[Congressional Record Volume 145, Number 149 (Thursday, October 28, 1999)]
[Senate]
[Pages S13378-S13387]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




             AFRICAN GROWTH AND OPPORTUNITY ACT--Continued

  Mr. ROTH addressed the Chair.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr. Smith of Oregon). The Senator from 
Delaware.
  Mr. ROTH. Mr. President, some of my esteemed colleagues argued this 
past week that we are losing jobs in manufacturing, particularly in 
textiles and apparel, because we have set the American standard of 
living too high through the minimum wage, Social Security, Medicare, 
workplace safety rules, environmental standards, and social policies 
such as parental leave. That is the sort of broad assertion we have 
heard about every trade bill or trade vote that has come to the floor 
in the past years.
  They argue that any trade liberalization will lead to a reduction in 
our own labor and environmental standards, rather than encouraging an 
increase in the labor and environmental standards among the beneficiary 
countries. That attack on this legislation is wrong for three reasons.
  First, there is no evidence that trade has weakened our labor and 
environmental standards--quite the contrary. During the period from 
1970 to the present day, while trade as a percentage of American GDP 
more than doubled from 11 to 25 percent, our labor and environmental 
laws were strengthened. What we have witnessed has been the exact 
opposite of what the trade critics would have predicted. Our labor laws 
continue to provide strong protection to workers, and the reach of our 
workplace safety laws has continued to expand.
  The last 30 years witnessed the passage of landmark environmental 
legislation, enormous set-asides of wilderness areas, and significant 
improvements in air and water quality. We have seen sufficient progress 
on endangered species so that the President recently removed the bald 
eagle from the list of endangered species. Who would have thought of a 
more potent symbol of the progress we have made in the last 30 years. 
Have we done enough? No. There is still more we can do to encourage 
conservation and environmental protection. Based on the last 30 years 
of evidence, there is no reason to forgo the benefits of trade based on 
the errant assumption that trade will somehow undermine the basic 
fabric of our environmental law or encourage a race to the bottom.
  What has been true in the United States has also proved true 
elsewhere. The truth is that economic growth and a rising standard of 
living is a necessary predicate for higher labor and environmental 
standards, and trade is essential to both goals. What the most recent 
studies have shown is that air and water quality improve as per capita 
income increases. The growth in pollution declines as incomes rise. 
There should be no doubt, then, that poverty is the enemy of both labor 
and environmental standards and that both benefit from economic growth 
to which trade contributes.
  Third, there are sound reasons why higher labor and environmental 
standards will not lead to a race to the bottom, even in a world of 
expanding trade. Pollution control costs, even in the dirtiest of 
industries, account for less than 1 or 2 percent of total production 
costs. In other words, even in the dirtiest of industries, the cost of 
compliance with our environmental standards is not sufficient to 
persuade companies to invest in other countries simply to take 
advantage of lax environmental laws.
  Trade critics who argue that trade will devastate the environment 
tend to overlook that firms generally invest in the developing world's 
pollution havens to gain market access, not to take advantage of the 
lower environmental standards. In other words, the companies generally 
invest because their exports face tariffs averaging between 10 and 30 
percent, a cost disadvantage they can only overcome through investing 
on the other side of that tariff wall.

  Given those facts, we would be better off beating down high tariffs 
in the developing countries in order to allow the export of goods from 
clean factories in the United States, rather than encouraging trade 
restraints that lead to investment in pollution havens.
  Equally important, our companies tend to take their existing 
technology and production techniques with them, even when they do 
invest in pollution havens abroad, in order to get around the high 
tariff walls. They do not do this out of altruism. They do it because 
it makes good, cost-effective, economic sense.
  Our companies have found ways of producing in the United States that 
both allow them to comply with our environmental standards and remain 
globally competitive. We should be encouraging the export of those 
techniques of manufacturing wherever we can. But what those facts most 
assuredly do not mean is that trade has somehow led to a race to the 
bottom. In fact, trade appears to lead to a rising standard of living 
in environmental as well as economic terms.
  My colleagues say we can no longer compete in textiles and apparel 
because our producers compete with many countries in the world with far 
lower standards of living. They explicitly or implicitly argue that we 
must impose trade restraints in order to protect these industries and 
the associated jobs.
  Let me be blunt: There is no protection in protectionism. For every 
job we save through trade restraints, we lose many more in other 
sectors of the economy. As we have learned this past summer during the 
debate over quota legislation, saving one job in the steel industry by 
imposing trade restraints puts 40 jobs in the consuming and exporting 
industries at risk. Those who oppose this legislation do not favor the 
win-win outcome that the Finance Committee bill would create and the 
textile industry itself supports.
  Mr. MOYNIHAN. Will the distinguished chairman yield for a question?
  Mr. ROTH. I am happy to yield.
  Mr. MOYNIHAN. The Senator spoke of those who oppose this legislation. 
I believe we voted to move to this legislation by a vote of 90-8?
  Mr. ROTH. That is correct.

[[Page S13379]]

  Mr. MOYNIHAN. I believe this measure came out of the Finance 
Committee, under the Senator's leadership, unanimous, both parties?
  Mr. ROTH. The Senator is correct.
  Mr. MOYNIHAN. Would the Senator think I was out of range if I 
suggested there are 75 votes for this legislation as it is?
  Mr. ROTH. I think that is a fair statement.
  Mr. MOYNIHAN. Well, then doesn't the Senator think we should find a 
way around our self-imposed restraints and vote?
  Mr. ROTH. I couldn't agree with my colleague more. I wish we could 
proceed. I think this legislation is critically important. I think we 
have, as the Senator says, a vast majority on both sides of the aisle. 
As we have already said on many occasions, it has the strong support of 
the President.
  Mr. MOYNIHAN. Who is meeting this morning with the President of 
Nigeria who is here to talk about that.
  Mr. ROTH. I understand a number of the ambassadors from the countries 
in Africa that would be impacted with this legislation have been 
calling and telling people of the importance they attach to it. It 
would be a major setback, inexcusable for this legislation not to 
proceed.
  Mr. MOYNIHAN. Exactly, sir.
  Mr. ROTH. As I said, there is no protection in protectionism. For 
every job we save through trade restraints, we lose many more in other 
sectors of the economy.
  Those who oppose this legislation do not favor the win-win outcome 
that the Finance Committee's bill would create and the textile industry 
itself supports.
  Some of my colleagues would seem, instead, to prefer the ``lose-lose-
lose'' option of imposing a regressive form of taxation on the poorest 
in our society, lowering employment in the textile and apparel sector, 
and lowering employment throughout the economy.
  I want to reemphasize what I have been saying. It is not the chairman 
and it is not the ranking member of the Finance Committee that is 
telling you that the Senate bill would lead to higher sales and higher 
employment in the textile industry. No, it is the textile industry 
itself that is telling us the Senate bill would increase textile 
shipments by $8.8 billion over 5 years and increase textile-related 
employment by 121,000 jobs over the same period.
  That is a win-win outcome we should support. I urge my colleagues to 
support the amendment to the legislation.
  With that, I yield the floor.
  Mr. MOYNIHAN. Mr. President, it goes without saying that I wholly 
agree with the remarks and statements of our revered chairman. May I 
say, there is still hope. It is not over yet.
  Mr. HOLLINGS. Mr. President, I obtain the floor in order to thank my 
distinguished colleague from Illinois, Senator Fitzgerald. He is a 
banker, a financier. He is far more experienced in financial affairs 
than I, and he is on the other side of the aisle. His arrival now makes 
it bipartisan and I am very grateful to him. We had a bipartisan move 
with Senator Heinz and myself in passing section 13.301 of the Budget 
Act, which says you could not use Social Security--either the Congress 
or the President--in reporting a budget. That was approved by 98 
Senators in a bipartisan fashion.
  Yet the budgeters continue to ignore it. So I have been looking, 
since we lost Senator Heinz on that side of the aisle, for some 
assistance. We had otherwise the leadership of Senator Armstrong and 
Senator Boschwitz. We were in the extreme in 1989, for supporting a 
value-added tax, a 5-percent value-added tax, allocated to reducing the 
deficit and the national debt so we would not spend Social Security. In 
fact, we had eight votes in the Senate Budget Committee. We recommended 
again another VAT. We tried to pass other laws. But with respect to the 
distinguished Senator's statement that the Democrats have voted against 
Social Security several times, let me clarify that observation of his 
to the extent that we, right now, are in that same situation. Here now, 
the tree is filled up. You have veritably fast track; namely, you have 
a bill out from the committee with a substitute or leader's amendment 
or maybe they want to call it the amendment of the committee itself. 
But whatever they call it, it is the committee bill and you cannot 
amend it.
  When the tree is filled up that way on cloture, it will be difficult 
to get cloture because no one is allowed to offer amendments. We need 
someone to understand this and allow us to begin deliberating. Now, 
that is what we have. If this persists through tomorrow, I am hopeful, 
but I don't know because I am a minority of a minority of a minority 
here, that we can move forward. But it could very well occur that we 
may not get cloture tomorrow morning at 9:30, if that is when they call 
the vote. They said they didn't think there are any votes tonight, 
other than a continuing resolution, which we can voice vote. We may, 
but I doubt if we could get that vote.
  So the reason you don't vote cloture is because you want to try to 
get some amendments considered to discuss these issues. That was the 
situation each time they brought up that Social Security. I know better 
than any because I put in my amendment at the very beginning of the 
year, drawn, if you please, by the Social Security Administrator 
himself. We introduced it. It was referred under the rules, of course, 
of the Budget Committee. I have been on that Budget Committee since 
they started it as a Budget Committee in 1974, some 25 years. So I have 
been there. I have been chairman of the Budget Committee. I thought I 
could get a hearing. They don't want to talk about a true lockbox or 
taking it off budget. They will vote for a sense of the Senate. Then 
they will vote for the law and then totally ignore the law. And if you 
can put in my amendment in, as we have it propounded now in the Budget 
Committee, I can tell you here and now we really will have lockbox, and 
you won't be able to touch it.

  We won't have to debate whether or not we are. Everyone could see and 
understand it. That situation happened several times, and the majority 
was going to call it the lockbox. One proposal was made by the majority 
leader that allowed three amendments. We would bring it up, have three 
amendments considered with time agreements, and then vote.
  When they found out about my one amendment that was for a true 
lockbox that is in the Budget Committee, which they won't even give you 
a hearing on, they would not agree. We had to go ahead and vote against 
cloture. The distinguished Senator from Illinois calls that a vote 
against Social Security. Not at all. That is a vote, really, for Social 
Security.
  Tomorrow, when a substantial number vote, let's say, assuming against 
cloture, someone could say they voted against the trade bill. Not at 
all. They are for the trade bill. The distinguished minority leader has 
made that clear. The Senator from South Dakota is for this bill, but he 
is trying to protect the rights of Senators on both sides of the aisle 
to offer amendments. The Senator from Illinois was mistaken to 
characterize that as a vote against Social Security several times, 
saying, ``Why did you vote against it if you are sincere?'' We are 
sincere all right, to try to preserve Social Security.
  I was one of them and I will go immediately now to the observation 
made by my distinguished ranking member on the Finance Committee about 
90 votes to proceed. I was one of those 90. That doesn't mean you can 
pass the bill without even considering any amendments. When I voted to 
proceed, I voted to do just that--proceed to debate the amendments, 
vote upon them, and get to a final enactment thereof. I have several 
things that we want to bring up. I see other Members present.
  I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from North Dakota.
  Mr. DORGAN. Mr. President, I have watched with some interest in 
recent days the Senator from South Carolina holding forth on the floor 
of the Senate on trade issues. This isn't the first time. He has often 
come to the floor of the Senate to engage in interesting and robust 
debates about international trade.
  I also noticed that the bill that is before us, the House bill 
dealing with African trade, the African Growth and Opportunity Act, if 
you read it, reads like a lot of trade deals we have dealt with. It is 
kind of a NAFTA for Africa approach with trade adjustment assistance, 
CBI, and other things added to it.
  As I was thinking about all of this, I realized that nothing really 
changes very much. I guess it has been 4, 5, 6 or

[[Page S13380]]

7 years I have been here on the floor of the Senate talking about trade 
issues to no avail. The debate never changes.
  Those who come to the floor proposing a new trade initiative will 
speak only about their new trade initiative. They will refuse to speak 
at all, or refuse to address the residue and the problems resulting 
from the trade bills we have recently passed, NAFTA being one, United 
States-Canada being another, and GATT being a third. You never hear 
anybody willing to tackle the problems.
  I had a chart with me. It is lost in a pile of charts somewhere. But 
I wish I could show it. It shows the trade deficits. After several 
decades of ballooning Federal budget deficits and after getting those 
deficits under control, now we have another deficit. It is the trade 
deficit. The annual trade deficit on a chart is just spiking almost 
straight up. It is a devastating consequence of bad trade policy and a 
range of other things, but especially bad trade policy. Yes, the 
collapse of economies, or the difficulties of economies in Asia 
contribute to it, and there are some other things that contribute to 
it, but by and large this has been an abiding trade deficit that has 
been growing for a long period of time, and a chart would show a very 
significant spike in this deficit.
  It is serious. Our current account balance deficit as a result of 
this trade deficit is going up and up, and it is unsustainable. We 
can't continue to do this. Yet there is no discussion on the floor by 
those who bring trade legislation to the floor to say, well, let's talk 
about what is happening; let's talk about our current experience with 
our trade practices.
  It is not the case that I believe we should put a wall around our 
country, or we should restrict trade, or we ought to decide to in some 
way diminish trade. That is not the case at all. I believe, however, 
that after about 50 years of post-Second World War experience in trade, 
we ought to understand what is going on. For the first 25 years after 
the Second World War, our trade policy was exclusively foreign policy. 
They called it trade policy, but it wasn't trade policy; it was foreign 
policy. We used trade as a foreign policy instrument with which to help 
a range of other countries around the world.
  That was fine. We could beat any country virtually on any set of 
circumstances and any competition with one hand tied behind our back. 
We were bigger, tougher, stronger, and more able to compete. And we 
could essentially create all kinds of approaches that would be helpful 
to other countries in foreign policy, call it trade policy, and still 
win and still prevail.

  But the second 25 years after the Second World War, things were 
different, especially recently. Our trading partners have become 
shrewd, tough, economic competitors. This is not any longer, and should 
not be, about foreign policy. It ought to be about trade policy, about 
what makes sense for our country's interests and how to engage in 
policies with other countries that are mutually beneficial, yes, to 
them and also to us.
  As I listened to the Senator from South Carolina, I was thinking 
about something I told the Senate some many years ago. I had a young 
son who ordered an ant farm from a magazine. He is 12 now. I guess he 
was probably 5 years old. He saw this advertisement for an ant farm. It 
was a thing you ordered by mail. It was a container. It would hold 
sand. They sent you the container and the sand. They put the sand in 
the container. Then they sent you the ants separately. They said in the 
order to put the ants in the container. They said you should put that 
little vial of ants in the refrigerator for a while to slow them down a 
bit.
  So my son got all of this in the mail. He put these ants in the 
refrigerator and slowed them down a bit. He poured them into his ant 
farm and then put the top on. For, I don't know, a month or two, we 
watched these ants in the ant farm. There must have been 100 or 200 
ants in this little ant farm. You could watch them every day. They 
would go from one end of this little partition to the other hauling all 
of this sand back and forth, and back and forth, and nothing ever 
changed. I looked at those ants. I thought, I wonder what they are 
thinking, if they think; they just keep hauling this sand back and 
forth, and nothing ever changes.
  I thought the Senate is similar to that, especially on trade policy. 
You could put a blindfold on and earmuffs on, and for 7 years nothing 
would change--at least it hasn't in the 7 years I have been in the 
Senate. Back and forth, back and forth, never a change.
  Does anybody here have a debate about the provisions in NAFTA that 
lead to the terribly unfair trade in durum wheat? Did anybody ever hear 
of that? I have never heard of that. I have been down here and talked 
about it a lot. In fact, most people probably don't know much about 
durum wheat at all.
  Probably many of the expert staffers working on trade have no 
interest in and no knowledge of durum. They have no knowledge of durum. 
They certainly have no knowledge of semolina flour. If they eat pasta, 
they are eating semolina flour and durum wheat. Eighty percent of the 
durum wheat in America is produced in North Dakota. Anyone working on 
trade issues in the Senate and eating spaghetti or lasagna might well 
be eating something that came from a North Dakota durum field.
  After this country negotiated a trade agreement with Canada, we had a 
trade negotiator who reached an agreement with Canada and put it in 
writing to Members of Congress. He said in writing--Clayton Yeutter, 
our trade ambassador--there will not be an increase in the flow of 
grain back and forth across the border as a result of this agreement. 
That was a guarantee in writing to Members of Congress. It wasn't worth 
the paper on which it was written. It wasn't worth anything. The fact 
is, the trade agreement was enacted by Congress after it was 
negotiated. It was sent here and voted on by Congress and prevailed. I 
did not support it.
  Immediately, we had an avalanche of Canadian durum coming across our 
border. That durum undercut our farmers' prices, took a couple hundred 
million dollars out of the pockets of our farmers in a year, and has 
happened time and time again. This past year was the largest amount of 
durum, over 20 million bushels in the first 7 months of this year; for 
6 months, up over 80 percent.
  People say it doesn't matter; that is technical; that is detail. That 
is fine for someone wearing a suit and tie, but try farming, raising 
durum, and having the price collapse and see what it does to your 
income and wonder whether it is important. Wonder whether you 
understood it and wonder whether you had a responsibility when you talk 
of trade the next time or talk of the trade problems you caused for the 
hard-working people in our country. Wonder about the trade problems you 
caused them by the previous trade agreements.
  The same agreement, NAFTA, which has opened the floodgates for the 
grain coming in that has terribly hurt the family farmers, was 
advertised to Members, as the Senator from South Carolina knows, as 
being a trade agreement that would create several hundred thousand new 
jobs in our country. It didn't turn out quite that way. When NAFTA was 
negotiated with Canada, Mexico, and the United States, we had a trade 
surplus with Mexico and a small trade deficit with Canada--not so small 
but a trade deficit with Canada. So this Congress passes NAFTA, 
approves NAFTA. The trade surplus with Mexico has now been changed from 
a surplus to a $16 billion annual deficit just in the first 8 months of 
this year alone. The trade deficit with Canada has more than doubled.
  In a study by the Economic Policy Institute, Rob Scott says NAFTA has 
resulted in a net loss of over 440,000 jobs in this country.
  But the NAFTA supporters advertised that ``a lot of new jobs will be 
created.'' The fact is, a lot of jobs were destroyed.
  ``It will be good for our country.'' In fact, big trade balances that 
were positive were turned to very large trade balances that are 
negative for our country. Yet the same folks continue to peddle the 
same merchandise on the floor of Senate.
  Just make this trade agreement and somehow it will be better. My 
response is to say if we are going to talk about trade, I am perfectly 
willing to listen and be reasonable about all of these things. I want 
to help Africa. I want to help the Caribbean nations. I want to reach 
out and do all those things. But,

[[Page S13381]]

I want it to be fair. I want our producers to have fair competition. I 
am willing to retain these, but I refuse to have people come to the 
Senate and say: Here is our agenda and we demand you respond to that. 
And we don't intend at all to address the problems we have created in 
the previous trade agreements. To us, they are irrelevant. We don't 
intend to address them. They don't matter. They don't exist, and we 
don't intend to talk about them.

  The remedies that normally would have been available to fight the 
unfair trade have been traded away in previous trade agreements. Those 
who have lost their jobs and farms find little solace in those who say: 
``We have a new agreement now and we don't intend to talk about the old 
problems.''
  It seems to me we ought to talk about some of the problems that exist 
in previous trade agreements and fix them. The quickest way for 
President Clinton and, for that matter, the committee chairman and the 
two managers of this bill, to have a thoughtful discussion about new 
trade initiatives is to agree to have a thoughtful discussion about the 
problems created by the old trade policies and begin to fix them. If we 
are not willing to fix some of the mistakes in previous trade 
agreements, we are not going to get consensus to move to new issues. I 
told the President the best way for him to get fast-track authority 
from the Congress is to show a willingness to fix the problems that 
have existed in NAFTA, the U.S.-Canada Free Trade Agreement and GATT.
  When a ship pulls up at a dock in California loaded with grain that 
is dumped in this country--clearly illegally--and there is no remedy to 
address it, our farmers say, how can grain be shipped from a European 
port to a dock in California and be sold for half the price of the 
grain that is being sold here, even after transportation is paid? How 
can that be? The answer is it is unfair trade and there is no remedy to 
deal with it and you can't stop it.
  That is why producers in this country are saying to those who are 
pushing new trade agreements, help fix some of the trade problems we 
have. When that is done, we will listen. We will work with you. We will 
address some of these additional trade issues. It is not acceptable to 
simply ignore the misery, the suffering, and the difficulty that so 
many producers in this country experience because of unfair trade 
policies. It is not fair to ignore them. We must get our priorities 
straight.
  I find it fascinating that some who have been so concerned about 
deficits during the years I have been in Congress are those who are the 
least concerned about trade deficits. Japan, $50 or $60 billion a year, 
every year. Want to buy a T-bone steak in Tokyo? Does anybody in this 
Chamber know what kind of a tariff will be imposed on a T-bone steak 
coming from the United States and sold in a Tokyo restaurant? Does 
anybody know the answer to that? I bet not. After a trade agreement 
with Tokyo in order to get more U.S. beef into Tokyo, we have a 50-
percent tariff on all U.S. beef going into Tokyo which diminishes but 
snaps back if the quantity increases. Today there is a 40.5-percent 
tariff on every pound of American beef going into Tokyo.

  That is considered a failure in any set of circumstances in any trade 
negotiation. But our trade negotiators, when they reached that deal, 
thought they won the Olympics. They were feasting and rejoicing, 
breaking their arms patting each other on the back. It was a big deal.
  It is a failure. A 40.5-percent tariff in foreign markets for our 
beef is a failure. After all of this posturing and genuflecting and 
trade talks, the average tariff confronting our products going overseas 
from the agricultural sector is nearly 50 percent.
  We will have some discussions in Seattle in December with our trade 
negotiators. We have been talking with our trade negotiators and we 
hope very much for once we could win. Will Rogers once said, the United 
States of America has never lost a war and never won a conference. He 
surely must have been talking about our trade negotiators.
  We must start standing up for the interests of American producers and 
American workers not in a way that prohibits competition. We can 
compete; our farmers can compete. They are willing to do that. But they 
sure are not willing to compete when the ground rules are not fair.
  We end a negotiation with Europe on the issue of grain. Let me go 
back to grain because I represent a farm State. We didn't even cut 
European grain export subsidies that are multiples of ours. We say that 
is fair competition. I don't think so. In my hometown, that is not fair 
competition. It is the best they could get. The result is a trade 
agreement that is unfair, a trade agreement that hurts our producers.
  Senator Roth from Delaware is managing this bill. He is a Senator for 
whom I have a great deal of respect. I have worked with him. I like 
him. We are friends. He comes to the floor and I am sure he believes 
strongly in this bill.

  Senator Moynihan, legislative giant and great thinker, comes to the 
floor. He believes strongly in this bill. The Senator from South 
Carolina believes differently. I believe differently in these issues.
  The way to deal with them is to have amendments offered and have 
votes. One would think an elementary lesson in politics is that 
politics is a process of making choices. You make choices by voting. 
But we have this vineyard I described earlier that has been planted by 
the majority leader with a whole series of vines now. He has decided he 
is the gatekeeper of the vineyard. These are his vines. He will decide 
who comes through the gate and picks the fruit. His friends will be 
able to do that. ``My friends will get in, they will offer their 
amendments, but I will not allow any other amendment because that's a 
nuisance.''
  That is not the way to legislate. That is not an appropriate way to 
do business in the Senate. It is an appropriate way to do business in 
the House. The majority leader served there. I served there. We 
understand that. In the House, you have a Rules Committee, you have a 
1-minute rule, you have a 5-minute rule, and everything happens by the 
clock. That is the way the House works.
  When the framers of the Constitution created this Senate, they 
created a different body. I guess they cannot jettison the habits--they 
die hard--the habits of those who served in the House and who now want 
to control the Senate in the same manner. But the Senator from South 
Carolina, for example, has every right, in my judgment, to come to this 
floor, when this bill is before the Senate, to offer amendments and say 
to the Members of the Senate, both Republicans and Democrats: Here are 
my ideas. Here is the merit I ascribe to my ideas. Here is how I feel 
about them. Here is my passion. Let's have a vote about it up or down, 
yes or no. I am not afraid of that.
  What we can do, it seems to me, is have a system in this Senate where 
we allow full, free, and open debate. Unfortunately, that does not 
always happen. So we have this legislative tree.
  Earlier we had a filibuster on the motion to proceed. But we had 
cloture the motion to proceed. We will move on. Now we have this 
legislative tree which is totally unacceptable. At some point, I hope 
we can do this in a different manner. The best way for this Senate to 
act is for people with ideas to come together.
  This week I worked with Senator Brownback on a bill we introduced 
dealing with wireless telephones. I have been working with Senator 
Craig on a WTO trade caucus. I have been working with a range of others 
on the Republican side on legislation dealing with telecommunications. 
That is the best way to legislate: to find good ideas and work together 
to get them done. But that is not the way the Senate is working these 
days. In many ways that is regrettable because the public is not well 
served by this kind of parliamentary tactic we find ourselves in now.
  I yield the floor and will listen to the Senator from South Carolina.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr. Bennett). The Senator from South Carolina.
  Mr. HOLLINGS. Mr. President, I thank my distinguished colleague, the 
Senator from North Dakota, Mr. Dorgan. He knows this particular subject 
intimately. He is an expert in the field. He is right on target on the 
broad observation that it is very unfortunate we cannot debate trade--
just generally speaking.
  I am going to make a few comments in just a little while with respect 
to

[[Page S13382]]

the overall idea that the software industry, computerization and 
otherwise, is the engine, this is the engine that has gotten America 
this wonderful boom of its economy. It has for the stock market, but 
not necessarily for the strength of the economy. We will have to get 
into that.
  There are a few loose ends. Just recently, for example, the 
distinguished Senator from New York, as I understood it, questioned the 
matter of jobs and the statistics used. So I have the statistics from 
the Bureau of Labor Statistics, dated October 15, at 12:05. We have 
lost 17,700 textile jobs and 13,500 apparel jobs, for a total of 
textile and apparel jobs lost in South Carolina of 31,200, and a 
national loss of 424,000. That is the authority for the statistics, the 
facts I have been using.
  Further, I have heard the debate. I want to be sure that it does not 
slip my memory. The distinguished Senator from Delaware came up a 
moment ago, the chairman of our committee, and said: ``Really, the 
reason for the loss of jobs is high tariffs. That is why they go to get 
the protection of high tariffs.''
  I will try to get to see him later. Maybe he is joining me in my 
position because we certainly then do not want reduce the tariffs. I 
ask unanimous consent to have printed in the Record the text of the 
tariffs in the Caribbean and the text of the tariffs in Africa.
  There being no objection, the material was ordered to be printed in 
the Record, as follows:


             textile tariffs in the caribbean (As High As)

       Dominican Republic: 43% (Includes 8% VAT).
       El Salvador: 37.5% (Includes 12% VAT).
       Honduras: 35% (Includes 10% VAT).
       Guatemala: 40% (Includes 10% VAT).
       Costa Rica: 39% (Includes 13% VAT).
       Haiti: 29%.
       Jamaica: 40% (Includes 15% general consumption tax).
       Nicaragua: 35% (Includes 15% VAT).
       Trinidad & Tobago: 40% (Includes 15% VAT).


                       textile tariffs in africa

       Southern Africa Customs Union (South Africa, Botswana, 
     Lesotho, Namibia and Swaziland): 74% (Includes 14% VAT for 
     South Africa).
       Central African Republic: 30%.
       Cameroon: 30%.
       Chad: 30%.
       Congo: 30%.
       Ethiopia: 80%.
       Gabon: 30%.
       Ghana: 25%.
       Kenya: 80% (Includes 18% VAT).
       Mauritius: 88%.
       Nigeria: 55% (includes 5% VAT).
       Tanzania: 40%.
       Zimbabwe: 200%.
  Mr. HOLLINGS. Mr. President, we have made that point. With NAFTA, we 
at least eliminated the tariffs. We had the side agreements on labor 
and environment, we had reciprocities, and we cut down on the tariffs. 
But here we have no reciprocity. There is no tariff elimination. 
According to the argument propounded by the distinguished chairman of 
the Finance Committee, since Zimbabwe has a 200-percent tariff, all of 
the textile industry should move there immediately, under his 
reasoning.
  The truth is, with the elimination of the tariffs, the opposite is 
true. With the elimination of the tariffs the investment has gone 
south. That sucking sound, as Ross Perot talked about, I can hear it. 
They can't hear it but I have heard it, 31,200 textile and apparel jobs 
in my State since NAFTA. I continue to hear the sound. I want to 
emphasize that.
  Further, the statement was made by the distinguished Senator from 
Iowa that we had a 50-year history of removing barriers. Ha. Not at 
all. Not at all. We have had a 50-year history of removing our 
barriers, using foreign trade as foreign aid. But take textiles alone--
we have the book. This is ``Foreign Regulations Affecting U.S. Textile 
and Apparel Exports''; from 1994.
  Maybe it is on account of me because I used to use this book. Over at 
Commerce they are not putting it out, but you can get the individual 
countries and make up an even bigger book--because it has gone up. It 
has not gone down. They said ``50 years of liberal trade policies 
eliminating or reducing tariffs.'' The war was over in 1945. To 1995 
would be 50 years; to 1994, 49 years. That is 49 years of not reducing 
foreign textile tariffs and not reducing all the other tariffs and 
nontariff barriers.
  You cannot get in and do business, still, in Japan. If you want to 
sell textiles or do anything about textiles in Korea, you have to get a 
vote of the industry. Everybody knows Korea have used the Japanese 
system of controlled capitalism, and it works. That was the American 
system under Alexander Hamilton. We point out time and again to the 
Brits, once we won our freedom in the earliest days--David Ricardo, the 
doctrine of comparative advantage; Adam Smith, open markets, let's go 
right now. The Brits corresponded with Hamilton saying: You fledgling 
colony, now that you have won your freedom, let's trade back to the 
mother country with what you produce best and we will trade back with 
you what we produce best.
  Hamilton said in a book ``Reports On Manufacturers''--bug off. He 
said: We are not going to remain your colony.
  The second bill that passed this Congress, from which I stand here 
this evening, on July 4, 1789--the first bill being, of course, the 
Seal of the United States--the second bill on the 4th of July, 1789, a 
tariff bill of 50 percent on 60 articles. We started and built this 
economic giant with controlled capitalism, with protectionism. It is 
emulated--and I do not blame them, it has worked--in Japan.
  It is not about being fair. These American politicians whine: You 
have to be fair, be fair.
  Come on. You have to be realistic. Trade is trade--a fair price for a 
sound article. It is not a giveaway. Japan is working. Its system is 
working.
  All these articles have been written. That is why I want everybody to 
read Eamonn Fingleton's ``Hard Industry.'' I cannot put the whole book 
in the Record, but I will make reference to it in a minute.
  Japan, with 125 million citizens and the United States with 260 
million citizens, still outproduces us. They are outproducing us. They 
have a stronger economy. They have a better savings rate. There may be 
one or two banks bankrupt, but a lot of them did not go bankrupt. They 
readjusted. They continued to take over market share.
  This past year, they have taken over, again, more of the American 
automobile industry than the American manufacturers. It is working. If 
I were there, I would run it the same way. I would not run away saying 
they are being unfair. We are being downright stupid.
  The Senator from North Dakota pointed out the observation of Will 
Rogers: We win every war but lose every conference because we run 
around like we are fat, rich, and happy. That is exactly what we heard 
from the Senator from Delaware, that we have this booming economy. Not 
so. We have a $300 billion deficit in the balance of trade and we 
increased the debt again at the end of the fiscal year. We spent $127 
billion more than we took in and one important economic indicator--the 
consumer confidence index--is falling. Chairman Greenspan is raising 
interest rates, and our nation has lost textile jobs to the extent that 
two-thirds of the clothing I am looking at is represented in imports. I 
am fighting today to maintain the one-third.
  This industry is very productive and very competitive but cannot 
remain so if this bill passes. Within a 5-year period, we are going to 
have enough problems with respect to the phasing out of the Multifiber 
Arrangement. So we have to batten down the hatches now and stop putting 
in these giveaway programs to the Caribbean and to the sub-Sahara on 
the basis of helping the Caribbean and the sub-Sahara people.
  I wanted to put in the book of foreign firms located in Mexico in the 
fabric field. They said it was too many pages. The reason I wanted to 
do that, of course, is the fabric field abandoned the apparel industry. 
Now that industry is locating jobs out of the U.S. and that sucking 
sound of jobs you hear I am trying to prevent from becoming a roar.
  Maybe they are listening because I received a letter from ATMI. I had 
not seen this letter. It is dated October 1, 1999. There are two dates. 
September 28, 1999:

       Dear Members of Congress: On behalf of the American Textile 
     Manufacturers Institute, I would like to share our views 
     regarding the Caribbean Basin [Initiative] and the Africa 
     Growth and Opportunity Act that was approved by the Senate 
     Finance Committee . . . and to express, for the record, our 
     position on any trade package that might include the 
     measures.

  Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the letter be printed in 
the Record.

[[Page S13383]]

  There being no objection, the letter was ordered to be printed in the 
Record, as follows:

                                           Milliken & Company,

                                               September 28, 1999.
     Re CBI, Africa trade legislation.
       Dear Members of Congress: On behalf of the American Textile 
     Manufacturers Institute (ATM), I would like to share our 
     views regarding the Caribbean Basin trade bill (S. 1389) and 
     the Africa Growth and Opportunity Act (S. 1387) as approved 
     by the Senate Finance Committee, and to express, for the 
     record, our position on any trade package that might include 
     these measures.
       On CBI, ATMI supports the yarn-forward, 807A/809 approach 
     embodied in S. 1389. This approach, which has also been 
     proposed by the Administration, would extend duty-free, 
     quota-free treatment to apparel from the region only if it is 
     made of U.S. yarn and U.S. fabric, and U.S. thread of fabric 
     shipped to the region in roll form. It would ensure that 
     benefits accrue to all sectors U.S. apparel manufacturers, 
     the CBI countries, U.S. importers and retailers, and U.S. 
     textile and fiber producers while harming none of them. No 
     other CBI proposal strikes such a balance. And, in the 
     current political climate, no other CBI proposal stands a 
     better chance of being enacted.
       ATMI cannot, however, support Senate passage of the African 
     Growth and Opportunity Act (S. 1387) in any form as a stand-
     alone bill or as part of a trade package because of the 
     dangers posed by a conference with the House. While S. 1387 
     includes critical U.S. yarn and fiber requirements, the 
     House-passed Africa bill (H.R. 434) will promote massive 
     illegal transshipments of Asian and apparel products through 
     the 48 nations of Sub-Saharan Africa to gain duty-free, 
     quota-free access to the U.S. market. The result will be that 
     billions of dollars of illegal Asian, particularly Chinese 
     transshipments will enter the U.S. at zero duty, resulting in 
     job losses for thousands of workers, many of whom are 
     African-American, in the U.S. textile, apparel and fiber 
     industries. The House Africa bill is so fatally flawed that 
     any compromise other than the bill approved by the Senate 
     Finance Committee would be extremely harmful to our industry.
       Therefore, without firm assurance that the Senate Finance 
     Committee's Africa bill will be maintained in conference 
     without change, we remain opposed to any package containing 
     the Africa bill, even it were also to include the Finance 
     Committee's yarn-forward, 807A/809 CBI bill. For as 
     beneficial as an 807A/809 CBI bill would be for all the 
     sectors in the textile complex from fiber all the way through 
     retail, it would not overcome the price of a bad Africa bill. 
     Simply put, the Sub-Saharan Africa bill is a poison pill it 
     is so badly flawed and would exact such a heavy toll on the 
     U.S. textile industry at we must oppose it, even at the 
     expense of a balanced and viable CBI bill.
       Accordingly, ATM encourages you to oppose any trade 
     legislation containing a Sub-Saharan Africa trade bill and 
     support passage of the Finance Committee's CBI bill (yarn-
     forward, 807A/809) apart from the Africa bill.
           Sincerely,
                                                       Doug Ellis,
     President.
                                  ____

                                                  American Textile


                                      Manufacturers Institute,

                                                  October 4, 1999.
     Re Update on trade and legislative issues.

     To Chief Executive Officers of ATMI Member Companies.
       Dear Members: ATMI's Board of Directors discussed a number 
     of key trade and legislative issues at its fall meeting last 
     month. I want to take this opportunity to inform you of those 
     discussions and to review ATMI's positions on these issues.
       One of the key issues discussed at the meeting was the 
     pending Caribbean enhancement legislation, often referred to 
     as the CBI (Caribbean Basin Initiative) bill. Presentations 
     by John Reilly of Nathan Associates and Fernando Silva of 
     Kurt Salmon Associates indicated that the U.S. textile 
     industry will benefit most from a bill that requires 
     Caribbean apparel to use U.S. fabrics made of U.S. yarns in 
     order to gain quota-free and duty-free access to the U.S. 
     market. That approach is contained in the Senate Finance 
     Committee's bill (S. 1389), but not in the bill reported by 
     the House Ways and Means Committee. The Senate bill also 
     requires that if the U.S. fabric is cut in the Caribbean the 
     apparel must be assembled with U.S.-formed thread.
       The Senate is likely to vote on this bill within the next 
     three weeks, and it will probably be considered together with 
     the Sub-Saharan Africa free trade bill.
       The Sub-Saharan bill was also discussed by the Board and, 
     as noted below, the Board's previous decision to oppose Sub-
     Saharan legislation was reiterated. Even though the Senate 
     Finance Committee version of the Sub-Saharan bill requires 
     U.S. yarns and fabrics, as with the Caribbean bill, the 
     House-passed Sub-Saharan bill would be so damaging to the 
     U.S. textile industry that ATMI's Board remains committed to 
     opposing Sub-Saharan legislation. The risk of a compromise 
     between the House and Senate versions that would still be 
     damaging to the U.S. industry has made this position 
     necessary.
       After extensive discussion, the Board voted to reaffirm its 
     support for the Senate CBI bill and opposition to the Sub-
     Saharan Africa bill as follows: ``The Board of Directors 
     reaffirms its current position on CBI parity and the Sub-
     Saharan Africa Bill and unconditionally opposes the CBI bill 
     approved by the House ways and Means Committee''.
       Other trade/legislative issues discussed were reform of the 
     trade rules governing imports from the Northern Mariana 
     Islands, China's attempt to join the World Trade Organization 
     (WTO), and the new round of WTO trade negotiations. Following 
     is a summary of ATMI's positions on each, which were not 
     changed by the Board:
       The Board resolution on China's accession to the WTO 
     approved by the Board on March 11, 1999 is as follows:
       The ATMI Board holds as a pre-condition for its support for 
     China's accession to the WTO the following:
       A. The reduction or elimination of tariff and non-tariff 
     barriers to its textile and apparel market that will result 
     in effective market access to all WTO exporting countries.
       B. China must also adhere to equitable conditions of 
     competition regarding: 1. Worker's rights; 2. Environmental 
     preservation; 3. Dumping, countervailing duties (subsidies); 
     and, 4. Transparency.
       C. China must go through the full ten-year integration 
     schedule out of the quota system as every other WTO member 
     country.
       WTO Negotiations--The U.S. should seek the following as 
     part of a new round of WTO negotiations that will be kicked 
     off at the WTO meeting in Seattle in December:
       No cuts of U.S. Textile/apparel tariffs:
       Access to key textile/apparel markets, which those 
     countries committed to provide in the previous round of WTO/
     GATT negotiations;
       Maintain U.S. laws against foreign unfair trade practices 
     (dumping subsidies) without any weakening;
       No acceleration of the phaseout of textile/apparel quotas.
       Northern Marianas--ATMI supports bills (H.R. 1621 and S. 
     922) that will close a loophole and prevent apparel made in 
     the Northern Marianas from being labeled ``Made in the 
     U.S.A.'' and from entering the U.S. duty-free and quota-free. 
     For more information and to contact your representatives and 
     senators on this, please see the excellent internet site 
     www.takepride.org.
 I hope this provides you with a useful update of key trade/
     legislative issues. I urge each of you to continue to contact 
     your congressional representatives in the House and Senate to 
     support our position.
       Please call me, Carlos Moore or Doug Bulcao of our staff if 
     you have any questions or information about these issues.
           Sincerely,
                                                       Doug Ellis,
                                                        President.

  Mr. HOLLINGS. I do not want to mislead or misquote. They say they are 
for the CBI part of the bill. I quote from the letter in the third 
paragraph:

       ATMI cannot, however, support Senate passage of the African 
     Growth and Opportunity Act in any form as a stand-alone bill 
     or as part of a trade package because of the dangers posed by 
     a conference with the House. While S. 1387 includes critical 
     U.S. yarn and fiber requirements, the House-passed Africa 
     bill will promote massive illegal transshipments of Asian and 
     apparel products through the 48 nations of sub-Sahara Africa 
     to gain duty-free, quota-free access to the U.S. market. The 
     result will be that billions of dollars of illegal Asian 
     particularly Chinese transshipments will enter the U.S. at 
     zero duty resulting in job losses for thousands of workers, 
     many of whom are African American, in the U.S. textile 
     apparel and fiber industries.
       The House Africa bill is so fatally flawed that any 
     compromise, other than the bill approved by the Senate 
     Finance Committee, would be extremely harmful to our 
     industry. Therefore, without firm assurance that the Senate 
     Finance Committee's African bill will be maintained in 
     conference without change, we remain opposed to any package 
     containing the African bill even if they were to also include 
     the Finance Committee's yarn forward 807A/809 CBI bill.

  That would have saved me days in this debate because we are using the 
same authority. I wish we could have the sandwich board back up. They 
were saying the ATMI, representing all of the textile industry, will 
support my position.
  Let's say they oppose half of my position; namely, the CBI. I at 
least have support from my own ATMI for the position I have taken. I am 
beginning to feel a little strength this afternoon where we are picking 
up a little speed. Maybe I can get the Senator from Florida to support 
me. I am going to try my best because I want everyone to understand 
just exactly what was being talked about by the distinguished Senator 
from North Dakota with respect to the overall trade.
  We are finding out with respect to agriculture, where I think it 
would almost be an embarrassment to ask for another subsidy for 
agriculture--I support agriculture. Everybody knows it. But we have to 
be up front and lay it on the line.
  We have magnificent agriculture, not on account of market forces but 
on account of Government forces. They are

[[Page S13384]]

saying market forces, free market. They always give me that when I 
bring up my textile bill, and they have, what? The land itself.
  We had our friend--Sen. Dale Bumpers--the Senator from Arkansas, talk 
about the leases ranchers can get for grazing lands to get their wool.
  I understand the distinguished ABC announcer who lives in New Mexico 
has a mohair subsidy. I know the telephone is subsidized with the co-
ops. Electricity is subsidized.
  These producers have been getting price supports. They get export 
promotion, trade promotion, and everything else like that. If it rains 
they get help. If it dries up, they get a drought, they get help.
  With durum wheat and these so-called free trade market forces, we 
have had an amendment introduced on this particular bill for trade 
adjustment assistance.
  So you can see the article by Mort Zuckerman of October 18 in U.S. 
News & World Report states:

       We are becoming two nations. The prosperous are rapidly 
     getting more prosperous and the poor are slowly getting 
     poorer. George W. Bush did well to rebuke his party when 
     House Republicans maneuvered to balance the budget by 
     proposing to delay the earned income tax credit for the 
     working poor--paying it in monthly installments rather than 
     an annual lump sum. ``I don't think they ought to balance the 
     budget on the backs of the poor,'' Bush said. Instead, it is 
     time for aspiring leaders to ponder how the two nations might 
     more closely become one.
       The American economy is growing dramatically. But this 
     prosperity is being distributed very unevenly. The America 
     that is doing well is doing very well indeed. But most 
     benefits have gone to those who work in industries where the 
     main product is information. The losers have been the 
     producers of tangible goods and personal services--even 
     teachers and health care providers. The high-tech information 
     economy has been growing at approximately 10 times the rate 
     of the older industrial economy. It has enjoyed substantial 
     job growth, the highest productivity gains (about 30 percent 
     a year), and bigger profits. It can therefore afford bigger 
     wage gains (about four times that of the older economy). And 
     this wage gap is likely to widen for years to come.
       The rich get richer. The concentration of wealth is even 
     more dramatic. New York University economist Edward Wolff 
     points out that the top 20 percent of Americans account for 
     more than 100 percent of the total growth in wealth from 1983 
     to 1997 while the bottom 80 percent lost 7 percent. Another 
     study found that the top 1 percent saw their after-tax income 
     jump 115 percent in the past 22 years. The top fifth have 
     seen an after-tax increase of 43 percent during the same 
     period while the bottom fifth of all Americans--including 
     many working mothers--have seen their after-tax incomes fall 
     9 percent. The result is that 4 out of 5 households--some 217 
     million people--will take home a thinner slice of the 
     economic pie than they did 22 years ago.

  Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that article be printed in its 
entirety in the Record.
  There being no objection, the article was ordered to be printed in 
the Record, as follows:

           [From the U.S. News & World Report, Oct. 18, 1999]

                            A Nation Divided

                       (By Mortimer B. Zuckerman)


     What to do about the ever widening gulf between rich and poor?

       We are becoming two nations. The prosperous are rapidly 
     getting more prosperous and the poor are slowly getting 
     poorer. George W. Bush did well to rebuke his party when 
     House Republicans maneuvered to balance the budget by 
     proposing to delay the earned income tax credit for the 
     working poor--paying it in monthly installments rather than 
     an annual lump sum. ``I don't think they ought to balance the 
     budget on the backs of the poor,'' Bush said. Instead, it is 
     time for aspiring leaders to ponder how the two nations might 
     more closely become one.
       The American economy is growing dramatically. But this 
     prosperity is being distributed very unevenly. The America 
     that is doing well is doing very well indeed. But most 
     benefits have gone to those who work in industries where the 
     main product is information. The losers have been the 
     producers of tangible goods and personal services--even 
     teachers and health care providers. The high-tech information 
     economy has been growing at approximately 10 times the rate 
     of the older industrial economy. It has enjoyed substantial 
     job growth, the highest productivity gains (about 30 percent 
     a year), and bigger profits. It can therefore afford bigger 
     wage gains (about four times that of the older economy). And 
     this wage gap is likely to widen for years to come.
       The rich get richer. The concentration of wealth is even 
     more dramatic. New York University economist Edward Wolff 
     points out that the top 20 percent of Americans account for 
     more than 100 percent of the total growth in wealth from 1983 
     to 1997 while the bottom 80 percent lost 7 percent. Another 
     study found that the top 1 percent saw their after-tax income 
     jump 115 percent in the past 22 years. The top fifth have 
     seen an after-tax increase of 43 percent during the same 
     period while the bottom fifth of all Americans--including 
     many working mothers--have seen their after-tax incomes fall 
     9 percent. The result is that 4 out of 5 households--some 217 
     million people--will take home a thinner slice of the 
     economic pie than they did 22 years ago.
       There are those who point out that these income figures do 
     not fully reflect the improvement in the standard of living 
     and say that attention should be paid to what Americans 
     own, what they buy, and how they live. A fair point. Two 
     economists, W. Michael Cox and Richard Alm, have revealed 
     that each person in the average household today has 814 
     square feet of living space compared with 478 square feet 
     in 1970; that 62 percent of all households own two or more 
     vehicles compared with 29 percent back then; that the 
     number of gas ranges has increased sixfold, air travel 
     four times, and the median household wealth--i.e., the 
     familiy right in the middle--has jumped dramatically. Even 
     given such improvements in life quality, our public policy 
     must not exacerbate the disproportionate concentrations of 
     wealth.
       Fortunately, Americans are pragmatists. They know that what 
     you earn depends on what you learn, especially in a digital 
     economy; so 83 percent of our children now complete four 
     years of high school, compared with 55 percent in 1970. This 
     is good news. But vast numbers of people feel marginalized in 
     an information-based economy. For too many, work no longer 
     provides the kinds of wages and promotions that allow them to 
     achieve economic success or security. Wage increases do not 
     substantially increase their real income, so they have to 
     work longer hours, get a higher-paying shift, or find another 
     job. These are the people who are particularly concerned 
     about the benefits they stand to gain from Medicare and 
     Social Security. If they do manage to put together a 
     successful strategy to survive, they should not be hit with 
     sudden shocks--like the denial of the lump-sum tax credit.
       Bush may have discomfited his Republican colleagues, but 
     his words served to remind that they are out of touch with 
     the realities of life for so many Americans. He later 
     softened his criticism, but it is time, nevertheless, for a 
     more generous leadership from the House Republicans. They 
     should not berate Bush. Indeed, they may well find themselves 
     in his debt should his appeal to the center of American 
     politics provide them the coattails they will need when 
     voters head to the polls in just over a year.

  Mr. HOLLINGS. I emphasize:

       The top fifth have seen an after-tax increase of 43 percent 
     during the same period, while the bottom fifth of all 
     Americans--including many working mothers--have seen their 
     after-tax incomes fall 9 percent.

  Fall 9 percent? Disappear. That is the issue in the bill before us. 
That is why the Senator from South Carolina takes the floor, because 
they are going to disappear. You have seen exactly what causes that 
disappearance. It is so-called free trade, free trade--the CBI. We are 
all for liberal free trade.
  We can sit around, as politicians, and we can wonderfully agree, in a 
bipartisan fashion, on this high standard of living. Before you can 
open up X manufacturing, you have to have clean air, clean water, 
minimum wage, Medicare, Medicaid, safe working place, safe machinery, 
plant closing notice, parental leave--all of these ramifications of the 
high standard of living that Republicans support, that Democrats 
support. But then when you open it up, without protection of your 
economic strength--your industrial backbone--you begin to hollow it 
out, and see free trade, free trade, you can go, for 58 cents an hour, 
down to--someone used the figure 82 cents an hour--to Mexico with none 
of those requirements.
  I went down to Mexico. I crossed into Tijuana. And the mayor saw me. 
He said: Senator, I want you to meet with 12 people. I said: Well, yes. 
I am down here, and you have been nice enough to come out. I will be 
glad to.
  I was looking at all the different industries, of course, and talking 
to the industrialists themselves, not politicians. But the mayor was 
very courteous, so I met with them in a little grouping. And in a short 
word, what happened was--this is about 4 years ago--they had a heavy 
rain at the end of the year and the beginning of the new year. And it 
flooded and washed down these little hovels.
  There are 100,000 people out in this valley of hard dirt. For a place 
to live, they take five garage doors and put them together. There are 
no streets. There are no power lines. There is a little electric wire, 
but that isn't sufficient other than to hold a light. It cannot run the 
TV. They have a battery to

[[Page S13385]]

operate the TV. It is a terrible, miserable existence. But they are 
proud people, and they work, and they try to get their children to 
school.
  So when the rain fell, they all got bogged down--they missed a day of 
work. So they went to the plant the next day, trying to hold on to 
their garage door housing, and they found out, under the work rules in 
Mexico, they were going to be docked another 3 days. So they lost 4 
days' pay. That sort of got them a little discouraged with this plant 
that had moved down from California making these plastic coat hangers.
  A month passed in February. These workers did not have any protection 
whatsoever on the inside with the manufacturing--as we talk about with 
safe machinery and a safe working place--and something broke and flew 
into a worker's eye, which he lost. Then the workers became more 
concerned.
  But on May 1, they had a favorite supervisor. She was expecting. She 
went to the front office and said: I'm sorry, I'm not doing well. I'm 
sick. I'm going to have to go home. They said: No, you're not. You stay 
in here and work or else you are not going to have a job. So she 
stayed, worked, and miscarried.
  Then the employees said: We are going up to California, and we are 
going to get a union. You know what they did? They went up there and 
got a lawyer in Los Angeles and found out that they had a union.
  These maquiladora owners are clever enough. When they move down, they 
fill out the papers, saying that they have a union. And the papers are 
there but the workers never see a shop steward. They never saw a union 
man, or anybody else around the plant; never met them. No one was ever 
there. But they swap monies amongst themselves to try to make it look 
official.
  Mexican law says if you have a union and try to organize one, you 
lose your job. And the 12 I was talking to with the mayor were fired. 
They could not make a living anymore, could not get a job.
  You wonder why illegal immigration is so high--I would have bugged 
out of that country, too. I would have sneaked into the United States 
or some other country, I can tell you now, to feed my family.
  That is the kind of work conditions that we try to prevent here in 
the U.S., which still persist in Mexico. These are the kind of side 
agreements that we had to try to prevent within NAFTA. So we did that, 
and we don't have that at all with respect to the different companies 
down there, let's say, in El Salvador. I won't get into every one of 
them.

  A Korean-owned maquila with 900-plus workers, Caribbean Apparel, 
S.A., American Free Trade Zone, Santa Ana, El Salvador: death threats, 
workers illegally fired and intimidated, pregnancy tests, forced 
overtime, locked bathrooms, starvation wages, workers paid 15 cents for 
every $16.96 pair of Kathie Lee pants they sold, cursing and screaming 
at the workers to go faster, denial of access to health care, workers 
fired and blacklisted if they tried to defend their rights. Caribbean 
Apparel is inaccessible to public inspection. The American Free Trade 
Zone is surrounded by walls topped with razor wire. Armed guards are 
posted at the entrance. Forced overtime, 11-hour shifts, 6 days a week, 
mandatory pregnancy tests, and on and on.
  I have to get this in the Record this evening because I have been 
very considerate of my colleagues. Many wanted to talk about our late 
colleague, the Senator from Rhode Island, obviously. I will always 
yield for that and for other particular points they want to make.
  You have another Kathie Lee (Wal-Mart) sweatshop in Guatemala, San 
Lucas, Santiago, Guatemala: forced overtime, 11- to 14\1/2\-hour 
shifts, 6 days a week, 7:30 to 6:30 p.m., sometimes they work until 
10:00 p.m. The workers are at the factory between 66 and 80 hours a 
week. Refusal to work overtime is punished with an 8-day suspension 
without pay. The second or third time this offense occurs, the worker 
is fired. Below subsistence wages, for 44 regular hours the pay is 
$28.57 or 65 cents an hour. This does not meet subsistence needs. Armed 
security guards control access to the toilets and check the amount of 
time the women spend in the bathroom, hurrying them up if they think 
they are spending too much time. Public access to the plant is 
prohibited by heavily armed guards.
  You can go right on down this list. I will tell you right now, if you 
try to organize a union, they will shoot you.
  Point: You are going to hear how this is going to be so good--as the 
Senator from Delaware said, a win-win situation. You are going to hear 
another Senator now say this is the way we want to go.
  Can't we stop, look, and listen and get these dreadful labor 
situations cleaned up before we go? Is that what we want to put the 
stamp of approval on, this kind of heinous conduct down there in the 
Caribbean? This isn't with everybody sitting on the beaches with the 
suntan oil waiting for the President to call us back in session this 
fall, maybe, if we don't pass this bill. All kind of threats made, how 
important the bill is.
  In September, Jiovanni Fuentes, a union organizer assisting the 
workers at Caribbean Apparel, received a death threat from the company. 
He was told he and his friends should leave the work or they would be 
killed. He was told he was dealing with the Mafia, and in El Salvador 
it costs less than $15 to have someone killed.
  Whoopee, let's pass the CBI bill. We want to make sure we get that 
kind of production. The cheap shirt they put on the floor and said, 
look at what we are doing, the retailers are for this bill. Sure they 
are because they will kill you if you don't produce for next to nothing 
down there in the CBI.
  It is a broader problem. Let us go right to what I have heard all 
year long about software, software. Software is the engine that is 
really running this wonderful economy here in the United States of 
America. Of course, we have had the pleasure of meeting Microsoft's 
Bill Gates. I happen to be one of his admirers. I particularly admire 
the recent initiative with his foundation, that they gave $1 billion to 
our friend, Bill Gray, United Negro College Fund, to make sure every 
black in America could receive a college education. Gates is making 
maybe $2 billion. He can afford it. But that is the finest thing this 
Senator has heard all year of 1999.
  Somehow, somewhere it is an economic situation that we face in the 
State of South Carolina, Georgia, the southern part of our country, 
where we have had, for a long time, a lack of any kind of educational 
facilities for the minorities. When I first came to public office, I 
went out and saw that little American Freedom School for the blacks. It 
was one big building. They had four classrooms in one room, a pot belly 
stove in the middle, and one teacher.
  Somehow, somewhere they have been getting jobs. Do you know what? 
They have textile jobs: 37 percent minority employed; over 50 percent 
are women.
  They wouldn't allow minorities to work in a textile plant when I 
first came to public office. I can tell you that they do now. That is 
why the head of the Black Caucus, the distinguished Congressman James 
Clyburn of South Carolina, why he is opposed to this bill. Don't give 
me no sandwich board of Amoco, Exxon, Citicorp, and all the money boys, 
for Lord's sake. Ask somebody, as they used to say with the Packard 
automobile, ask the man who owns one. Ask the Congressman who has 
worked in the vineyards, trained in the public, headed up our human 
affairs councils, now head of the Black Caucus in the House of 
Representatives of the United States of America. He is absolutely 
opposed to this because he is just getting jobs for his constituents. 
And he knows now we are going to export jobs. That is the biggest 
export we have. Export, export, export.
  Well, back to Bill Gates. I am referring, of course, to ``In Praise 
of Hard Industries,'' by Eamonn Fingleton: Mr. Gates himself 
exemplifies in high degree the sort of mind that succeeds in the 
software industry. He reportedly can recall the telephone extension 
numbers and car license plate numbers of countless Microsoft employees. 
According to the authors James Wallace and Jim Erickson, even as a 
child he displayed amazing memory skills. In particular, he won a local 
parish contest by memorizing and reciting the entire Sermon on the 
Mount. The passage is the equivalent of nearly four standard newspaper 
columns of type.

[[Page S13386]]

Among the hundreds who participated in the contest over the years, 
Gates, who was then only 11, was the only challenger who ever succeeded 
in reciting the entire passage without stumbling or missing a line.
  Now, you have to respect that. That is a fellow who deserves a 
billion a year or whatever it is he is making. I can't keep up with it. 
I do know he has done extremely well. I visited in Redmond, WA. He has 
the most magnificent, I don't mean ornate, I mean commonsensical 
approach to his employees.
  I understood from Time magazine, at the close of the year, they had 
22,000 employees with stock options, 22,000 millionaires. So they are 
all well paid, and we respect that and we don't oppose that. We don't 
expect this bill is going to affect that one way or the other, but it 
is going to affect the $8.37-an-hour textile and apparel worker in the 
State of South Carolina, I can tell you that; or the average is even 
better, about $10 an hour now. They have health care. We are all 
talking about those who don't have health care. A young lady can work 
and she can get health care so when her child is sick, they can get to 
a doctor. When she can save a little every month and get a health 
insurance policy and send the kids to college, that is a good job.
  I have lost 31,200 of them; I can tell you now. The Senator from 
Delaware says, well, we ought to realize the trend is global 
competition, better jobs. Let's think on those 31,200 because I know we 
have had a net loss of manufacturing jobs since NAFTA. Yes, we have BMW 
and Hoffman-LaRoche and all these industries that are the envy of 
everybody. I have GE, General Electric. My trouble is, I used to have 
five General Electrics. I only have one left. They have all left to go 
to Brazil or Malaysia or elsewhere.
  I can tell you now that it isn't easy to hold on to these industries. 
What has happened to my industry--and the reason I want to emphasize 
this about software is to disabuse the political minds in the National 
Congress that it is not the engine on the one hand, and on the other 
hand, they are headed the same way of textiles.
  Mr. President, 1998 ratios of imports to consumption. Aircraft 
engines, we import 70 percent. You see, the Airbus--market forces, 
market forces, market forces. Well, the European, very sensibly--not 
saying it is unfair and just whining about fairness. Come on. That 
comes from silly pollsters who never ran for office. The Europeans 
realize that, wait a minute, out of the defense industry came the 
magnificent research in aerospace. Out of our space program came the 
magnificent research in aerospace. So we gave that to the Boeing, 
Lockheed, McDonnell Douglas, and all the rest of them.
  We gave them Export-Import Bank financing. It was a predominant 
industry at one time. The engines are being made by GE, Pratt and 
Whitney, and the rest. But now we find out that we are importing the 
majority of the engines. I have seen where USAir, which I travel back 
to South Carolina on, bought Airbus. There is no such thing as ``buy 
American.'' I remember when they used to demonstrate when they didn't 
``buy American.'' We can go down the list: Tape recorders and video 
tape players, 100 percent; radio transmission and reception apparatus, 
58 percent; television apparatus, 68.5 percent. You can go down to 
electrical capacitors and resistors, 69.5 percent, and that is where I 
lost my GE plant. That means we have about 30 percent being produced 
here. It gets unproductive to produce here, uneconomical. Watches, 100 
percent. Look at the watch on your hand; it came from elsewhere, I can 
tell you that. Footwear, 84.2 percent. Look at the shoes. If they stop 
working overseas, we have to go barefoot. This is the list.
  Now, what about this wonderful engine with this magnificent economy 
that they brag about? I have stopped them bragging with some of the 
columns in the financial news, and otherwise.

       In his search for world-beating software talent, [Mr. 
     Gates] has included six Japanese universities among the top 
     twenty-five universities worldwide where he likes to 
     concentrate Microsoft's recruiting efforts. Gates should know 
     about Japanese software talent given that one of his closest 
     friends and confidants in his early days was the Japanese 
     software engineer Kazuhiko Nishi. Before they had a falling-
     out in the mid-1980s, Gates described Nishi as ``my best guy 
     ever.''

  This says:

       Thus, for a software entrepreneur in a low-wage country, 
     the capital cost per job can be as little as $10,000, a 
     reduction of more than 90 percent from the mainframe era. 
     This figure is well within the reach of software 
     subcontracting companies in low-wage countries--and far 
     less than is needed to get started in even the least 
     sophisticated areas of manufacture.

  So we know none better than Mr. Gates himself. They have the 
mentality. We don't have all the Gateses in the world, because Kazuhiko 
Nishi will probably near equal him, according to Gates himself. What 
does it cost? It costs $100,000 to create a textile job when you have 
high-tech machinery now in these plants. They have been spending $2 
billion a year. I use that quote on page 18 of this particular volume, 
which is authoritative. Spinning is a good example, as recounted in the 
Wall Street Journal. ``The capital required in the state-of-the-art 
spinning mill these days can amount to as much as $300,000 per job.''
  In contrast, this requires only 10,000 in so-called software. The 
minds ought to flex in the Senate body because what has happened is 
they are blindly looking at the stock market. Maybe some of them are 
making a bunch of money. They don't want to see further; all they know 
is they are making a fortune. But they are not looking at the jobs. I 
have tried my best to get the figures with respect to the balance of 
trade in software. I am convinced we have a deficit in the balance of 
trade. But according to the Department of Commerce figures, the U.S. 
receipt in software is $3.2 billion and the payments are $.05 billion, 
for a net balance of $2.7 billion in software trade.
  But I looked further and I found out licensing is considered exports. 
So as they license them in India, for example, and other places to do 
this computerization--like my light bill in South Carolina is made up 
in India out of a firm from Columbia, SC. They send it in overnight. 
When they close down, all that work is done for them, so when they come 
to work in the office in the morning, it is all a done deal and they 
pay, let's say, $10,000 a job over there; whereas, it costs at least 
$100,000 in the American software industry.
  We should dwell on this particular volume, Mr. President, and take a 
hard look at computer software because it goes right down and shows not 
only the Japanese are coming in, but the Chinese also. I had in here 
some sections that are easily referred to about the Japanese because 
they have really got the balance of trade. I read that earlier today. 
Let me say this.

       Chinese programmers can develop software for, say, a clinic 
     in the United States without knowing anything other than the 
     end-user's basic requirements. Perhaps the most surprising--
     and for American software workers, the most ominous--aspect 
     of IBM's Chinese affiliate is that it is pioneering a new 
     work shift system linking several low-wage countries. When 
     the Chinese programmers finish each evening, they pass their 
     work on to Latvia and Belarus, where other IBM engineers 
     continue working on the modules during the Chinese night. No 
     wonder Bloomberg News commented: ``The tilt in software 
     design towards more basic, interchangeable products is good 
     news for countries like China with armies of talented 
     programmers.'' Given that IBM has laid off thousands of 
     programmers in the United States and other Western countries 
     in the last five years, the message could hardly be clearer: 
     the software industry's spread into the Third World has 
     already begun--and a challenge to the West's software job 
     base is imminent.

  So China is coming in. The truth of the matter is, we are going to be 
losing this particular industry. And we ought to have a full debate 
when you start losing your hand tools and machine tools. When you start 
losing your steel industry, when you start losing the textile 
industry--found to be the second most important to our national 
security--when you start losing finally your software industry, then 
this crowd will sober up and begin to debate a trade bill in the proper 
fashion.
  This is not in the interest of the worker. It is not in the interest 
of the economy. It is not in the interest of the security of the United 
States. It is a terrible, fatal blow, final and fatal blow to the 
textile industry. I know from hard experience. I have been in the work 
of creating jobs. I know about education and technical training. I know 
about the best of the best coming in. And I know about the best of the 
best leaving.

[[Page S13387]]

  In spite of all the jobs we have attracted to South Carolina, in the 
last 4 years, there has been a loss of 12,000 jobs. Don't give them the 
Washington solution of retraining and new skills. We had the Oneida 
plant. It made just T-shirts. It closed at the beginning of last year. 
We got it some 35 years ago making these T-shirts. They had 487 
employees. The age average was 47 years. They are closed now. But where 
did the jobs go? They have gone to Mexico. They did not create the jobs 
for the Oneida workers. They lost the jobs for the Oneida workers.
  Now Washington is overly smart here, telling the workers that this is 
the trend--global competition, engine of the economy, and all that kind 
of nonsense. Retrain--let's try that on for size.
  Let's assume tomorrow morning we have to retrain and have new skills 
for computer operators. I know the distinguished Chair is an 
outstanding business leader. He knows business. He knows that business 
is not going to hire the 47-year-old computer operator. They are going 
to hire the 21-year old computer operator. Business in competition 
can't afford to take on the retirement costs of a 47-year-old or the 
health care costs of a 47-year-old. They are going to take on that 21-
year old.
  So Andrews, SC, is a ghost town. We have some other industries I 
helped bring there. But I can tell you, those 487 are not coming back, 
as the distinguished Chair of the Finance Committee says, by just 
retraining and new skills.
  This is happening with the automobile industry, with the automobile 
parts industry, with the aircraft industry, Boeing, and now, according 
to the recent statistics, with the software industry.
  This Congress and this Government has a real problem up here. It is 
not a problem of getting these folks, me included, reelected. It is a 
real problem that only we can handle, that only we can take care of. 
Everyone else has their government on their side. When is our 
Government going to get on our side?
  Yes. The Secretary of Labor is not calling over here. It is 
unfortunate. Do you know who is calling over here? The Secretary of 
State. The Secretary of State has a European Desk. She has a Japanese 
Desk. She has a Chinese Desk. She has a Cuban Desk. When are they going 
to get an American Desk? She is not going to have one. That isn't her 
responsibility. But she is talking free trade, free trade, so that the 
striped-pants diplomats can run around and give away even more.
  You know how wonderful, fat, rich, and happy we were after World War 
II. We are going broke. I can prove it. You watch it. You will see it 
here. It will happen--not totally broke, obviously. The economy is 
simmering down. Don't worry about it. We are losing that hard industry, 
hard-core industry in the middle class. That is the strength of the 
democracy, according to G.K. Chesterton. That is why we have succeeded 
as a fledgling democracy--the strong middle class. And instead, we are 
getting rid of it. As Zuckerman says, we are going into two groups of 
people--the haves and the have-nots. One important industry to our 
national security is about to bite the dust with this piece of 
legislation.
  I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Oregon.
  Mr. WYDEN. Thank you, Mr. President.

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