but
nothing of substance. No protections for our environment. No
protections for workplace safety. No protections for hardworking
Americans and their families.
I must remind my colleagues that the Constitution of the United
States gives Congress the power to regulate commerce with foreign
nations. Since 1974, however, the House and Senate have abdicated this
responsibility by giving the president trade negotiating authority that
limits congressional input. This culminated in the failed North
American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA).
The legacy of NAFTA is the growing number of American companies
heading south of the border to take advantage of low wages and non-
existent workplace safety and environmental standards. Two years ago,
Johnson Controls, located in my congressional district, said they were
closing a valve plant and taking 200 jobs with them to Mexico.
Companies such as Fruit of the Loom and Sara Lee have joined Johnson
Controls in abandoning thousands of their workers in search of lower
costs in Mexico.
Even worse, companies are using the threat of relocating in Mexico in
order to force their loyal employees to accept cuts in pay and
benefits. To top it off, many workers are being required to work longer
hours in order to meet the production demands of corporate CEOs. A
commission created under a side agreement of NAFTA conducted a study
that showed these threats were carried out three times more often under
NAFTA than in the past. This lack of bargaining power has prevented
American workers from enjoying the benefits of the recent period of
economic prosperity.
Many say the recent economic expansion has been, in part, a result of
the recent trade policies of our nation. While that may be true, it is
a fact that American workers have not enjoyed the benefits that should
come with economic prosperity. From 1993 to 1996, real median wages
fell 4.1 percent. My state of Wisconsin has been hit particularly
hard--recent Census data shows Wisconsin was only one of four states
where household income did not grow over the past year. In fact, the
median income in Wisconsin dropped almost $1,800--or 4.2 percent--last
year. The reason: the quality of jobs, measured by wages, has
deteriorated.
America should also be concerned about what recent trade agreements
have done to the environment. The proponents of fast track point out
that we are in a global economy and need this authority to avoid being
left out. But what they fail to realize that when we choose to ignore
environmental standards in trade negotiations, we are putting our own
health and safety at risk.
Instead of debating this partisan sham of a trade bill, the House of
Representatives should be doing its job. We must defeat this
legislation and reassert our constitutional duty to debate, amend, and
then approve trade proposals that are in the best interest of working
families.
Mr. FRELINGHUYSEN. Mr. Speaker, I rise today in strong support of
H.R., 2621, known as ``fast track'' authorization for the President to
negotiate international trade agreements. Congress must pass this
legislation today for several reasons--it will open markets and create
jobs, it is the right policy for American export businesses, and it is
about leadership.
H.R. 2621 will give the U.S. an edge by opening up overseas markets
to our products and services. Over 96 percent of the world's consumers
live outside of the U.S. and fast track will ensure some of America's
most important industries market access and future economic expansion.
I hear from countless businesses and their employees that fast track
is the right policy for American Export Businesses. There is virtually
no question that exports have contributed immensely to America's
increasing economic vitality and stature throughout the world.
America leads the world in net exports. Last year, American exports
of goods and services totaled more than $933 billion--14 percent of
total world trade. More than 11 million U.S. jobs are export-related,
including 1 in 5 manufacturing jobs, which pay an average of 13-16
percent above the national average.
Thirdly, fast track is about leadership. We are the world's global
leader in trade and our action today is both symbolic and substantive.
You can't lead the world towards democratic ideals and free markets if
you remove yourself from the trade process. We need to be involved on
all continents, and right now we are shutting ourselves out of too many
overseas markets.
Similarly, our country cannot be an advocate for global environmental
protection and the improvement of labor conditions and wages if we are
not at the table to lead in these efforts.
Finally, I would like to express my disappointment over the
President's personal involvement during this debate today. Over the
past year, he and members of his Administration, including the Vice-
President, the Secretary of State, and the Treasury Secretary, have
been quoted repeatedly about the urgency of passage of fast track. In
this regard, I would like to quote Secretary of State Madeline
Albright's July 24, 1997 speech to the Pacific Council and Los Angeles
World Affairs Council. She said,

American prestige is not divisible. If we want our views
and interests respected, we cannot sit on the sidelines with
towels over our heads while others seize the opportunities
presented by the global marketplace. That is why, from a
foreign policy perspective, I consider fast track to be among
our highest legislative priorities.

I commend the leadership of the House for bringing this bill to the
floor today, despite the lack its support by the President and his
Administration, because they understand the importance of this bill for
our country.
Mr. Speaker and colleagues, I urge the passage of this legislation.
It is inconceivable that we would not act today to assure a brighter
future and a better standard of living for our children and
grandchildren and their futures.
Mr. DAVIS of Illinois. Mr. Speaker, when the United States enters
into trade agreements, the objective should be to advance the standard
of living for working families in our country and abroad.
Just like the average family in Illinois' 7th Congressional District.
They are impacted by this trade agreement whether they like it or not.
My hope is for them. They want what you and I want--to provide, to the
best of their ability, for their loved ones.
My hope is for the people in the district, so that they can obtain a
Living Wage, a wage that allows workers to lead a dignified life while
working in a safe and healthy environment--an environment that respects
their needs as a worker and a human being. Their struggles and desires
are not so different from yours and mine. They want to put clothes on
their children's back, they want to put food on the table, have access
to reliable transportation, live in adequate housing and be able to
obtain affordable child care for their children. Their issues need to
be taken into account and be an active part of this debate. We need to
engage the people in this debate--for we are playing with their
livelihoods.
I hope for a trade agreement that will help to broaden our economy,
help eradicate poverty, while bringing jobs and a decent quality of
life to all of those involved. However, based upon recent reports,
NAFTA as a trade agreement and trade model, has not met its promises.
Thus, I believe that any standard of trade, based on the NAFTA model,
will further threaten the standard of living for working families, not
only in the USA but in other countries as well. Therefore, I am opposed
to HR 2621, Fast Track.
``Free traders'' often state that those opposed to NAFTA-based
agreements--like fast track, need to ``get with the times''-- Often
asserting that we are opposed to this treaty out

[[Page H8801]]

of fear for the future. I pronounce that this is just simply not the
truth. I welcome healthy change and look forward to supporting a treaty
that will serve in the best interest of small businesses, workers and
the environment in this country, as well as all those involved.
Mr. Speaker, I know that when we start placing people before profits;
placing democratic safeguards before raw political gain; placing the
well-being of our land ahead of the fiscal bottom line of a limited
number of business concerns and protecting our inhabitants from
irresponsible development--then the future will be hopeful for those
ordinary folks both here and in places like Mexico.
Instead of fast-track, we need an agreement that increases our
purchasing power, that improves living standards for all, and that
proposes constructive solutions to pressing development and social
problems, and that enhances healthy commerce throughout the region.
``Fast track'' proponents continue to argue that jobs are being
created, but they cannot back up their claims.
Studies show that 65% of laid off U.S. workers end up in lower paying
jobs. The vast majority of new jobs in the United States are now in low
paying sectors of the economy. The U.S. Department of Labor's forecast
of job growth over the next ten years shows the greatest increase in
cashiers, janitors, retail sales clerks and waiters and waitresses.
The Administration argues that they need ``fast track'' authority to
negotiate trade agreements, but this just isn't so. By their own
admission, only 2, out of over 200 trade agreements negotiated while in
office, have been negotiated under ``fast-track'' authority. Working
families are better served by public debate over trade agreements, not
backroom deals cut by policy players that can only be voted up or down.
Fast-tracking is an issue of democracy. There is no adequate time to
debate. Thus, members are forced to circumvent on their duty to vote.
Finally, given the negative effects that NAFTA has had on workers
both here and across the continent, using a region known as the
Maquiladora, as point-in-case. The area is an environmental and health
disaster area called a ``cesspool of infectious diseases'' by the
American Medical Association. Residents on both sides of the border
suffer from alarming rates of hepatitis, chronic diarrhea and
tuberculosis. Contamination by toxic industrial wastes and chemicals
has been linked to the clusters of cancer, rare birth defects and
immunological diseases on both sides of the border in 1995.
This is a tragic example of the types of human costs that can be
experienced when linked to rapid industrialization without any human
rights standards. Yes, we need jobs and a solid economy, but, I ask my
colleagues, at what cost and at the expense of whom? We need to seek
equitable trade across borders, we cannot think of what is only good
for U.S. citizens. We need enforceable workers' rights provisions and
standards for all parties in trade agreements. This is fair trade.
To honestly analyze this ``agreement,'' we must understand not only
what NAFTA is, but more importantly what it is not. NAFTA did not
create substantially more free trade with Mexico, it did not create
higher paying jobs for rank and file workers--on either side of the Rio
Grande, it did not ensure the development of Mexico, and it side-steps
critical social, environmental and economic issues. NAFTA is the
absence of wage and labor rights, and responsible environmental
regulations.

I say that NAFTA is more about Wall St. than about Roosevelt Road in
my district where businesses thrive and employe many working-class
families.
What can we learn from this debate? One strategy that seems
abundantly clear is that we must work together to introduce and pass
legislation that seeks to defend the rights and improve the quality of
life for all working people across borders. People in my district--and
beyond--need good, decent-paying jobs with a liveable wage as well as a
workplace that has an atmosphere of safety and respect for all.
With a new effort afoot to spearhead international trading blocks, we
must respond by allowing aggressive organizing to take place in the
workplace, and create an atmosphere that welcomes the advocating of
social change that safeguards workers, communities and the environment.
To ask for less is to consign all of us to a spiral of economic decay
and growing human misery that undercuts the humanity and well-being of
all people of the America.
Mr. Speaker, I close today, by submitting to you that our struggle is
linked to the struggle of poor and oppressed people throughout the
world and their economic liberation protects our economic development.
I look forward to supporting a treaty that will help small business
prosper, a treaty that gives everybody the same break that the current
treaty reserves for only the most powerful players at the table. We
need a fair trade agreement that includes all who have a right and need
to trade.
Good trade is good for people in the 7th Congressional District of
Illinois, the city of Chicago as well as the people in the USA and
Mexico. A higher wage means more purchasing power which means a
stronger economy.
Mr. CONYERS. I am opposed to this bill to grant ``fast track''
negotiating authority to the president. The failed record of the North
American Trade Agreement should have taught this body that it is time
for us to remake our trade policy. NAFTA has hurt workers in America,
increased poverty in Mexico and accelerated environmental destruction
along the border.
The NAFTA disaster demonstrates not that we shouldn't be making trade
agreements, but that we need a fully participatory policy making
process that protects the interests of consumers, workers and the
environment. That process should put Congress, a body devoted to
responsiveness to people back home, at the center of the trade debate.
In my own state, NAFTA has been devastating to the auto industry. In
1997, the trade deficit with Mexico was $13.9 billion for autos and
automobile parts alone! This figure is expected to go up a bit this
year because from January through July of 1998, the trade deficit was
$8.7 billion, compared to $8.3 billion for the same period last year.
And keep in mind that before NAFTA, in 1993, the United States only had
a $3.6 billion overall deficit with Mexico.
I visited the low-wage maquiladora factories in Mexico in 1993. All
the foreign-owned corporations told us that this business sector would
shrink. Instead it has increased by half since NAFTA. This means that
polluted corridor along the US border is growing uncontrollably and
NAFTA's weak environmental protections give us almost no redress.
So Americans are not better off and Mexicans are not better off.
According to Mexico's National Autonomous University, the number of
people living in extreme poverty has gone up from 31 percent in 1993 to
50 percent in 1996. This is not a fair deal for anyone except the
greedy few who have profited from slashing American jobs and
suppressing American wages.
I know we can negotiate a better trade agreement. But the first step
is to keep Congress and the American people involved by rejecting the
failed fast-track approach to trade. I urge a ``no'' vote on this bill.
Mr. WEYGAND. Mr. Speaker, today we are scheduled to vote on whether
to grant fast-track authority to the President. I believe that, as
written, we cannot ensure that U.S. citizens and citizens of other
countries will get the safeguards they deserve therefore, I will be
voting against granting the president fast-track authority and urge my
colleagues to do the same.
Mr. Speaker, in the United States we have a great deal of
environmental, worker and consumer safeguards that make our standard of
living among the highest in the world. We have worked very hard at
building a nation where people can live with assurances that their food
has been inspected, their roads are relatively free of unsafe vehicles,
their air and water are clean and they can earn a livable wage. Why
should U.S. citizens or any other citizen of any nation not be
guaranteed the continuation of those same benefits? Why should U.S.
standards be compromised?
One of the purposes of trade agreements should be to better both or
all trading partners. Our goal should be to raise the standard of
living for everyone. Weak standards should be strengthened, strong
standards should not be weakened. As we have seen with NAFTA, not
including certain safeguards in the text of a trade agreement itself
will result in a lower standard of living.
Because we cannot look into a crystal ball to find out how a trade
agreement will turn out we must ensure that environmental, consumer and
worker safeguards are included, up-front. Including these provisions in
the fast-track bill will ensure that high standards are part of the
negotiations and will not be sacrificed.
I fully understand the importance of entering into trade agreements
to make sure that the U.S. is not left behind in this global economy.
Expanding export opportunities is critical to the continued economic
development of Rhode Island's economy and I will work to continue to
create and expand those opportunities without giving up our standard of
living. I am in favor of fair and equitable trade, but not at the
expense of jobs and our families. We should trade goods, not export
jobs.
I believe that this fast track is the wrong track. It quiets the
American people's voice in their government. This Fast-Track does not
defend workers and consumers and therefore is a hindrance to fair
trade, rather than a boon.
I believe we can have free and fair trade, trade that benefits
American workers and consumers and defends the environment. I believe
we can have agreement that will result in higher wages, cleaner air and
greater consumer safeguards. This bill will not yield those

[[Page H8802]]

desired results. Again, I urge my colleagues to vote against this bill.
Mr. DELAHUNT. Mr. Speaker, I rise in strong opposition to the bill.
This debate is not about ``free trade'' versus ``protectionism''--
though that is how proponents of the fast track proposal often
characterize it. It is not about ``engagement'' versus
``isolationism.'' Or ``leadership'' versus ``retreat.''
What this debate is about is whether the most powerful nation on the
planet will help create a global economic system in which everyone has
a fair share of the wealth.
Or whether we will continue to pursue trade policies that magnify
existing inequities. That favor huge multinationals and
``agribusiness'' combines over locally-owned enterprises and family
farms. That encourage American companies to go where they won't be
hampered by fair labor standards, consumer protection laws and
environmental regulations.
This legislation failed last year and it deserves to fail again.
Because the working people of America understand what it will mean for
them. For their families. And their communities. They have seen what
NAFTA has brought them, and they are not about to allow the Congress to
repeat that costly mistake.
NAFTA may have generated record profits for some large corporations.
But those profits have come at the expense of workers whose jobs moved
south. And farmers who couldn't compete with cheap Mexican wages. And
consumers forced to buy potentially unsafe produce.
Nor are the consequences of NAFTA confined to our side of the border.
On a recent trip to Mexico, I saw what NAFTA has meant for the people
of that country. Factory workers denied decent working conditions and
the right to organize. Agricultural laborers exposed to chemicals
banned in the United States. Thousands of subsistence farmers forced
off their land to make room for giant export producers.
To help address these concerns, I have joined with a number of my
colleagues in this House, the Mexican Congress and the Parliament of
Canada, in an agreement to establish a Tri-National Commission. The
Commission will meet every few months, beginning early next year, to
examine the effects of NAFTA in all three countries, and to look at
better alternatives.
We have been warned that if we fail to approve the bill, we will be
shut out while other countries reach agreements. That, I submit, is an
appeal to fear and weakness that ill befits a strong and confident
nation. A nation with the strongest economy in the world.
We should not negotiate because we are afraid we will be left out.
Rather, we should negotiate in the secure knowledge that our trading
partners need the American market at least as much as we need theirs.
That a great nation need not accept what others decree, but can work
with them to reshape the structure of international trade.
If we fail to do this--if we do nothing to address the growing gulf
between the haves and have nots--if we continue to enter into
agreements which codify the inequities of the current trading system--
we will have much to answer for.
I urge my colleagues to stand with working men and women everywhere
in just saying ``no.''
Ms. WATERS. Mr. Speaker, I rise in strong opposition to this once-
failed ``Fast Track'' trade authority legislation that the Republican
leadership has chosen to bring to the floor.
Our urban centers and rural communities nationwide have suffered
greatly from the corporate flight and job loss promoted and encouraged
by NAFTA. Wages for manufacturing workers have been depressed by brutal
global competition with terribly exploited workers overseas. And the
violent turmoil in the world's financial markets threaten to ruin the
economies of many developing nations.
But, in these uncertain financial times, the Republicans are using
this bill for their partisan purposes and ignoring the danger signs,
throwing protections for American workers and families out the window.
But they should not, and will not, pass this bill. They still have no
real protections for American workers who face the loss of their jobs
overseas. Environmental concerns continue to be ignored.
And, despite all the Republican rhetoric about being tough on drugs,
this legislation does nothing to stop the increase of the flow of drugs
into the U.S.
Loosening the rules of trade, without building in any safeguards
against drug trafficking, has meant a virtual explosion of the flow of
cocaine, heroin and other narcotics into the U.S. In November 1997 I
called for the addition of specific, core language in trade agreements
that addressed drug trafficking. I published a report ``Drug
Trafficking on the Fast Track'' that documented the dramatic increase
in drug trafficking that came as a result of NAFTA.
And this week's New York Times highlighted these dangers reporting
that the brother of Mexico's former President Carlos Salinas, ``assumed
control over practically all drug shipments through Mexico.'' He used
government trucks and railroad cars to ship tons of narcotics into the
United States using influence and bribery to buy protection from the
nation's army and police force.
So we negotiated a free trade treaty having absolutely no drug
trafficking protections built in, with a government that was literally
directing the flow of cocaine and narcotics into the United States.
We cannot repeat the mistakes of the past.
We cannot sign trade treaties with governments who are involved in,
or complicit with, drug cartels and international drug trafficking.
Until we address this issue, and protect the rights of American
workers, we should reject this legislation.
We need a fair trade agreement that protects American families. I
urge my colleagues to vote no on this fast track legislation.

[From the New York Times, Sept. 19, 1998]

Salinas Brother Is Tied by Swiss to Drug Trade

(By Tim Golden)

Mexico City.--After a nearly three-year inquiry into drug
corruption in Mexico, Swiss police investigators have
concluded that a brother of former President Carlos Salinas
de Gortari played a central role in Mexico's cocaine trade,
raking in huge bribes to protect the flow of drugs into the
United States.
In a secret 369-page report, the investigators assert that
Salinas's elder brother, Raul, used his wide influence in the
administration to organize an elaborate network of protection
for drug smugglers. He also channeled drug money to his
brother's presidential campaign, the report alleges.
``When Carlo Salinas de Gortari became President of Mexico
in 1988, Raul Salinas de Gortari assumed control over
practically all drug shipments through Mexico,'' the report
states. ``Through his influence and bribes paid with drug
money, officials of the army and the police supported and
protected the flourishing drug business.''
From a low-profile position in the administration's food-
distribution agency, the report states, Raul Salinas
commandeered Government trucks and railroad cars to haul
cocaine north, skimming payoffs that the Swiss estimate at
upwards of $500 million. On what some of his reputed former
associates referred to as ``green light days,'' he arranged
for drug loads to transit Mexico without concern that they
might be checked by the army, the coast guard or the federal
police.
A partial copy of the report was obtained by The New York
Times. It appears to be based largely on interviews with
nearly 90 former drug traffickers, reputed Salinas associates
and other witnesses, most of them unidentified.
Swiss officials said they expected the report to be the
basis for their Government's seizure in the coming weeks of
more than $130 million that Raul Salinas deposited in Swiss
banks.
Lawyers for Salinas dismissed the report Friday as the
slanderous product of a Swiss crusade to confiscate what they
insisted was a fortune that their client earned by legitimate
means.
``The report is absolutely false,'' Salinas's lead
attorney, Eduardo Luengo Creel, said in an interview. ``It
contains statements, assertions and situations that do not
correspond to the facts. It is a police report. It does not
have the validity of an evaluation by an investigating
judge.''
``We do not even know who these people are,'' Luengo said
of the many confidential informants listed in the document,
which Salinas's lawyers received two months ago. ``To accuse
someone with anonymous witnesses is unconstitutional in any
country.''
The document states that Swiss investigators were unable to
determine conclusively what involvement the former President,
his father and other family members might have had in the
purportedly illicit activities of Raul Salinas.
Some family members, it implies, were among a group of
people around Raul Salinas who were implicated in criminal
activities. It based that finding on witnesses it described
as ``principally credible'' but did not identify.
The report says the investigators did not look further into
the matter because the people mentioned were irrelevant to
their inquiry into whether Salinas's Swiss funds came from
illegal activities.
Nonetheless, the report adds, somewhat obliquely. ``We have
to seriously question the probability that a person with as
much power as the President of Mexico for years did not learn
about criminal activities of this extent, even if his brother
was heavily involved.'' Carlos Salinas has been living
recently in Europe.
The Swiss report is by far the most exhaustive assessment
to date of Raul Salinas's reported dealings with the Mexican
underworld.
It is clearly a prosecutorial document, one that cites
Salinas's own version of events mostly to show how it appears
to contradict other facts. Because the Swiss seizure of
Salinas's assets would be a civil court action, the report
also aims at a considerably lower threshold of proof than
would be required in a criminal case.

[[Page H8803]]

Raul Salinas was widely rumored to have grown rich on
dubious business dealings during his brother's presidency,
but the accusations were almost never public or specific.
Shortly after Carlos Salinas's term ended, in December 1994,
his chosen successor, Ernesto Zedillo, shattered a long
Mexico tradition of impunity for presidential families by
authorizing Raul Salinas's arrest on charges that he ordered
the murder of a leader of the governing party who was his
former brother-in-law.
In the tiny maximum-security prison cell where Salinas has
spent the last three and a half years, he has been struck by
wave after wave of new allegations. Federal prosecutors in
New York are pressing ahead with a criminal investigation
into the possibility that he may have laundered illicit funds
through his accounts at Citibank headquarters in New York.
And after a series of reversals in their murder case, Mexican
officials say they are close to announcing new corruption
charges against him.
Much of the Swiss evidence seems to come from witnesses who
are identified only by pseudonyms like ``Ludmilla'' and
``Juan,'' and whose credibility is difficult to judge.
Some claimed they had arranged the protection of drug
shipments with Salinas directly. Others, including
bodyguards, chauffeurs and secretaries, said they had
attended meetings at which they saw Salinas receive suitcases
full of cash from smugglers. Still others, including an
American drug enforcement agent, testified to matters they
had learned about second-hand.
As the true names of several of the witnesses have leaked
out over the course of the Swiss investigation, Salinas's
lawyers have attacked their accounts. But even when the
informants are convicted criminals, the report often asserts
reasons why their claims are credible.
Legal experts in Switzerland and the United States
predicted that the confidentiality of the sources arrayed
against Salinas might well prove a weak point in the
Government's case. If a seizure is ordered and lawyers for
Salinas challenge it in court, as they insist they will, the
judge who evaluates the case will have access to the
witnesses' identities but the lawyers will not.
In contrast to law enforcement officials in the United
States who have studied Mexican drug corruption for years,
the small team of Swiss federal police investigators had
virtually no background in the subject. But since their
arrest of Salinas's third wife, Paulina Castanon, as she
tried to retrieve phony passports with her husband's picture
from a Swiss safe-deposit box in November 1995, the Swiss
detectives managed to scour American court files and jail
cells for anyone who might claim a link to their target.
In at least a few such cases, United States law-enforcement
officials have acknowledged, those informants had been
ignored or misused by prosecutors in the United States until
the Swiss sought them out. The Swiss report also cites some
confidential witnesses who are described as people who once
worked or socialized around Salinas, and it contains what two
American investigators described as a meticulous analysis of
his financial dealings.
``For us, what they have would be a triable case,'' said a
United States law-enforcement official who is familiar with
the Swiss evidence.'' It wouldn't be a slam-dunk, but you
could definitely take it to court.''
For the family of a former President who was once
celebrated as the bold architect of a new relationship
between Mexico and the United States--the man who championed
the North American Free Trade Agreement and brought to power
a new generation of Ivy League-educated technocrats--the
report paints a devastating portrait.
Quoting unidentified former associates of the family, the
report contends that both Raul and Carlos were ``introduced''
to the drug trade in the late 1970's by their father, Raul
Salinas Lozano, a former Government minister. It did not make
clear what that introduction involved.
``Raul Salinas Lozano, with his political influence, would
have preferred Raul at the head of the Government in
Mexico,'' it continues, quoting an informant close to the
family to present a dark new twist on an old story of
brotherly ambition. ``But because Raul Salinas de Gortari's
infamous earlier life would not have permitted him to hold a
high-level government position, the father decided to support
his son Carlos instead.''
Long before Carlos Salinas began to make his name in the
mid-1980's as Mexico's young, Harvard-trained Budget
Minister, the report suggests, his father had built a
friendship with one of the legendary figures of Mexico's
north-border drug trade, Juan N. Guerra. Such a relationship
has been reported in the past, and angrily denied by Raul
Salinas Lozano.
The eldest son of the one-time border Senator--Salinas
Lozano was a dominant figure in the politics of his home
state of Nuevo Leon--and a nephew of the trafficker Juan
Garcia Abrego, inherited the connection, the report contends.
Quoting a series of former drug traffickers, the Swiss
investigators state that Raul Salinas began arranging
protection for both Garcia Abrego and traffickers of the
Medellin cartel in Colombia even before his brother became
President.
One of those traffickers, identified as ``Giuseppe,''
appears to be Jose Manuel Ramos, a former high-level Medellin
cocaine distributor who operated out of northern Mexico and
Texas until his arrest in 1990. Three American law-
enforcement officials familiar with his case described Ramos,
who remains in prison, as highly credible.
Both Ramos and his wife, Luz Salazar, (the ``Ludmilla'' of
the report) referred the Swiss detectives to payment ledgers
and other documents that had been seized at the time of their
arrest. According to the report, the documents helped to
corroborate that from 1987 to 1989, they paid Salinas $28.7
million on behalf of their boss, Jose Gonzalo Rodriguez
Gacha.
Another convicted trafficker who gushes with information
about Raul Salinas, Marco Enrique Torres, has weaker bona
fides.
While the report notes some corroboration of Torres's
account by an F.B.I. agent who pursued his case, Orlando
Munoz, it fails to note Salinas's denials that he ever knew
Torres. Nor does it raise questions about the more improbable
parts of his tale of a long criminal friendship between a
mid-level drug smuggler and a member of the Mexican political
aristocracy.
Once Carlos Salinas became President at the end of 1988,
the report states, his brother's power to assure the safe
northward passage of drugs grew sharply.

Mr. MATSUI. Mr. Speaker, I yield the balance of my time to the
gentleman from Missouri (Mr. Gephardt), the Democratic leader.
(Mr. GEPHARDT asked and was given permission to revise and extend his
remarks.)
Mr. GEPHARDT. Mr. Speaker, I rise in opposition to this bill and ask
Members on both sides of the aisle to oppose this bill.
I have voted for and worked on fast track bills in the past. I worked
on a bill with then President Bush that we passed back in the late
1980s. I believe in trade, and I believe in trade agreements. I believe
in opening markets. I believe in free trade agreements.
This is not a partisan issue. It is an issue on which I think people
of like minds have to come together to prepare an architecture so that
the free trade treaties that come from the fast track authority will
succeed in opening up more trade and, most importantly, in increasing
the compatibility between the countries that are engaging in trade.

{time} 1830

To take NAFTA, for an example, it is a free trade treaty between
countries that have very different standards of living, very different
attempts at enforcing their basic laws. We now know that the problems
that have come from NAFTA have been caused because we did not get in
NAFTA the kind of enforcement provisions, with teeth, that would allow
all the parties to get the other parties to the agreement to properly
enforce their labor and environmental laws. We tried to get that in the
treaty and at the end everyone said, ``Well, we can't get it.'' I vowed
from that moment that if we had another fast track, and I thought and
knew we should and would, that I would try to get in it provisions that
would say definitely that any treaty that would come from that fast
track would have to have proper provisions in it, with teeth, that
would get the labor and environmental and other laws in the signatories
to the treaty to properly enforce their laws.
Now, why is this important? If you go to Mexico today on the border,
you will find the most modern plants in the world. In fact, there are
double the number of plants than there were before NAFTA and double the
number of jobs. In many ways that is good. That is what we hoped would
happen. But if you examine further and you go in the villages where the
workers live next to the plants that are modern, as modern as anything
in the United States, you will find workers living in abject poverty.
They live literally in the cardboard boxes that carry the goods out of
the plants. The labor laws in Mexico are better than ours. They are
just not enforced. If you speak with the workers and you ask why do you
not join an independent union or why do you not bargain for better
wages, they laugh at you. And they say, ``We have no ability to do
that.'' They live next to open sewage ditches. Their children have
hepatitis. Half the children cannot go to school because the workers do
not earn enough money to send their children to school.
If this is the future of free trade in the world economy, then we
have no future. If it is a race to the bottom because we do not insist
on standards in trade, then we have let down everybody in the United
States and we have let down everybody in the world. Surely we can do
better than this.
I believe if we work from this day forward, because I do not think
this

[[Page H8804]]

fast track will pass, we can work to a bipartisan fast track that will
give the President the fast track authority that he wants, that has the
proper conditions in it so we can construct the right architecture in
the world so that free trade is also fair trade, it is trade with
standards, it is trade that raises the standards in the world and not
lowering everybody's standards to the lowest common denominator. Now,
surely we can do this.
The fast track we have tonight not only does not allow us to have
those kinds of provisions in free trade treaties, it specifically says
we cannot take up those matters in free trade negotiations. It is the
opposite of what we need. We are the leader in the world. We are the
one that has to help bring this infrastructure, this architecture to
the world.
What you are voting on tonight is a very imperfect instrument that
will not get us where we need to be. We can do better than this. Vote
this fast track down. Let us come back next year in a bipartisan way,
honestly and decently, and put together a piece of legislation that
will allow America to lead the world to a higher standard of living and
to the benefits of trade for all the people of the world.
Mr. ARCHER. Mr. Speaker, I yield the balance of my time to the
gentleman from Georgia (Mr. Gingrich) the Speaker of the House of
Representatives.
The SPEAKER pro tempore (Mr. Hastings of Washington). The gentleman
from Georgia is recognized for 4\1/2\ minutes.
Mr. GINGRICH. Mr. Speaker, let me say that I agree with the gentleman
from Missouri that this is an imperfect instrument and that this is a
difficult time. On the other hand, we were told a year ago it was the
wrong time to vote. That was not an election year. Now we are told this
year, it is the wrong time to vote. This is an election year.
Now, since under our Constitution the House is elected every two
years, if it is not right to vote in the year before the election and
it is not right to vote in the year of the election, the correct answer
from some of our friends on the left is that there is never a time to
vote, because they do not want to expand markets. And I understand
that. But we need to understand just how historic this moment is. And
Members are going to have to live with their conscience for a long time
if they vote ``no.''
We have entered the first deflation since the Great Depression, from
Malaysia and Thailand, to Indonesia, to South Korea, to Japan, to
Russia, now to Brazil, we see all over this planet people whose
economies are shaky, whose currencies are shaky and they are looking
for leadership. The choice for them is very simple: Do they move into
the world market which since World War II has so dramatically increased
the wealth of the entire world, including the United States? Or do they
move towards autarchy and protectionism and beggaring their neighbors
and all of the policies which under Smoot-Hawley led to the Great
Depression? It is that simple. And you get to vote in a few minutes to
send a signal to the entire world because the entire world is watching.
My friend from Washington State said the Brazilians hope we defeat
it. He is right. The Brazilians want us to defeat fast track because
they are creating a common market in South America and they do not want
American exports and they know that if we do not have fast track,
corporations are going to build new plants in Brazil and new plants in
Argentina and take the jobs out of the U.S. because they are going to
go behind that barrier. The European Common Market wants you to vote
``no.'' The European Common Market knows that for the first time since
World War II, they are selling more to Argentina and more to Brazil
than the United States. So the European Common Market hopes you will
vote ``no.'' That is the goal they have, make sure the American
President stays impotent.
You say we are playing politics? It is the American President,
William Clinton, who sent up the request for fast track, and who this
year talked about how bitterly, that is his word, bitterly he regretted
the defeat of fast track last year in his own caucus. We did not bring
it up last year because we were told it was impossible because your
unions would not let you vote.
Well, most of you do not have an opponent now. Most of you do not
have an excuse now. This is a vote of conscience. You can vote ``no,''
and when you vote ``no,'' particularly those of you who have said for
years you were free traders, you tell us who is playing politics: The
people who vote their conscience, the people who vote for history, the
people who send the signal to the world that we actually believe and
vote for free trade? Or those of you who were for free trade until it
became inconvenient for the Democratic Party?
You were for free trade until the unions told you, not this time, not
on this bill, not last year, not this year. And you think the unions
are going to tell you next year, oh, that is fine, Gephardt and Gore
can be for free trade in 1999, because after all, there will not be a
presidential nomination, the unions will not care.

Let us be honest. The fact is the Democratic Party is wedded to
protectionism and it is willing to give away Latin America to the
Europeans, it is willing to allow the Brazilians to create a common
market that excludes America, it is willing to have the world market
grow without us and if necessary it is willing to send the signal to
Asia, go ahead and withdraw from the world market. And for what gain?
Now, you will say, ``Well, it hurts America.'' Today's Washington
Post, Poverty Rate Fell, Incomes Rose in 1997. This is the great damage
of NAFTA. Poverty is going down, incomes are going up, we have the
lowest unemployment rate in 30 years, the lowest inflation rate in 30
years, the lowest housing mortgage rate since 1967, because we have had
the guts to compete in the world market, because our companies have
grown leaner and tougher and smarter, because our farmers export, our
small businesses export. 108,000 of the 113,000 exporters are small
businesses. But that is not good enough. More jobs for Americans, more
wealth.
You think you are going to convince the Mexicans to establish a
higher standard of child labor when you do not trade with them? You
think you are going to convince El Salvador to create a higher standard
of wealth when you do not trade with them? The fact is this
administration could introduce a proposed child labor agreement with
Mexico anytime it wants to. They could come up next week and introduce
it as a freestanding bill and make it be heard on its merits. But that
is an excuse.
You know what the real issue is here. The real issue is, your union
will not let you vote for free trade and you are willing to send a
signal to the entire world at a time when a major firm was bailed out
yesterday for $3.5 billion, an American firm, not a Japanese, not a
Korean, not an Indonesian, an American firm, and in the middle of this
level of instability, you yell partisan politics and then you vote
partisan against your own rhetoric?
I am not going to embarrass my colleagues by reading into the Record
what they said, what their President has said, what the Vice President
has said. Because when they go out of the country, they are for fast
track. The fact is this year, the President said he is for fast track.
This year the Vice President said he is for fast track. It is sad to
see the partisan politics of the unions and the Democratic Party and
yes, this may go down, but if this goes down and we end up in a steep
worldwide recession, some of us will have had the comfort of knowing,
we cast the right vote, we sent the right signal, and we tried to
sustain what has worked for 50 years and not let the world slide back
to what failed in the Great Depression.
The SPEAKER pro tempore. Pursuant to House Resolution 553, the
previous question is ordered on the bill, as amended.
The question is on engrossment and third reading of the bill.
The bill was ordered to be engrossed and read a third time, and was
read the third time.
The SPEAKER pro tempore. The question is on the passage of the bill.
The question was taken; and the Speaker pro tempore announced that
the ayes appeared to have it.

Recorded Vote

Mr. RANGEL. Mr. Speaker, I demand a recorded vote.

[[Page H8805]]

A recorded vote was ordered.
The vote was taken by electronic device, and there were--ayes 180,
noes 243, answered ``present'' 3, not voting 9, as follows:

[Roll No. 466]

AYES--180

Archer
Armey
Bachus
Baker
Ballenger
Barrett (NE)
Barton
Bass
Bateman
Bentsen
Bereuter
Berry
Bilbray
Bliley
Blunt
Boehner
Bonilla
Bono
Boswell
Brady (TX)
Bryant
Bunning
Burr
Callahan
Calvert
Camp
Campbell
Cannon
Castle
Chabot
Chambliss
Christensen
Clement
Collins
Combest
Cooksey
Cox
Crane
Cubin
Cunningham
Davis (FL)
Davis (VA)
DeLay
Dickey
Dicks
Dooley
Dreier
Dunn
Edwards
Ehlers
Ehrlich
Emerson
Eshoo
Etheridge
Ewing
Fawell
Foley
Ford
Fossella
Franks (NJ)
Frelinghuysen
Ganske
Gekas
Gilchrest
Gillmor
Gingrich
Goodlatte
Granger
Greenwood
Gutknecht
Hall (TX)
Hamilton
Hansen
Harman
Hastert
Hastings (WA)
Hayworth
Hefley
Herger
Hobson
Hooley
Horn
Houghton
Hulshof
Hyde
Istook
Johnson (CT)
Johnson, E.B.
Johnson, Sam
Kasich
Kim
King (NY)
Kingston
Klug
Knollenberg
Kolbe
LaHood
Largent
Latham
Lazio
Leach
Lewis (CA)
Lewis (KY)
Linder
Livingston
Lofgren
Lucas
Manzullo
McCollum
McCrery
McDermott
McInnis
McIntosh
McKeon
Miller (FL)
Minge
Moran (KS)
Moran (VA)
Morella
Myrick
Nethercutt
Northup
Nussle
Ortiz
Oxley
Packard
Parker
Paxon
Pease
Peterson (PA)
Petri
Pickering
Pickett
Pitts
Porter
Portman
Price (NC)
Radanovich
Ramstad
Redmond
Riggs
Rogan
Roukema
Ryun
Salmon
Sanford
Sawyer
Schaefer, Dan
Schaffer, Bob
Sensenbrenner
Sessions
Shadegg
Shaw
Shays
Shimkus
Skeen
Skelton
Smith (OR)
Smith (TX)
Snowbarger
Snyder
Stenholm
Stump
Sununu
Talent
Tanner
Tauscher
Tauzin
Thomas
Thornberry
Thune
Tiahrt
Upton
Watkins
Watts (OK)
Weldon (FL)
White
Wicker
Wilson
Young (FL)

NOES--243

Abercrombie
Ackerman
Aderholt
Allen
Andrews
Baesler
Baldacci
Barcia
Barr
Barrett (WI)
Bartlett
Becerra
Berman
Bilirakis
Bishop
Blagojevich
Boehlert
Bonior
Borski
Boucher
Boyd
Brady (PA)
Brown (CA)
Brown (FL)
Brown (OH)
Buyer
Canady
Capps
Cardin
Carson
Chenoweth
Clay
Clayton
Clyburn
Coble
Coburn
Condit
Conyers
Cook
Costello
Coyne
Cramer
Crapo
Cummings
Danner
Davis (IL)
Deal
DeFazio
DeGette
Delahunt
DeLauro
Deutsch
Diaz-Balart
Dingell
Dixon
Doggett
Doolittle
Doyle
Duncan
Engel
English
Ensign
Evans
Everett
Farr
Fattah
Fazio
Filner
Forbes
Fox
Frank (MA)
Frost
Gallegly
Gejdenson
Gephardt
Gibbons
Gilman
Gonzalez
Goode
Goodling
Gordon
Graham
Green
Gutierrez
Hall (OH)
Hastings (FL)
Hefner
Hill
Hilleary
Hilliard
Hinchey
Hinojosa
Hoekstra
Holden
Hostettler
Hoyer
Hunter
Inglis
Jackson (IL)
Jackson-Lee (TX)
Jenkins
John
Johnson (WI)
Jones
Kanjorski
Kaptur
Kelly
Kennedy (MA)
Kennedy (RI)
Kennelly
Kildee
Kilpatrick
Kind (WI)
Kleczka
Klink
Kucinich
LaFalce
Lampson
Lantos
LaTourette
Lee
Levin
Lewis (GA)
Lipinski
LoBiondo
Lowey
Luther
Maloney (CT)
Maloney (NY)
Manton
Markey
Mascara
Matsui
McCarthy (MO)
McCarthy (NY)
McDade
McGovern
McHale
McHugh
McIntyre
McKinney
McNulty
Meehan
Meek (FL)
Meeks (NY)
Menendez
Metcalf
Mica
Millender-McDonald
Miller (CA)
Mink
Moakley
Mollohan
Murtha
Nadler
Neal
Neumann
Ney
Norwood
Oberstar
Obey
Olver
Owens
Pallone
Pappas
Pascrell
Pastor
Paul
Payne
Pelosi
Peterson (MN)
Pombo
Pomeroy
Poshard
Quinn
Rahall
Rangel
Regula
Reyes
Riley
Rivers
Rodriguez
Roemer
Rogers
Rohrabacher
Ros-Lehtinen
Rothman
Roybal-Allard
Royce
Rush
Sabo
Sanchez
Sanders
Sandlin
Scarborough
Schumer
Scott
Serrano
Sherman
Shuster
Sisisky
Slaughter
Smith (MI)
Smith (NJ)
Smith, Adam
Smith, Linda
Solomon
Souder
Spence
Spratt
Stabenow
Stark
Stearns
Stokes
Strickland
Stupak
Taylor (MS)
Taylor (NC)
Thompson
Thurman
Tierney
Torres
Towns
Traficant
Turner
Velazquez
Vento
Visclosky
Walsh
Wamp
Waters
Watt (NC)
Waxman
Weldon (PA)
Weller
Wexler
Weygand
Whitfield
Wise
Wolf
Woolsey
Wynn
Young (AK)

ANSWERED ``PRESENT''--3

Blumenauer
Martinez
Skaggs

NOT VOTING--9

Burton
Fowler
Furse
Goss
Hutchinson
Jefferson
Pryce (OH)
Saxton
Yates

{time} 1859

So the bill was not passed.
The result of the vote was announced as above recorded.
A motion to reconsider was laid on the table.

____________________