[Congressional Record Volume 145, Number 151 (Monday, November 1, 1999)]
[Senate]
[Pages S13592-S13597]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




              AFRICAN GROWTH AND OPPORTUNITY ACT--Resumed

  Mr. LOTT. Madam President, with that, I now call for the regular 
order with respect to the trade bill.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will report the bill by title.
  The legislative clerk read as follows:

       A bill (H.R. 434) to authorize a new trade and investment 
     policy for sub-Sahara Africa.

  Pending:

       Lott (for Roth/Moynihan) amendment No. 2325, in the nature 
     of a substitute.
       Lott amendment No. 2332 (to amendment No. 2325), of a 
     perfecting nature.
       Lott amendment No. 2333 (to amendment No. 2332), of a 
     perfecting nature.
       Lott motion to commit with instructions (to amendment No. 
     2333), of a perfecting nature.
       Lott amendment No. 2334 (to the instructions of the motion 
     to commit), of a perfecting nature.
       Lott (for Ashcroft) amendment No. 2340 (to amendment No. 
     2334), to establish a chief agricultural negotiator in the 
     Office of the United States Trade Representative.


                      Amendment No. 2340 Withdrawn

  Mr. LOTT. Madam President, I now withdraw amendment No. 2340.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator has that right. The amendment is 
withdrawn.
  Mr. LOTT. Madam President, it is now my hope the Senate can consider 
trade related amendments to the underlying African trade/CBI bill. We 
have been encouraging Members throughout this process to be prepared to 
offer their amendments. I have stated previously it has always been our 
willingness to have Senators offer these trade amendments. I believe it 
is time to move forward on this important legislation and complete this 
bill as early as possible this week.
  So I ask consent it be in order for me to send to the desk a series 
of cleared amendments that I think are about equally divided on both 
sides. This will be the so-called managers' amendments to H.R. 434. I 
would say, we would offer these en bloc. There may be other amendments 
that may need to be offered that are not on this list.
  I ask this so-called managers' amendment be considered en bloc, 
agreed to en bloc, and the motion to reconsider be laid upon the table.
  Mr. HOLLINGS. I object.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Objection is heard.
  Mr. LOTT. Madam President, when I yield the floor, the bill will be 
open for amendment. An amendment can be offered at this point. In my 
discussion with Senator Daschle, I have indicated if we can get 
agreement on how to proceed on the trade bill and the bankruptcy bill, 
on which I think he and I can agree, I will be perfectly willing to 
take down the tree, too. I want the Record to reflect that. I have 
opened this slot so an amendment is in order. Senator Daschle may want 
to comment on that.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Democratic leader.
  Mr. DASCHLE. Madam President, first, while I fully recognize the 
ability of the Senator from South Carolina to object to this amendment, 
it is certainly his right. I am disappointed. The majority leader has 
made, in my view, a major step forward in trying to resolve the 
impasse. I commend him and appreciate the direction he has now 
indicated he is prepared to go in an attempt to bring this matter to a 
close.
  The amendment, as the majority leader indicated, is one that includes 
amendments on both sides. We expressed last week our concern for two 
things: First, the array of relevant amendments that may not be 
germane. The majority leader's amendment includes all relevant 
amendments that, in many cases, if not all of them, are not germane. So 
unless we get an agreement to add these relevant amendments, we are 
precluded from doing so.
  There are some relevant amendments that still need to be offered that 
are not included in this package. By taking the tree down, those 
relevant amendments about which we have been very concerned are still 
pending and would not be offered if there were objections to offering 
them or if we were not able to bring them to closure.
  The second problem we had, of course, was with nonrelevant, 
nongermane amendments. In our discussions and negotiations, we have 
been able to accommodate that concern by working out an agreement on 
bankruptcy that I find to be very satisfactory that will allow us to 
take up nonrelevant, nongermane amendments.
  I intend to support cloture tomorrow, if that is the only way we can 
move this forward. I hope our colleagues will do so. It is no longer 
now a matter of protecting colleagues' rights. We are denied that 
right, not by the majority leader or by the parliamentary situation, 
but by individual Senators who are within their rights, of course, to 
object to proceeding on this bill.
  I want to get this legislation finished. I want to do all I can to 
protect Senators and their rights to offer amendments. Obviously, we 
will have to find other ways with which to do that. One way or the 
other, we are going to continue to work to see if we can resolve these 
difficulties. I appreciate very much the majority leader's effort to 
get us to this point.
  Mr. LOTT. Madam President, in conclusion, I yield the floor and 
observe the bill is open for amendment.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from South Carolina.
  Mr. HOLLINGS. Madam President, I remember the distinguished minority 
leader's plea about protecting the rights of colleagues. Now instead of 
protecting the rights, we are given our rights on the installment plan. 
If you get in line for your installment, fine business.
  Like the distinguished Senator from New Jersey, he has an amendment 
that the majority leader was just presenting to grant permanent and 
normal trade relations status to Albania. Isn't that grand? We have 
gone from CBI, to the sub-Sahara, and now we are back to Albania. Next 
thing you know, we will have a Kosovo amendment protecting Members' 
rights to present amendments. You can get in the back room and work 
this out.
  Here is another one. The Dodd-Ashcroft-Bond amendment that would 
allow a company with operations in Connecticut and Missouri to obtain 
the

[[Page S13593]]

refund on duties paid on imports of nuclear fuel assemblies. Isn't that 
wonderful? They can bring up that amendment. That is germane. I am sure 
it is because down in the Caribbean Basin, they have a lot of nuclear 
down there, particularly in the sub-Sahara. I have traveled there and I 
have gone to see all the nuclear plants in Nigeria and Ghana and the 
Republic of Congo, Brazzaville, the French Congo, and the rest. It is 
wonderful to see all those nuclear powerplants. That is another germane 
amendment.
  Then the distinguished Senator from Montana has a sense-of-the-Senate 
amendment that it is the Senate's view that Japan should open its 
telecommunications sector. Now we have gone from CBI, to sub-Sahara, 
and we are all the way around to Japan now. With this deal, you can 
move things around. It is bargain basement time-- this sort of 
parliamentary Filene's that opened up on the weekend. I did not know 
you could get all of these things over the weekend.
  The Roth amendment, the distinguished chairman of the Finance 
Committee would ensure existing reports regarding trade-related matters 
are submitted to the Finance and Ways and Means Committees in addition 
to the committees already designated. We have the Government Operations 
Committee with jurisdiction in this bill.
  Clarification regarding rules of origin for silk products, an 
amendment requested by the President. Tell him to run for the Senate 
like his wife.
  An amendment requested by the President to clarify the rules of 
origin regarding silk products. This clarification is part of a 
settlement reached in a dispute between the United States and the 
European Union--not sub-Sahara, not CBI, not a Senator, but sooey pig, 
everybody come, just get whatever you want.
  I am ready to deal because I have worked into a position where I can 
deal now. That is the way trade is treated in the Senate. It is a very 
sad thing for the main and simple reason we have an extremely important 
matter not only for textiles but with respect to the general mindset of 
the National Government.
  I have heard time and again on the floor of the Senate how the e-
commerce and the telecommunications industry, the information society, 
the semiconductors, software, Microsoft, and all the rest are an engine 
that is really barreling this economy forward of the United States. I 
was very interested in reading over the weekend about the impact. I 
refer in particular to the October 30 edition of the London Economist:

       A study published in June by the Department of Commerce 
     estimates that the digital economy--

  That is what they are talking about--

     the hardware and software of the computer and telecoms 
     industries--amounts to 8% of America's GDP this year. If that 
     sounds rather disappointing, then a second finding--that it 
     has accounted for 35% of total real GDP growth since 1994, 
     which should keep e-fanatics happy.
       Perhaps unwisely. A new analysis by Richard Sherlund and Ed 
     McKelvey of Goldman Sachs argues that even this definition of 
     ``technology'' is too wide. They argue that since such things 
     as basic telecom services, television, radio and consumer 
     electronics have been around for ages and they should be 
     excluded. As a result, they estimate the computing and 
     communications-technology sector at a more modest 5% of GDP. 
     . . .
       But what, might you ask, about the Internet? Goldman 
     Sachs's estimate includes Internet service providers, such as 
     America Online, and the technology and software used by 
     online retailers, such as Amazon.com. It does not, however, 
     include transactions over the Internet. Should it? E-
     business is tiny at present, but Forrester Research, an 
     Internet consultancy, estimates that this will increase to 
     more than $1.5 trillion in America by 2003. Internet bulls 
     calculate that this would be equivalent to about 13% of 
     GDP. Yet it is misleading to take the total value of such 
     goods and services, whose production owes nothing to the 
     Internet. The value added of Internet sales--i.e., its 
     contribution to GDP--would be much less, probably little 
     more than 1% of GDP.

  But with the contributions, it has a 100-percent impact on this 
particular body when we would see it with about 1-percent impact 
actually on the economy. But politically it has gotten where you pick 
it up in the weekend news magazines. Time magazine--talking about the 
move of Fruit of the Loom, with its 17,000 jobs from Kentucky, its 
7,000 jobs from Louisiana, going down to the Cayman Islands, with its 
executives contributing over $500,000 to the Presidential race of Gov. 
George W. Bush, and others, and of course of, the Democrats. They know 
how to give to both sides.
  But with those contributions, it is not 1 percent of the effect, it 
is 100 percent, and we come around and start changing the rules. When 
the computer industry came to town--that was American Online, Gateway, 
and all the rest of them--our friend Bill Gates, talked all of us. We 
sat around the table and then rushed out with Y2K legislation. It can't 
even happen until a couple months from now or more, but we changed all 
the State tort laws. Why? Because of the contributions.
  I think they have an article with respect to just exactly that in the 
same magazine. Here in the magazine they have taken judicial notice, as 
we used to say in the law:

       The rise of America's high-tech industry is not just a 
     windfall for presidential hopefuls. It could also be a 
     godsend for the liberal political tradition.

  But the high-tech industry have come to town now, and they have 
doubled their effort on all scores.

       The Technology Network (TechNet), a political action group 
     founded two years ago in Silicon Valley, has just set up a 
     second office in Austin, and plans to open more chapters in 
     the future--an attempt to influence policy at both state and 
     local level. Companies in Washington, DC--home of America 
     Online, America's biggest Internet service provider, and a 
     city where the computer industry has just taken over from 
     government as the biggest local employer--have also started 
     their own lobbying group, CapNet.

  Oh, boy it goes on and on and says, wait a minute, it has the largest 
contribution group in all of Washington all of a sudden. Five years ago 
they were not even around.
  That is what it says on page 23 of this October 30 edition of the 
London Economist.
  You ought to read these magazines. Somehow, maybe that is what 
colleagues can do on the weekends. Because if you read Time magazine, 
if you read the London Economist, if you read the Washington Post, you 
can find out what influence it can have up here.
  The devastating impact, of course, is somehow, really, we ought to 
get rid of the textile industry and we ought to get rid of all these 
smokestack industries and everything else. That is what they said to 
them in Great Britain years ago: that we will go from a nation of brawn 
to a nation of brains; instead of providing products, we will provide 
services; instead of creating wealth, we will handle it. Of course, 
they have gone to second rate. They have the lowest GDP growth and have 
created two levels of society.
  I came over only because of the unanimous consent request. But I have 
the articles with respect to the U.S. News & World Report, and Mort 
Zuckerman 2 weeks ago, that I had inserted into the Record about how we 
are going to two levels of society. Now we see the magazines and the 
title:

       The new economy e-exaggeration. The digital economy is much 
     smaller than you think.

  It is really a bummer for the main and simple reason it does not 
create jobs, it does not help with the exports. It is not helping with 
the growth at all. It is small income growth, and imbalanced mix of 
jobs, and a poor export prospect. In fact, Eamonn Fingleton, the 
distinguished author of ``Blindside,'' now has put out his book ``In 
Praise of Hard Industries,'' and compares exactly the hard industries 
and their contributions to the economic security and power of a nation 
compared with the e-commerce or the information society, what he calls 
the deindustrialization group.

       The postindustrial jobs, that is what it is, the 
     postindustrial jobs of people of considerably higher than 
     average intelligence. It does create jobs for the top 2 or 3 
     percent. You have to be a whiz kid to be one of the 22,000 
     who work for Bill Gates out there at Microsoft in Redmond, 
     WA. I have had the privilege of visiting there and meeting 
     with those folks.

  Right to the point, according to Time magazine, with their stock 
options, you have 22,000 millionaires. They are well paid. But heavens 
above, that is not middle America. That is not jobs for everybody. What 
we are talking about is--of course, the computerization, has assisted--
but more than anything else, with robotics we have become a very 
productive society for not the best IQ laborers in our society but

[[Page S13594]]

for normal folks such as you and me who can get the job.
  According to Fingleton and Michael Rothchild, 20 percent of the 
American workforce will be marginalized by the move to an information-
based economy. That amounts to a shocking 25 million people. We are not 
just talking about textiles for the CBI and sub-Sahara. We are talking 
about the basic, formative industry in America really supporting our 
society. And with 25 million, they can give you all of these particular 
statistics about unemployment and otherwise, but I can tell you now, 
those are retail jobs and part-time jobs for people who have lost their 
jobs in textiles--some 31,200 in South Carolina since NAFTA--that they 
have had to seek out as best they can. That is a loss of some 25 
million jobs. It is a slow-income growth. For example, the ultimate 
authority on the income growth or the new economy is the Organization 
of European Community Statistics and Figures, the Paris-based 
Organization of Economic Cooperation and Development.

       For those who believe in the superiority of the U.S. 
     postindustrial strategy, the 1998 edition of the yearbook 
     makes distinctly chastening reading. It shows, with a per 
     capita income--about $27,821 a year--the United States trails 
     no fewer than eight other nations.

  Last week when I was talking about the United States going out of 
business, look at this: We trail Japan, Denmark, Sweden, Germany, 
Austria, Switzerland. You can go right on down the list. They are into 
the manufacturing and the middle class of America. Manufacturing over 
in those other economies have outpaced the United States in interim 
growth with 134 percent compared to our 106 percent over the same 
period. The wages of America's post-industrial workers are generally 
much higher than the American average. Naisbitt jumps to the completely 
fallacious conclusion that a general shift by the United States into 
post-industrialism or the information society will result in a general 
boost in wages. The fallacy here is that Naisbitt assumes that post-
industrial wages are higher by dint of the superior economic virtues. 
In reality, the high wages paid, such as in the software industry, 
merely reflect the fact that some businesses generally recruit 
exceptionally intelligent and capable workers. But it is a very small 
group of people earning this income.

  The leader in income growth, of course, for the entire period from 
1980 to 1998 is South Korea, because it has gone, not for high tech, 
but for hard goods. Of course, they tried to say this information 
society or post-industrial America is really going to create those 
jobs, but in truth, it does not. Without those jobs, they have slow 
income growth and poor export prospects.
  We have all been talking about the matter of agriculture, which is a 
magnificent contribution to our exports. We used to export a lot of 
hard goods because we manufactured and produced hard goods. Last week, 
I put into the Record that we have really gone out of business with 
respect to shoes and textiles and machine tools and steel. We are 
importing steel. Can you imagine--the United States of America is a net 
steel importer. That is why we have had a hard time getting a ruling. 
We have had to take the case all the way from the International Trade 
Administration to the commission and back over to the White House 
trying our dead level best to save the No. 1 industry important to our 
national security. But we don't have anything now to export.
  When you look to software, you have the language difficulties, the 
cultural difficulties with respect to that software. You have the 
proposition of piracy, and they can steal and reproduce immediately 
this software overseas. This is the most important thing to emphasize 
because they have people smart enough about software outside of the 
United States. They assume all of these skills are just here, which is 
absolutely fallacious. That is why they are trying to change the 
immigration laws.
  The software people are coming up here because they want to take all 
the smart people the world around and bring them into this country.
  Let's talk about Japan, which is supposed to be going broke. That has 
particularly nettled me, and I am glad to get the exact figures, 
because they have calculated a controlled kind of capitalism through 
their Ministry of Finance and their Ministry of International Trade and 
Industry. They allocate the financing of a particular industry and then 
they control the local market.
  We act as if we have led the way for 50 years on liberal trade and 
have broken down the barriers, as one of the distinguished proponents 
said only last Friday. That is why I brought that thick book. Just on 
textiles alone, barriers persist around the world, specifically in the 
sub-Sahara and the CBI, specifically no reciprocity in this particular 
treaty--that is the thing we are trying to emphasize. Those things 
continue. Japan now is supposed to have gone broke. Let's see how they 
compare.
  The living standards and everything have really improved. In fact, 
with the so-called almost depression that was described in the Wall 
Street Journal, there was a less than 4 percent unemployment rate, less 
than 4 percent in the first 8 years of the 1990s up to early 1999. The 
highest it had been at any stage was 4.4 percent. Japan's total exports 
during that period rose by a cumulative 53 percent in the first 8 
years. That represents real growth of more than 18 percent.
  So Japan is still coming on as an economic superpower at this 
minute--the little island of 125 million versus the great United States 
with its 260 million. Japan outproduces the United States of America. 
If it continues at this particular rate, by the end of next year, 2000, 
it will have a bigger gross domestic product; it will have a larger 
economy, the largest in the world.

  John Schmitt and Lawrence Mishel pointed out that the per capita 
gross domestic product actually grew faster in Japan than in the 
booming United States for the first 8 years of 1990. The distinguished 
Senator from New York and the distinguished chairman of our Finance 
Committee started off the debate on Friday that way: What a wonderful 
economic boom we have had. We have to sober up. We have to look at the 
real facts.
  Actually, our competition is growing much stronger and much faster 
than we are. Japan's performance has been even better than the 
comparisons suggest. For a start, the figures measured gross domestic 
product, whereas the most appropriate yardstick for comparison is gross 
national product. The distinction, of course, is that the GNP is a more 
comprehensive measure. Unlike gross domestic product, it takes in 
account the debits and credits relating to cross-border investments.
  The United States has become an increasingly large net importer of 
capital in recent years. Its GNP is actually now considerably less than 
its GDP. By contrast, Japan has long been a major net exporter of 
capital and its GNP is considerably larger than its GDP. These are the 
kinds of things that have to be taken into consideration. The yen has 
been gaining a net 24 percent between 1989 and 1998 on the dollar.
  I saw that in the Financial Times last week. I put that article in. 
If we continue with this deficit in the balance of trade, there is 
bound to be a devaluation. In this regard, if other things are equal, 
the strength of a nation's currency is the ultimate determinant of the 
size of its economy, the ultimate symbol of its economic health. In the 
1960s, President John F. Kennedy felt so strongly about this that he 
ranked dollar devaluation alongside nuclear war as the two things he 
feared most.
  Let us get right to a particularly interesting section here: the 
clearest evidence of the lengths to which Japanese leaders are prepared 
to go to understate their economy. They know how to talk rather than 
run around beating their breasts like American politicians saying how 
great we are, the only remaining superpower. We are going to blow them 
off the map and, of course, if they don't move with the Air Force, we 
are not going to invade, or anything else of that kind. It is almost 
embarrassing, this braggart attitude of United States politicians.

       Perhaps the clearest evidence of the lengths to which 
     Japanese leaders are prepared to go to understate their 
     economy's true strengths is in the way they talk about the 
     Japanese Government's budget. All through the 1990s, they 
     have suggested that the government has been running huge 
     deficits--deficits ostensibly intended to stimulate 
     consumption, particularly consumption

[[Page S13595]]

     of imported goods. So successful have they been in this 
     regard that America's most respected media organizations--
     organizations of the caliber of the New York Times, the 
     Washington Post, and the Wall Street Journal--have fallen for 
     the story. Thus, year after year, Americans have been treated 
     to a deluge of reports that Japan was supposedly running huge 
     government deficits. In reality, as authoritative figures 
     from OECD demonstrate, Japan was running huge government 
     surpluses. In 1995, for instance, the year when the Wall 
     Street Journal reported that Japan was running a budgetary 
     deficit of 2 percent, the OECD found that the government 
     achieved a budgetary surplus of 3.5 percent. In fact, 
     according to OECD's figures, which were published each year 
     in the widely circulated yearbook OECD In Figures, not only 
     was Japan's surplus one of the strongest of any OECD nation, 
     but Japan was the only major nation that had a budget surplus 
     at all that year. By comparison, the United Kingdom, for 
     instance, ran a deficit of 5.0 percent and America's deficit 
     was 2.2 percent.

  Well, this Senator knows better than anyone how they didn't really 
continue to call deficits surpluses. I put that in the Record, and I 
will put it in the Record again time after time. The Department of 
Treasury's figures showed that they had $127 billion deficit last 
fiscal year. Now, true it is, they had some carry-over amount, which 
concluded to be about $16 billion. So, at best, it would be $111 
billion to $112 billion deficit--not a surplus. That is the debt of 
treasury at year end, September 30, 1999, for fiscal year 1999--a 
deficit, not a surplus. But these newspapers pick this up, and we have 
almost got a cheering section carrying us into bankruptcy. Continuing 
to read, it says:

       So how strong is the Japanese economy really?

  Eamonn Fingleton said, in this book Hard Industries:

       From his vantage point in Tokyo, he has seen little since 
     then to undermine his confidence in his analysis. Certainly, 
     he has been vindicated in his central point, which was that 
     Japan's current account surpluses would continue to soar in 
     the latter half of the 1990s, thus, giving the lie to much 
     talk in the American press in the mid-1990s that Japan's 
     export industries would be disastrously hollowed out by South 
     Korea and other low-wage East Asian nations.
       . . . the truth is that, at last count, Japan was producing 
     $708 billion in new savings a year--or nearly 60 percent more 
     than America's total of $443 billion.

  They are saving twice as much.

       . . . Japan's net external assets jumped from $294 billion 
     to $891 billion in the first seven years of the 1990s. By 
     contrast, America's net external liabilities ballooned from 
     $71 billion to $831 billion.

  Madam President, the reason we continue to give these figures with 
respect to this particular bill is that we are in deeper trouble than 
most Senators realize. They are all talking about whether they are 
human, or whether they have on an overcoat, or a jacket, or whatever 
nonsense it is about running the campaign, and who all is for 
education. Everybody is for education and wants smaller classrooms, or 
better math and science programs. We finally got, again--in the U.S. 
News and World Report, from David Gergen, he got back to my particular 
premise, that what we ought to do is double the teachers' pay. You get 
what you pay for. Average pay is $37,000. The average pay in my State 
is down to $31,000. I see the young graduates coming across the stage 
and they say: Senator, I would like to have gone into teaching, but I 
could not save enough money to send my children to college. Yet, we are 
bumping into each other, saying how we are all for education. We can be 
all for it or all against it. The most you are going to spend is 7 
cents out of every dollar. It is a local matter. We are Senators and we 
have to get on to the things the local and State governments do not 
take care of, and that is trade. That is the economic strength and 
viability and security of the United States, the sustenance of the 
middle class. That is why I am talking about these particular figures.

  In the first seven years of the 1990s, America's current account 
deficits totaled $726 billion, up 79 percent. Thus, despite a massive 
devaluation of the dollar that supposedly brought a dramatic turnaround 
in American competitiveness that would soon dispose of the deficits for 
goods.
  Madam President, for the first 8 years of the 1990s, Japan's current 
account surpluses totaled $750 billion. That was more than 2\1/2\ times 
the total of $279 billion recorded in the first 8 years of the 1980s. 
So all during the `90s, we have been reading and telling each other 
these fairy tales. One, that the information age is upon us and the 
information society, and post-industrialism has taken over. The 
computer software and so forth is the engine of the economy that is 
barreling us forward into global competition. False. It is taking us 
down into very precarious straits. We are relying upon it, and we are 
going to eliminate the middle class and the workforce of America. 
Otherwise, we have been told time and time again about how Japan has 
been going down and we have been going up. We have had 8 years of the 
boom, with the lowest inflation, the lowest unemployment; but we have 
been giving away the store.
  Mr. President, I wasn't prepared to get into this general item this 
afternoon, but it is salutary that we were able to touch on it so we 
can talk sense to the American people, because what we have with the 
CBI, the sub-Sahara bill, is an extension of NAFTA to the Caribbean 
Basin Initiative; and so the sub-Sahara. If you are in with or close to 
the leadership, you can take care of Japan, Albania, and operations in 
Connecticut and Missouri to refund some money on nuclear fuel 
assemblies. You even can get a distilled spirits tax fixed.
  You watch it.
  I am going to present an amendment to put side agreements that we had 
on NAFTA on this particular bill, and you can bet your boots they will 
stand down there and say it is not germane, having had the audacity to 
come in with nuclear, Japan, Albania, distilled spirits, and what have 
you, but not take a formative, relevant, serious concern that we have 
on this particular bill.
  I didn't like NAFTA. But, be that as it may, it had side agreements 
on both the environment and labor. I have a side agreement to present 
on the environment. I want them to allow us to vote on that side 
agreement for the CBI and the sub-Sahara. I want them to let us vote--
at least a vote. Don't get here with a technicality after you have 
sneaked in all your Japanese, Albanian, Missouri, and nuclear 
amendments here this afternoon when nobody is in town and then come 
tomorrow when the Senate is in full session and say, oh, no, that is 
not germane; we have rules of rules. They will get to be rules of rules 
tomorrow. One is reciprocity. We have tariffs that are being really 
merged out and disassembled out because under the Multifiber 
Arrangement we had a 10-year blend-out of it and a termination. So now 
we are entering the last 5 years.
  But there are still some tariffs that ought to be reconciled with the 
CBI and the tariffs in the sub-Sahara, so we can get some modicum of 
reciprocity when they talk about the trade adjustment assistance. That 
takes gall to do that. They say it is unconscionable to oppose this 
bill. I will say it takes gall to talk about trade adjustment 
assistance, which is nothing more than welfare payments putting people 
out of work.
  So they say: Hurry up, we have to get this bill done because we have 
200,000 of those put out of work who have lost their jobs as a result 
of these silly trade agreements--these one-way streets that the Senate 
has ratified and agreed upon. You wouldn't have to have trade 
adjustment assistance if you just let them trade, if you just let them 
work, and not put them out of business.
  But the great merit, according to the senior Senator from New York, 
on this particular measure is, back in Kennedy's days, 37 years ago, we 
passed trade adjustment assistance. I don't want that to infer that 
John F. Kennedy was against textiles. Thirty-eight years ago, President 
John F. Kennedy put in his seven-point textile program and one-price 
cotton looking out for the cotton farmer.
  So the Senator from Massachusetts, then President, was very aware of 
the economic viability of these United States of America. He knew what 
was keeping the country strong and what was necessary to keep the 
country strong. So he put that in. He wasn't bragging about having to 
put in trade adjustment assistance. He was just trying to reconcile the 
successful United States at the time with the other trading nations, 
giving them a chance under the Marshall Plan to rebuild their 
economies.
  At that particular time, they said to me, as Governor: Governor, what 
do

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you expect these Third World emerging nations to make? Let them make 
the textiles and the shoes, and we will continue, and we will make the 
computers and the airplanes. My problem now, in November 1999, is those 
countries are making 86 percent of the shoes worn on the floor of the 
Senate. I can see them now. These countries also are making two-thirds 
of the clothing that I see, looking at in this Chamber, imported into 
the United States.
  Look at the contracts made by USAir and all of the other airlines 
concerning Airbus. They are making the planes and dumping them here in 
the United States. They are making the computers and dumping them in 
the United States. The Japanese have taken over the computer industry, 
in spite of Sematech, in spite of Microsoft, in spite of Intel.
  We have to be not pessimists nor optimists but realists.
  Here on the floor of the Senate is a good moment to really bring 
everything into focus because the leadership said we are now going to 
vote cloture tomorrow and the minority leader is not going to ask them 
to vote against it. That is exactly how NAFTA was passed.
  I will never forget the New York Times article. I wish I had it. But 
I will try to get it and put it in the Record tomorrow. But in NAFTA, 
the President then just bought off the sufficient votes to pass NAFTA. 
I will never forget. He gave a cultural exchange to my friend, Jake 
Pickle of Texas. He gave two C-17s to another Texas fellow. He gave 
another particular freebie, and they went down with the 26 giveaways to 
pick up the 26 votes.
  Here on this solemn afternoon, we have the same deal going. They are 
buying off the votes. They are getting it on nuclear fuel assemblies. 
We are getting it on the Japanese telecommunications. We are getting it 
on Ways and Means and Finance Committee rules. We are getting it on 
silk products of the United States and the European Union. We are 
getting it on Albania. We just go right down--on Kyrgyzstan. What in 
the world? Kyrgyzstan. I don't know about that. Now we are in Asia 
Minor. I am almost at Bible school. Asia Minor. This procedure has 
gotten to be a disgrace. They buy enough votes and they win. They have 
11 of them listed here on the so-called managers' amendment. So they 
put them all in there and take care of those 11 votes so they will know 
that they will get cloture.
  It is wonderful to serve in this body.
  But it is better to be heard because it is important that we be 
heard. I can tell you here and now, when the ATMI wakes up, the 
American Textile Manufacturers Institute, and they put in the sub-
Sahara along with the CBI, I want to see them at that party. They are 
going to hold a victory party because they supported this particular 
bill. That is going to happen. That is exactly what is going to occur. 
You can see the fix is on. They are going to roll over this particular 
Senator and get rid of what little textile industry we have left.
  There will be a few of the real competitors; the Roger Millikens will 
last. They put money in, and they know how to run an industry and they 
will survive. But generally speaking, they can't survive. The reason 
they can't survive is on account of us. We Democrats, we Republicans, 
we Senators and Congressmen have many requirements called the American 
high standard of light. That standard calls for Social Security, 
Medicare, Medicaid, plant closing notice, parental leave, safe working 
place, safe machinery, clean air, clean water, all of these things, 
labor rights, and otherwise. And it is one of these things in the 
global competition that is not required. On the other hand, they have 
the comparative advantage of their governmental policies.
  I wish Ricardo were here because he didn't think finance could be 
transferred so easily, that the bankers would all stay close to their 
home folks and depositors. Now you can transfer it on satellite by 
computer, in a flash, and you can get capital anywhere. You can send on 
a computer chip the technology and save 20 percent of your labor costs 
by moving to low-wage offshore countries. So a company in the United 
States with $500 million in sales can save 20 percent, or $100 million, 
by keeping its main office and its sales force here in the United 
States, send its manufacturing to a Third World, low-wage country, and 
make $100 million, or they can continue to work their own people and go 
broke because of competition.
  That is why on last week I inserted part of an important book in the 
Record. I will get that book again and show you that all of them are 
leaving here in the United States--Dan River, the corn mills, 
Burlington, all of them are going down. It is not the sewing operations 
alone, it is fabric plants, and, of course, the Japanese, the Koreans, 
and, most of all, the Chinese, the People's Republic of China.
  They are whining on the other side of the aisle about most favored 
nation for China. Look at a most-favored-nation Chinese vote and anyone 
will see a vote for this bill.
  China, we have sub-Sahara; put up the front companies and put up the 
production of the People's Republic of China through the sub-Sahara.
  The arrangement that those folks relied on some 5 years ago; they 
better batten down the hatches because I don't know how they will get 
the money out of the machinery and survive with this particular 
measure. It is drastic. It is unconscionable. They say we are 
unconscionable; I say they are unconscionable.
  We can see how the majorities are fixed. We have not had any real 
debate on the floor of the Senate on trade as a matter of national 
policy or otherwise. They say the President wants this; the minority 
leader says it is his duty to give the President what he wants. The 
other side of the aisle has been wanting to do away with all kinds of 
trade agreements and market forces, and Adam Smith has long since gone 
in this global competition. It ought to depend on market forces. They 
depend on protection. Of course, so does the other side of the aisle 
when it comes to intellectual property, movies, books, copyrighting, 
when it comes to protecting the talents of the individual producers, 
the authors, writers, singers, and performers. Fine, let's have 
protection for them. But for those who work by the sweat of their brow, 
that is protectionism and a terrible thing. We are isolationist and we 
are unconscionable.
  Maybe they will have another consent agreement similar to this one, 
and I will have another opportunity to talk. I appreciate the 
indulgence of my colleagues this afternoon.
  Mr. BAUCUS. Mr. President, I am proud to stand on the floor of the 
world's greatest deliberative body. I've been proud every time over the 
past twenty years that I have had this privilege. I can think of no 
greater honor than to discuss with my Senate colleagues issues of vital 
importance to our nation.
  So I am deeply distressed that I have not yet had an opportunity to 
discuss important trade issues. Last week, the majority leader chose to 
cut off consideration of amendments to the Africa bill, the only trade 
bill which will reach the floor of this honorable body. That bill 
included amendments which had bipartisan support. Because of this 
bizarre process, we can't even act on Senator Harkin's amendment to 
combat child labor, which has widespread support.
  I had filed two amendments to the bill, both of them trade-related. 
Both of them issues which are extremely important to Americans. I am 
very disappointed that we were locked out of discussing them. However, 
with the new filing of cloture, I hope that we may have the chance to 
talk about these important matters.
  One of the amendments allowed for tariff cuts on environmental goods 
as part of a global agreement in the WTO. The measure has the support 
of both business and environmental groups. This is a rare instance 
where both sides of the trade-environment debate agree on something. 
It's a shame that the Senate cannot move forward on something so 
sensible.
  The second amendment concerned agricultural subsidies. American 
farmers are the most productive in the world. But they're being frozen 
out of foreign markets by European and Japanese subsidies. I filed an 
amendment that would fight back by funding our Export Enhancement 
Program.
  This amendment required the Secretary of Agriculture to target at 
least two billion dollars in Export Enhancement Program funds into the 
EU's

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most sensitive markets if they fail to eliminate their export subsidies 
by 2003. It's time to start fighting fire with fire. This ``GATT 
trigger'' should provide leverage in the next round of the WTO in 
reducing grossly distorted barriers to agricultural trade.
  I voted against cloture last week because I objected to the way the 
majority leader handled the bill. I was denied the ability to do what 
the people of Montana sent me here to do. But I support the bill 
itself. I support each of its elements--the Caribbean Basin Initiative, 
the Africa Growth and Opportunity Act, and the renewal of both Trade 
Adjustment Assistance and the Generalized System of Preferences.
  I have long supported efforts to extend additional tariffs 
preferences to the Caribbean Basin. But with conditions. The benefits 
should be conditioned on the beneficiary countries' trade policies, 
their participation and cooperation in the Free Trade Area of the 
Americas (``FTAA'') initiative, and other factors. This trade bill is 
substantially similar to the version I supported in the 105th Congress 
with some reservation.
  I see a flaw in the bill, however, and would like to work to repair 
it. The bill suggests criteria the President can use when deciding 
whether to grant CBI benefits. It is a long list of about a dozen 
items. Criteria like Intellectual Property Rights. Investment 
protections. Counter-narcotics. Each one is important. The bill should 
make these criteria mandatory.
  In particular, I believe that the President should be required to 
certify that CBI beneficiaries respect worker rights, both as a matter 
of law and in practice. We can't maintain domestic support for open 
trade here at home unless our programs take core labor standards into 
account.
  We want to help our Caribbean neighbors compete effectively in the 
U.S. market. But we don't want them to compete with U.S. firms by 
denying their own citizens fundamental worker rights.
  It only seems reasonable that as we help the economic development of 
these nations, we also help them enforce the laws already on their 
books. The majority of these countries already have the power and only 
need the will to ensure that their citizens see the benefits of 
enhanced trade--decent wages, decent hours and a decent life.
  Overall, I believe that CBI parity is the right thing to do--if it 
does what it is intended to do. That is lift the people of the 
hurricane devastated countries out of poverty and ensure them a better 
way of life.
  I also believe that the U.S. must lead by example. Sensitively to 
labor and environment must play a role in our trade decisions and 
actions around the world.
  It's tragic that partisan politics keeps the United States Senate 
from taking these actions.
  I have the same concerns about labor in terms of the African Growth 
and Opportunity portion of the bill. But I supported the Chairman's 
mark, which included a provision requiring U.S. fabric for apparel 
products produced in eligible sub-Saharan African countries.
  Developing markets is in the best interest of us all. And the trade 
bill would help Africa move in that direction. But this bill is about 
more than trade. It is about hope.
  It is about bringing the struggling nations of Sub-Saharan Africa 
into our democratic system. It is about establishing stability and a 
framework wherein the citizens of these nations can enjoy the fruits of 
prosperity. It is about building a bridge between the United States and 
Africa that will be a model for all nations.
  The third part of the bill renews the Trade Adjustment Assistance 
Program. This program is vital to help our workers adjust to the new 
forces of globalization.
  I have seen the effects of this program in Montana. We have been well 
served by the efforts of Gary Kuhar, Director of the Northwest TAA 
Center in Seattle, Washington.
  Impact on Montana--Montana currently has six firms affected by TAA 
funding, including:
  Montana Moose--Christmas ornament operation,
  Ranchland--a cattle operation,
  Mountain Woods--furniture designer,
  Western States--pellet operation,
  Sun Mountain Sports--manufacturer of golf bags and other ripstops,
  Burt and Burt--wind chimes, and
  Kahlund Enterprises--picture frames producer.
  In fact, the renewal of Trade Adjustment Assistance translates to 330 
Montana employees impacted and approximately $44 million in gross 
annual sales preserved.
  This legislation is long overdue. While we delay, certified firms 
anxiously await funding. This is fundamentally unfair--especially for 
firms fighting import competition that is beyond their control.
  They cannot afford to wait while TAA is caught up in the annual 
battle for funding as the ``perennial bargaining chip'' for other trade 
proposals. That's just ineffective government. It's time to pass this 
legislation.
  Finally, let me say a word about GSP renewal. This is the fourth part 
of the trade bill. This is also a question of effective government. 
Over the years, the program has lapsed periodically when renewal 
legislation was delayed. The latest lapse occurred on June 30. Four 
months later, we still haven't acted on its renewal.
  Who gets hurt? Not just foreign companies. A lot of American firms 
get hurt. That includes both American importers and exporters. A lot of 
the American firms produce abroad and then export to the United States. 
Much of this is internal company trade. That's the reality of today's 
global economy.
  When GSP lapses, these companies are suddenly required to deposit 
import duties into an account. Customs holds the money until renewal 
legislation is signed. Eventually the companies get their money back. 
But they don't know how long renewal legislation will take. So they 
don't how much they'll have to set aside, or how long the money will it 
be in escrow.
  How can we expect businesses to operate efficiently under such 
conditions? These cycles of GSP lapsing and then being renewed 
represent government at its worst. We have a responsibility to provide 
business and consumers with a consistent, predictable set of rules. We 
need to fix this GSP lapse as quickly as possible.
  Mr. President, a lot of effort, a lot of thought, a lot of time has 
gone into this bill. Much time has also gone into formulating 
amendments. It was a great disappointment to see this effort unravel 
over partisan politics. We may have a second chance this week. Let's 
not squander the opportunity. We can and should work together to pass 
this bill.
  We were elected to his body to pass legislation not to bicker. Let's 
do what the people sent us here to do.
  I yield the floor and I suggest the absence of a quorum.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will call the roll.
  The legislative clerk proceeded to call the roll.
  Mr. GRAHAM. Madam President, I ask unanimous consent that the order 
for the quorum call be rescinded.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
  Mr. GRAHAM. Madam President, I ask that we return to morning business 
for a period of 30 minutes for remarks on the Labor-HHS conference 
report.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.

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