[Congressional Record Volume 145, Number 127 (Monday, September 27, 1999)]
[Senate]
[Pages S11464-S11466]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                  FAMILY FARMERS AND THE TRADE DEFICIT

  Mr. DORGAN. Mr. President, I want to take some time to talk about a 
couple of items that are related to the desperate crisis facing 
America's family farmers. One, what the conference committee on 
Agriculture Appropriations, of which I am a member, is doing--or, as is 
more accurate, not doing--to help them. Second, I want to talk to the 
issue of the burgeoning growing trade deficit.
  I will talk for a moment about the Agriculture appropriations bill 
which is now in conference between the Senate and the House. I am a 
conferee. The Senate passed its version of that bill and included 
roughly $7.4 billion in emergency help for family farmers because 
prices have collapsed and farmers are in desperate trouble. We passed 
that on August 4.
  Weeks and weeks went by and nothing happened. No conference. No 
meetings. Then last week, those of us who are conferees met with the 
House of Representatives. Then the Chair called an adjournment. The 
Members of the House called an adjournment, and we have not met since. 
Nearly a week later, and there has been no meeting since.
  Why? They are all hung up on the House side of the conference with 
respect to the question of whether we should retain embargoes on food 
and medicine.
  The answer to that is simple: Of course not. Of course we should not 
retain any embargoes on food and medicine. That is what the Senate 
said. By a vote of 70, the Senate said let us stop using food as a 
weapon.
  We have used food as a weapon against Cuba, Iran, Iraq, North Korea--
you name it. We have embargoes. I do not have any problems with 
embargoes against countries that are behaving badly, but the embargo 
should not include food. Why would you want to include food and 
medicine in embargoes that hurt the poor folks around the globe, the 
people who need the food and medicine?
  I have always maintained that when we put an embargo on food 
shipments anywhere in the world, it is the equivalent of shooting 
ourselves in the foot. When you do it for 40 years, it is almost 
unforgivable. It is one thing to shoot yourself in the foot; it is 
another thing to take aim, hit it, and then brag about it. That has 
been the policy.
  The Senate, by 70 votes, said: No more; we are going to break the 
back of food embargoes; we are going to stop using food as a weapon; 
over; finished; done.
  We went to conference, and the House of Representatives said: No, we 
want to continue using food as a weapon in some circumstances. The 
result is, we have not even been meeting in that conference, and the 
emergency help that is needed for family farmers around this country is 
not getting done because the conference is not meeting.
  Hurricane Floyd roared up the east coast, and I am told that there 
are over 100,000 hogs floating belly up dead in floodwaters, along with 
a million chickens, untold heads of cattle and horses. There are crops 
underwater, devastated, and gone. The folks down in that region who 
were so badly hurt by Hurricane Floyd are flat on their backs wondering 
how they are going to get through this. How they will get through it 
depends on this Congress deciding whether it will extend a helping hand 
saying: When a natural disaster strikes, we want to help you.
  Other farmers in my home state were flooded out this spring. Over 
three million acres of farmland did not get planted early this spring, 
and family farmers who did get acres planted have discovered that if 
they got a crop, it was, in many cases, a bad crop with sprout damage. 
If they got a good crop

[[Page S11465]]

and hauled it to the elevator, they were told by the grain market their 
crop was not worth anything because prices had collapsed.
  The bill before the conference committee is a bill that provides from 
the Senate side, not the House side, emergency help for collapsed 
prices and disaster relief for the massive loss of livestock and for 
prevented planning. All of those issues are critical for family 
farmers. If this does not get done, we will have family farmers going 
belly up in record rates in the next couple of months.
  It is unfathomable to me that we have this interminable delay in 
something that is so urgent. There wasn't a delay in passing a $792 
billion tax cut that we could not afford, spending $792 billion in tax 
breaks over 10 years based on the premise that we might have surpluses 
in the future. We do not have surpluses yet. All we have are 
projections by economists.
  Nobody knows what is going to happen in the future, but we are told 
to expect surpluses for 10 years. So before the first real surplus 
exists, we have folks rushing to the Senate Chamber to cut nearly $800 
billion in taxes. There was an urgency to do that, a real urgency. We 
had to get it done immediately. But, of course, on the issue of 
providing disaster relief to family farmers, there is not quite the 
urgency, at least not for some.
  There is a crisis in farm country. This deserves a response now. The 
conference ought to be meeting. We ought to pass emergency relief. We 
ought to pass disaster relief. We ought to extend a helping hand to 
farmers of this country to say: You matter. We care and want to help 
you get through these tough times.
  Let me turn to the other issue that is related to the family farm 
crisis, the trade deficit. Last week, we heard from the Department of 
Commerce. We see in the newspapers that the trade deficit has gone up 
once again to a record high of $25.2 billion last month alone.
  What does that have to do with farmers? It means we are selling less 
overseas than we used to. We are importing much more from other 
countries.
  Here is an example of what is happening with our trade deficit with 
Canada. Mr. President, on this chart, 1998 is in blue; 1999 is in red. 
There was nearly a doubling of the trade deficit with Canada in one 
year, a dramatic increase in the trade deficit with Mexico, and a 
dramatic increase in the trade deficit with the European Union. Of 
course, these are much lower than the trade deficits that exist with 
China and Japan. We have huge trade deficits with China and Japan.
  In addition to all of this, our family farmers in North Dakota who 
are hurting so badly are suffering from a massive quantity of durum 
wheat being shipped into our country, in my judgment illegally, by the 
Canadians. Last year saw the largest amount of durum wheat imports, and 
in the first 6 months of this year, the level of imports is 80 percent 
above that.
  What is being done about all of this? Senator Byrd, Senator Stevens, 
and I and others were able to establish a Trade Deficit Review 
Commission last year. That Commission is now meeting to make 
recommendations on the trade deficit. Otherwise, this matter has met 
with eerie silence. We do not hear anything from the administration. We 
do not hear anything from Congress about this issue.
  This is a very serious issue that could easily undermine this 
country's economic growth. We have to do something about it, and we 
have to do something now. One of the things we ought to do is expect 
this administration to stand up and take action against unfair trade, 
which is part of this. I will show you what they have done.
  We have a trade dispute with Europe, and the trade dispute actually 
is about a couple of things. One is beef, which is legitimate. The 
second is bananas. We do not produce bananas in the United States. We 
have American corporations that get bananas from the Caribbean and want 
to ship them to Europe. Europe does not want the Caribbean bananas, so 
we have a trade dispute on behalf of American corporations that are 
shipping to Europe something we do not produce. So we are right and 
they are wrong. On the merits we are right.

  It is always surprising to me. We fight so hard over bananas. How 
about durum wheat? Durum wheat deals with semolina flour. Semolina 
flour is made into pasta. When you eat pasta, you are eating something 
from the wheat fields, often in North Dakota. What about standing up 
for those producers? We stand up for banana producers in the Caribbean. 
What about standing up for wheat producers?
  What have we done now? We have done nothing about the unfair trade 
from Canada, but we have taken tough action against the Europeans with 
respect to the banana and beef hormones cases. We said to the 
Europeans: You better watch it. We're going to take action against you 
on Roquefort cheese. That is tough. You whip somebody with Roquefort 
cheese. You can have a big fight.
  Or even better, we are going to take action against your Roquefort 
cheese and chilled truffles. That is strong action. This is going to 
scare the devil out of the Europeans.
  Do you know what else we are going to do? We have decided we are 
going to take action against goose livers. If that does not scare the 
Europeans, it will at least scare the geese. Goose livers, chilled 
truffles, Roquefort cheese--and finally tough action against animal 
bladders. That is not all. There are some regular things as well.
  If we are going to get tough on trade--and I have been waiting for 
this a long time--maybe we can get tough on durum wheat. But, no, not 
us, not our trade ambassador. We get tough on goose livers. Maybe I 
missed the point. Maybe everybody in the world will miss the point.
  If we can't stand up and insist on fair trade, on open markets 
overseas--and, yes, on fair trade at home, to be sure--if we can't do 
that, this country will never get this trade deficit under control.
  The trade deficit is huge and growing. Almost everyone understands 
that it is dangerous. It is unsustainable. It will inevitably result in 
a weakened dollar and higher interest rates and less economic growth. 
This country must get a handle on the trade deficit.
  I have sent a letter to President Clinton once again and said to the 
President: If this trade ambassador is not willing to take action 
against the Canadians, replace the trade ambassador. The Canadians are 
just one issue. Replace the trade ambassador if she will not take 
action.
  This ambassador has the authority to self-initiate a trade complaint, 
and ought to do so. If the failure to do so at USTR is due to the 
ambassador, get an ambassador who will.
  We are willing to get tough with the European over bananas--that we 
do not produce here.
  Forgive me for being cynical. Forgive me for wondering if there is 
some common sense around here. How about standing up for things that 
matter in a way that says to our trading partners: This country demands 
action. This country demands open markets. This country demands fair 
trade. This country demands a stop to dumping in our marketplace. This 
country demands an end to unfair trade at secret prices by State 
trading enterprises that would not be legal in this country.
  How does this relate to farmers? As I said before, family farmers 
must find a foreign home for much of what they produce. Regrettably, 
our trade policy has now produced very large trade deficits for two 
reasons. One is because foreign markets have evaporated, dried up, been 
reduced in size.
  It is true that no one in the Congress or the administration caused 
the Asian crisis. I understand that. Yet there are other problems--the 
failure to enforce fundamental trade laws, the failure to enforce 
NAFTA, the negotiation of incompetent trade agreements; and then the 
failure to even live up to those incompetent agreements. This is not, 
in my judgment, something that we should be expecting from our trade 
representatives.

  Mr. President, I know my colleague from Utah is seeking recognition. 
How much time remains, if I might inquire?
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Six minutes 51 seconds.
  Mr. DORGAN. Let me take about 2 or 3 additional minutes. I know my 
colleague has things he would like to say to the Senate, as well.
  Let me conclude by saying this. I regret coming to the floor and 
talking in these terms about the trade ambassador's office or about the 
administration. I think the trade strategy of this

[[Page S11466]]

Congress is abysmal, to the extent we have one--and I guess largely we 
do not because you do not hear anybody talking about a trade strategy 
except myself and a couple others.
  It is this Congress that passed NAFTA. It is this Congress that 
passed the United States-Canada Free Trade Agreement. It is this 
Congress that passed the WTO. I didn't vote for any one of the three. 
But we helped cause these problems, and we ought to help solve them.
  This administration has a responsibility, and so does this Congress. 
And this Congress bears responsibility for the farm policy, the 
underlying farm policy that relates in some part to this trade policy 
that is such a significant failure.
  Our President has been very helpful in trying to push for a disaster 
and emergency package that will be helpful to family farmers, to save 
them from catastrophe, the catastrophe of collapsed prices.
  How would anyone in this Chamber, how would anyone in this country 
like to do business when someone says to you: By the way, your income 
is going to be changed this year. You say: How is that? And they say: 
You are going to receive depression-era income. We are going to adjust 
your income to depression levels.
  That is what has happened to family farmers. How many here would like 
to lose 40, 60, or 80 percent of your income and be told that is the 
way the market system works? It is not the way it works in a country 
that cares about producing on the land with a network of family farms.
  Europe does not do that. Europe has 7.5 million farms. And it says: 
We want you to stay on the farms because we want to have a healthy 
rural system in our country, with small towns that are thriving and 
family farms that are making a living.
  That happens in Europe. It happens because they have public policy 
that demands it. This country does not have comparable public policy. I 
hope that it will someday soon.
  This Congress must create that public policy. This President will 
lead in that direction. That is what he believes. This President is 
strong on those issues. I criticize this administration on trade. On 
farm policy, this administration has been very helpful.
  It is this Congress that is dragging its feet. As a member of the 
conference committee, I hope very much that we will soon get back to 
work on an emergency and a disaster package to respond to the desperate 
needs of family farmers.
  I also hope this administration will take action, aggressive action, 
to deal with these trade problems. I hope the administration and 
Congress will understand the gravity of the trade deficit and the 
gravity that the unsustainable increase in our current account deficit 
poses to this country's economy.
  Mr. President, I thank the Senator from Utah for his courtesy.
  I yield the floor.
  Mr. HATCH addressed the Chair.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Utah.
  Mr. HATCH. Mr. President, I thank my colleague for his kindness.

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