[Congressional Record Volume 146, Number 64 (Monday, May 22, 2000)]
[House]
[Pages H3509-H3515]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




               PERMANENT NORMAL TRADE RELATIONS FOR CHINA

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under the Speaker's announced policy of 
January 6, 1999, the gentleman from Oregon (Mr. DeFazio) is recognized 
for 60 minutes as the designee of the minority leader.
  Mr. DeFAZIO. Mr. Speaker, I rise this evening to speak on the 
proposed legislation that will be before this House in 2 days on the 
so-called permanent normal trade relations for China, that is once and 
for all the United States surrendering any right for the Congress to 
review the actions of the Government of China in terms of its 
compliance with past, existing agreements on trade, no matter how 
unfair; any right to review their actions in the area of human rights; 
any right to review their actions in the area of nuclear proliferation 
in dealing with terrorist nations. In fact, we would be writing a blank 
check for the government of China, a government which has broken every 
past agreement with the United States.
  But let us go back a little further. I quote. ``If it seems 
increasingly likely China embraces a trade regime that permits American 
firms to enjoy what our Secretary of State terms a fair field and no 
favor, how much does the United States stand to gain? According to the 
editorial pages of our most respected newspapers, senior government 
officials, captains of industry, and numerous other opinion makers, the 
answer to that question appears to be much more than we can possibly 
imagine. The chairman of a prominent U.S.-China business group, for 
example, contends that an accord will incalculably

[[Page H3510]]

strengthen and stimulate our trade ties. A commercial roundtable claims 
no other market in the world offers such vast and varied opportunities 
for the further increase of American exports. Echoing these appraisals, 
The New York Times declares that it is not our present trade with all 
Chinese exports, but the right to all that trade with its future 
increase for which America will become a source of great profit.''
  Unfortunately, they were all wrong. The President was McKinley, the 
year was 1899, and the policy was open door toward China.
  But let us move ahead to more recent actions in the closed Chinese 
market. The Chinese are the most unfair trading nation on earth. My 
colleagues do not have to take that from me. We can go to one of the 
biggest cheerleaders for this accord, the President's special trade 
representative, Charlene Barshefsky, whose annual report has detailed 
that, in fact, the Chinese have a plethora of nonmarket-based 
exclusions to U.S. and other goods around the world.
  The President proclaims they will lower their tariffs. Well, guess 
what, the tariffs are meaningless. That is not how the Chinese keep the 
goods out of their country. They keep them out with nontariff barriers. 
So they have given away something that is meaningless. They will no 
longer levy on tariffs the goods they do not allow to be imported; and 
the U.S., of course, will lower all its barriers.
  Now, we are a market-based economy. Lowering our tariffs does mean 
more Chinese goods will flow into the United States. This is what has 
happened under the past agreements with China. Perhaps I should turn it 
over. This is the growth in our trade deficit, the growth in red ink 
with China. It reached a record last year, and it is projected that if 
the Chinese live up to the current agreement, which is pending, that in 
fact this trend will accelerate. And if they do not live up to it, it 
will grow even more quickly. The loss of jobs will be palpable here in 
the United States of America.

                              {time}  2000

  If we use the U.S. International Trade Commission's own model, they 
say that our trade deficit with China will continue to grow for the 
next half a century, reaching a peak of $649 billion in 2048, our trade 
deficit with China would not fall below its current level until 2060. 
Now, that is if they live up to the agreement. Remember, they have 
broken every agreement.
  Now, well, maybe this is different. Well, let us go to a good source, 
quotes from the Chinese official who negotiated these trade agreements. 
He is talking about a couple of specific things. He says, in fact, and 
he is talking about the import of meat and he says, this is a change of 
wording. This has created a fuss in the United States. People think 
that China has opened its door wide for import of meat. In fact, this 
is only a theoretical market opportunity. During diplomatic 
negotiations, it is imperative to use beautiful words for this to lead 
to success, the same kind of success that the Chinese have had in the 
past, every time beautiful words, signing agreements, every time 
violating the agreements and a dramatic acceleration in the U.S. trade 
deficit.
  Now, I have had the farmers from my State, I have had the cattlemen, 
I have had the wheat farmers, they say, Congressman, what an 
opportunity for us. The U.S. market is not so great. We need help. We 
need access to the Chinese market. I said to them, What if you thought 
that, in fact, the tables were going to be turned, if wheat produced 
cheaply in China was going to be imported into the United States? They 
said, Well, no one talked about that.
  Well, they did not tell the tomato growers in Florida about that when 
we entered into the NAFTA agreement, either; and they have been wiped 
out by the cheap tomatoes from Mexico. And, in fact, there is no huge 
opportunity to import meat into China, as we heard. These are beautiful 
words to get success in negotiations according to the chief Chinese 
negotiator.
  He went on to talk about wheat. ``Some people think there will be a 
massive amount of smut going into China,'' he is talking about 
something that grows on wheat, not pornography, ``if we promise to 
import 7.3 million tons of wheat annually from the United States. This 
is absolutely wrong. Commitment is just an opportunity for market 
accession in terms of theory. We may or may not import such an amount 
of wheat as 7.3 million tons.''
  He went on elsewhere to talk about how, in fact, the Chinese have 
made vast strides in producing and stockpiling wheat and that they 
fully intend to be major exporters of wheat and other agricultural 
commodities. And by the U.S. dropping all of its tariff barriers while 
the command and control, centralized communist economy of China has 
given us meaningless concessions on trade, those goods will be flooding 
into the U.S., further hurting our farmers and further impacting other 
sectors of our economy.
  What other sectors? Well, we have been told this is a vast 
opportunity. Remember, a hundred years ago we heard the same thing. We 
heard it a mere less than a decade ago about Mexico, how Americans were 
going to get wealthy, they were going to get wealthy by exporting goods 
to Mexico.
  No one talked about the fact that the total buying power of the 
nation of Mexico was less than the State of New Jersey. And in this 
case no one is talking about the fact that China is less important than 
Belgium to the United States in terms of exports. And the Chinese have 
no intention of opening that market because they are a command and 
control, communist, top-down dictated economy. They are not a market 
economy, and they will not become; and they are not required to become 
a market economy under this agreement.
  Most economists say everything but the military telecommunications, 
energy industries, along with some parts of the transportation sector 
will be opened to private competition. State-run monopolies and 
exports, imports and manufacturing, for example, will be dismantled. 
That is the promise.
  The reality is, headline: ``China Car Makers Expect Continued 
Protection After WTO Entry.'' Beijing Dow Jones. ``China Will Continue 
to Protect Its Agricultural Industry After Its Expected Entry Into The 
World Trade Organization.'' And the list goes on.
  Telecommunications, automobiles, transportation. The Chinese have a 
huge labor surplus. They are not about to risk the stability of their 
country by putting those people out of work by more efficient 
manufacturers here in the United States.
  This is not about exporting U.S. manufactured goods to China. It is 
exactly about the same thing that happened in Mexico. It is about 
making it safe for U.S. manufacturers to move huge sums of capital and 
manufacturing equipment in the past to Mexico and now to an even 
cheaper source of labor.
  Just think of it. They work for one-fifth of the dollar an hour that 
the Mexicans get paid. There will be endless threats of moving the 
company to China if they do not get wage concessions here at home.
  This is not about the buying power of the Chinese people at 20 cents 
an hour. A person who works in the plant manufacturing Nikes at 20 
cents an hour, 6\1/2\ days a week, 12 hours a day could, yeah, it is 
true, if they took 3 months' wages and got an employee discount, they 
could buy a pair of Air Maxes. Not too likely, and not even Nike says 
that.
  In fact, many multinationals are not mentioning selling. If you go 
visit their Web sites, it is very instructive. We have all heard talk 
about this, from their American-based factories to China, which might 
benefit American workers. Instead, they are carrying on about turning 
the People's Republic into a low-wage production base. That is what 
this is all about.
  Procter & Gamble, they want the low wages. Motorola, they want the 
low wages. Westinghouse, they are all saying, and they say this openly 
on their Web sites, they plan to substitute Chinese parts and materials 
steadily for American-made ones, the ones that they still send to China 
to put into finished goods.
  The predictable result is the loss of high-wage American 
manufacturing jobs. A trend that started with Mexico is going to 
dramatically accelerate with China.
  I see a couple of other Members have joined me, and let me go to them 
in a moment. But let me just go back to can we trust the government of 
China.

[[Page H3511]]

  We have outstanding numerous trade agreements with the Chinese, most 
importantly the 1979 Bilateral Accord signed by the government of China 
and the Government of the United States: Where the contracting parties 
shall accord each other most favored nation treatment with respect to 
products originating in or destined for the other country, any 
advantage, favor, privilege, or immunity they grant to like products 
originating from any other country or region in all matters regarding.
  It goes on and on and on. We have this agreement. We do not need to 
give them these extraordinary new concessions. We do not have to give 
them a permanent blank check. All we have to do is demand that they 
live up to an agreement they signed 21 years ago, which they have not 
lived up to in 21 years, and they have no intention of living up to in 
the future in addition to the newly phrased, nicely worded, beautifully 
worded, as the Chinese negotiator says, and successful negotiations 
they have just had with the United States, which is about to be or they 
are going to attempt to jam down the throats of this Congress and the 
American people.
  Mr. Speaker, I yield to the gentleman from Michigan (Mr. Bonior).
  Mr. BONIOR. Mr. Speaker, I thank my colleague for yielding. I want to 
compliment him for his statements and his explaining to the American 
people and to our colleagues here that what we are talking about in 
this trade agreement with China is quite similar to what we had as a 
result of the North American Free Trade Agreement, that is, creating 
another export platform for products.
  Businesses in this country move to low-wage, often authoritarian 
governments, countries, establish their business there and they do not 
have to deal with the question of paying decent wages or decent 
benefits, where there is no rule of law that allows people in those 
countries to form independent labor organizations, where there is 
oftentimes no chance to even provide a political voice in opposition.
  So that is kind of the strategy here for many of the multinationals 
that are locating in Asia and oftentimes in other underdeveloped or 
developing world countries. And I think you can tell from the chart 
that the gentleman has how clearly this policy that we have had for the 
last decade, well, actually it is more than the last decade, the chart 
indicates right there from 1983 to 1999 we have granted China all these 
trade concessions.
  All those arrows that are pointing at the red part of that graph are 
trade agreements we have reached with China. By the way, none of which 
were ever complied with. The result of that is the red that you see on 
that chart. And the red, of course, is the growing deficit from $6 
billion in trade deficit back in 1983 to now approaching $70 billion 
annually.
  The tragedy, of course, is because these countries, China in this 
instance, has such regressive, repressive laws about organizing 
politically, religiously, trade union-wise, their workers cannot earn 
enough money to purchase anything we might want to sell them. Even if 
we could get it into their country, which we cannot get, anyway, but 
assuming we could get it in, they have not the wherewithal to purchase 
the products we want.
  The United States Business and Industry's Council's Globalization 
fact sheet, China Trade, came out in July of 1999, one of their fact 
sheets, and it states ``What Will They Use for Money?''
  What they do is outline the cost of an automobile made in China. The 
price of a Buick is about $40,000. The price of a GM minivan planned to 
be made in China is about $48,000. The price of a small Volkswagen 
planned to be made in China is $12,000. The price of a Honda Accord 
planned to be made in China is $36,000.

  The point here is the average Chinese urban worker's annual income is 
about $600, and if you look at the Chinese manufacturing worker, they 
labor for about 13 cents an hour; and, as a result, one of the fastest 
growing export sectors to China is already parts for reassembly and 
export back to the United States. And this has grown at 349 percent 
over the past 5 years, exactly what they do in Mexico.
  Our corporations will go to the workers in this country and their 
representative unions and they will say to them, listen, if you do not 
take a cut in salary, if you do not take a freeze in benefits, we are 
out of here, we are leaving, we are going to Mexico, or we are going, 
in this case, to China. And they go and they hire people, as they have 
in many of the sweatshops in China, to put together handbags and 
clothing and shoes, athletic shoes, for anywhere between 3 cents an 
hour and 30 cents an hour.
  And the people that put those things together, they work long hours, 
oftentimes 30 out of 31 days a month, 12 hours a day, and they are 
working for literally pennies. So much so that the women who make shoes 
in some of these factories live in dormitories, the size of which in a 
1020 room there are nine or 12 women with bunk beds living in these 
cramped quarters.
  And so after they get done working these incredibly horrendous hours, 
12 hours a day almost every day of the month, they do not make enough 
at the end of the month to buy even one of the athletic shoes that they 
are making; and oftentimes what they make is taken from them to pay for 
their food and their dormitory use, which are really tragic.
  In fact, I think we have a shot of one that if the camera could put 
that up on the easel. This is the iron bars covering the dormitories 
where these women work. Not unusual. They work without gloves. They use 
toxic glues and all the horrors that you could imagine exist. Not 
unlike the maquiladora along the U.S.-Mexican border where often women 
young women in their teens, in their twenties work these long hours for 
very, very little pay.
  So when we are up here arguing, as the gentleman from Oregon (Mr. 
DeFazio) has so eloquently done this evening, about standards, when we 
talk about working conditions, when we talk about living up to their 
trade agreements, which the Chinese have not done, when we talk about 
meshing this together into a policy that makes sense for workers both 
here and in China, we are talking about really where the future is in 
trade.
  The policies that we have now are the past masquerading as the 
future. They are the same trade policies we have had for a hundred 
years in this country.
  What has changed, of course, is the globalized nature of the world 
that we live in today. Because everyone is more interconnected. We are 
interconnected by the work that we do. We are interconnected by the air 
that we breathe and the water that we drink.

                              {time}  2015

  Some people say, well, why are you so opposed to this environmental 
grounds. I do not get the Chinese environmental piece, what is that all 
about? Well, it clearly is this. China has a policy, and they will tell 
you this openly and they will be very clear to you that you cannot have 
environmentalism and economic growth at the same time. That is what the 
Chinese Government maintains. So as a result, five of the 10 most 
polluted cities in the world are in China.
  The air and the water in China is terrible, 2 million die each year 
of air-related or water-related illnesses in China. The rivers in 
China, 80 percent of them, do not have fish in them because of the 
toxics and the pollutants that are dumped in them. And, of course, the 
ozone layer is being eaten away.
  China produces more fluorocarbons than any other place on the face of 
the Earth. Now, why this is important to us or to China's neighbors is 
because that water flows not only in China. It flows into other bodies 
of water that border on other nations, the air, the ozone layer. The 
problem that causes is a result of the fluorocarbon production that 
affects all of us on the face of the Earth.
  The air that they pollute moves about the universe, so we are all 
interrelated; and that is why people who have a voice, need a voice, 
and want a voice at the table, whether it is the WTO or these trade 
agreements we do bilaterally or the IMF or the World Bank, we need to 
have people in the discussions at the table making policies that 
represent these views on the environment, on labor standards, and on 
human rights.

[[Page H3512]]

  There is kind of a mindset in this debate that I would like to kind 
of challenge, if I could for a second; and I encourage my colleagues to 
join me in this part of the debate, because it is a really critical 
piece to how we confront this issue.
  The proponents of this Chinese deal will argue to you, and they will 
argue vociferously, and I believe many of them believe this, they will 
say if we invest, engage with China, and I want to invest and I want to 
engage, but I want to do so under conditions, 15 percent of the 
American people in the Business Week poll said the best way to improve 
human rights and worker rights in China is not to restrict trade, but 
to engage China and include it in the World Trade Organization and give 
it permanent access to the U.S. market. Seventy-nine percent said, 
Congress should only give China permanent access to the U.S. market 
when it agrees to meet human rights and labor standards.
  The American people believe, by a large margin, that we should engage 
them, but only when they agree to meet human rights and labor 
standards. So their argument on the other side goes something like that 
that if we engage in trade, it will open up their economy, people will 
be on the Internet, they will be talking to each other, da da, da, da, 
and democracy will flourish.
  Mr. Speaker, of course, we have had now over 10 years of that, and 
the repression in China has only gotten worse. You can use these 
technologies in an Orwellian way to stifle peoples' rights to speak, to 
restrict their abilities to communicate or to organize.
  Technology can be used both ways, and if you have a government that 
forces the negative as opposed to accentuating the positive, it sounds 
like a song, then you have a very bad situation; and that is what we 
have in China. Religiously, if you challenge the government, whether 
you are a Buddhist or a Catholic or a Muslim, or what have you, you 
will end up in jail where tens of thousands of religious activists, 
political activists and labor activists now reside.
  I say to that argument that by trading, you can only open up the 
government, not through just the free market. The free market by itself 
did not open up anything. It did not open up our country. What opened 
up our country was people banning together democratically to form 
political organizations, labor organizations, religious organizations, 
human rights organizations that then came together and changed the laws 
of our country so more people could vote and participate. They were 
empowered politically, so that more people could have a right to 
organize in a union and collectively bargain; and they were empowered 
economically, so people could come together and form religions and 
express themselves through their faith in a religious way.
  And that is what changes people. Free market by itself, we had the 
free market in Chile during Pinochet's time. We had the free market in 
Indonesia during Suharto's time. If the government is there repressing 
the people, the things that my friends, the proponents of this trade 
agreement, want, will not happen. It is only through the people's 
courage and determination and fight that you could bring change.
  We need to stand on the side of those people who are trying to do 
that, the tens of thousands who have been locked up in prison, the 
other dissidents who are still there on the street, some who are in 
exile. The human rights advocates for China today, Harry Wu, Wei 
Jingsheng and many others like them, say do not do this trade deal, 
because the Chinese Government has not agreed to open up their labor 
rights and environmental and other issues to the general public.

  Mr. DeFAZIO. Mr. Speaker, will the gentleman yield?
  Mr. BONIOR. I yield to the gentleman from Oregon.
  Mr. DeFAZIO. Mr. Speaker, I think that is an extraordinarily 
important point, because I remember sitting in your office with Wei 
Jingsheng and he said, when I was locked up in prison in China with no 
communication with the outside world, he said, I could assess the state 
of affairs between the United States of America and the dictators in 
China. He said, At times I was treated much better in prison, and at 
other times I was treated much worse.
  And, of course, my immediate assumption was, well, I guess when we 
made concessions to the Chinese they treated him better. He said no. He 
said, in fact, when the United States was confronting the dictators in 
China, when the United States was taking a stand for the few months 
that President Clinton said that we were going to link human rights and 
labor rights to our trade concessions to China, he was treated better, 
as were other prisoners. But as soon as the U.S. caves in, every time 
the U.S. caves in, the oppression washes this back.
  Mr. BONIOR. This is permanent what we are talking about. This is 
permanent caving in. This is like we do not get to have this debate any 
more, the annual debate. Even though we debate this every year, we 
raise the consciousness of the country and the Chinese people and the 
world community who care about human rights, even though we are 
unwilling as a country to enact the laws that we need to really send a 
message to the Chinese. At least we have debate. Now, they even want to 
take the debate away from us, and that is how convoluted and how 
twisted this has all become.
  Mr. DeFAZIO. If I could reclaim my time, there are some who claim, 
well, in fact, we have to do this so they can accede to the WTO. In 
fact, that is patently false. The 1979 agreement guarantees the U.S. 
and China reciprocity in trade. Of course, they have not followed that 
agreement, and the WTO would allow under their rules China to accede, 
if the U.S. supported them, and continue to annually review their 
performance on a number of issues. To give that up, which we are doing 
here for all time, I mean, we are giving them everything they could 
have ever wanted, they could have ever dreamed of. They violated all 
past agreements, but the beautiful words are that they will do better 
in the future as their negotiators said.
  I think it should be performance based. The European Union set an 
example when Greece and Portugal wanted to accede to the European 
Union. They did not say, oh, sure come on right in and please, you 
know, we have some concerns, but if you will promise to fix those 
things, we will let you in right now full membership. They said, no, we 
want you to deal with labor conditions, environmental problems and 
other concerns, low wages in your country, because we are worried about 
a flood of our manufacturers into your countries. And, in fact, they 
conditioned their accession, and they said we are going to set 
benchmarks. You meet the benchmarks; we will bring you along. You meet 
another benchmark; we will bring you along. And when you finally reach 
the goal, we will give you full rights. Why could we not do that with 
China? Will the gentleman tell me?
  Mr. BONIOR. Of course, we could do that with China. We could do that 
with Mexico. We could do that with other Latin American countries, and 
we do not. We gave that away under the North America Free Trade 
Agreement, that was the time to set the pattern. We set this terrible 
pattern of no responsibility; and as a result of no responsibility, we 
got no accountability.
  And we have walked this path of no return it seems, unless people 
decide to stand up and say, no, we are not going on this path. We want 
to make people responsible so that standards rise; they do not fall for 
working people in the country.
  And the other side, and I will just conclude with this, and I know 
the gentlewoman from California (Ms. Pelosi) is here and the gentleman 
from New Jersey (Mr. Pascrell) is here, the real champions on this 
issue, the other side will also argue, they will say, well, you know, I 
saw the President on TV just a while ago. He was being interviewed by 
Tom Brokaw on NBC; he was saying this is a win for us, because we get 
all this access to the Chinese market, all our stuff is going to be 
able to come in, because their tariffs are going to come down. But what 
he fails to tells you is that they do not have any compliance or 
enforcement, and they do not let our stuff in, even though they say 
they can come in.
  Let me give you a couple of quick examples. In the area of wheat, 
China will establish large and increasing tariff rate quotas for wheat 
with a substantial share reserved for private

[[Page H3513]]

trade. This is the USTR agreement with China. After that was agreed to, 
Mr. Long also said that although Beijing had agreed to allow 7.3 
million tons of wheat from the United States to be exported to the 
mainland each year, it is a ``complete misunderstanding'' to expect 
this grain to enter the country. In its agreements with the U.S., 
Beijing only conceded a theoretical opportunity for the export of 
grain.

  Let me move to another commodity: meat. China has also agreed to the 
elimination of sanitary, phytosanitary barriers that are not based on 
scientific evidence, USTR, in other words, breaking down this barrier 
of allowing our meat into their country. Here is what the Chinese said 
right after that was agreed to: ``Diplomatic negotiations involve 
finding new expressions. If you find a new expression, this means you 
have achieved a diplomatic result. In terms of meat imports, we have 
not actually made any material concessions,'' China trade envoy Long 
Yongtu, China's chief WTO negotiator.
  I could just go on and on and on: telecommunications, insurance. 
Insurance industry is running all of these ads on the radio; you hear 
them everywhere you go. You turn on your radio, they are spending all 
of these hundreds of millions of dollars in this campaign to convince 
the American people that we will be able to sell the Chinese insurance 
products. Agreements: ``China agrees to award licenses to U.S. 
insurance firms solely on the basis of prudential criteria, with no 
economic needs tests or quantitative limits.''
  It sounds pretty good, pretty strong, USTR negotiated in November. Ma 
Yongwei, chairman of China's Insurance Regulatory Communication, top 
person, she says, that ``even after China's accession to the WTO, 
Beijing reserved the right to block licenses for foreign insurance 
companies if their approval seemed to threaten stability of economic 
policy.''
  Now, come on, you do not have to be a rocket scientist to figure this 
stuff out. I mean, this is the same game they played since 1983, which 
has allowed our deficit to mushroom and go out of control, and here we 
are with these basic commodities, meat, wheat, insurance, 
telecommunications, and they are playing the same game.
  And I say to my friends in the agricultural sector especially who 
are, you know, trying to persuade us, China is awash in food today. 
They are not going to be importing all of this food.
  Mr. DeFAZIO. If I could reclaim my time, just to finish the statement 
by the chief negotiator, and I thought this was very telling, too, he 
said during diplomatic negotiations, it is imperative to use beautiful 
words, for this will lead to success. That is success in negotiations, 
not success in U.S. access.
  I sit as the ranking member on the Coast Guard and Maritime Affairs 
subcommittee, our maritime commission has come to us and said U.S. 
ships cannot access Chinese ports. It is not tariffs. It is not 
phytosanitary barriers. It is not environmental concerns. They have a 
constantly set of mutating unwritten rules for port access.
  We have ships dispatched from the United States, the few that carry 
goods back that way, because most all of their deadheading back just to 
bring Chinese goods here, when they get to a Chinese port, they are 
told, we are sorry, you must leave, and they say, why, and they say, 
well, the rules have changed since you left the United States. And they 
said, could we see the rules, and they said, well, we are we sorry, the 
rules are not written, but we can assure that those rules do not lie. 
None of that will change under this agreement.

                              {time}  2030

  The tariff barriers are meaningless, meaningless, in a command and 
control Communist Chinese top down state-dominated economy.
  Mr. BONIOR. The gentleman forgot one other adjective, corrupt. The 
Chinese government is a corrupt government. It functions based upon, to 
a large extent, on bribery. It is a very corrupt government.
  Now, I have been through this before. In fact, the gentleman from 
California (Mr. Dreier), who has just risen, and I were debating this 
issue a little bit. And I remember him getting up and arguing that the 
Salinas government in Mexico was such an outstanding government and 
Salinas was such an outstanding individual, and things would change, 
things would get better in Mexico as a result of this.
  Well, of course, Salinas now is in exile, having been scorned by his 
own countrymen for the corruption of him and his family. And, as a 
result, what we find in Mexico are people whose standard of living has 
dropped appreciably, and it was not just because of the devaluation of 
the peso, by the way, which could very easily happen to the currency in 
China if this goes through. Do not be surprised if the same thing 
happens in China, because it probably will.
  But the people in Mexico, in Maquiladora, in real wages are earning 
anywhere from 20 to 30 percent less than they were prior to NAFTA. Of 
course, we have lost many of our jobs there as well.
  Mr. DREIER. Mr. Speaker, will the gentleman yield, in light of the 
fact that the gentleman mentioned my name?
  Mr. DeFAZIO. Mr. Speaker, I have other Members to recognize first.
  The SPEAKER pro tempore (Mr. Cook). The gentleman from Oregon (Mr. 
DeFazio) controls the time.
  Mr. DeFAZIO. Mr. Speaker, if I could add, just to go back to the 
argument that the gentleman made, after the NAFTA agreement, after they 
devalued, after the people of Mexico were impoverished, the economists 
who promoted this and talked about the huge market and the jobs said, 
``How could we have predicted this?'' I remember that the gentleman 
from Michigan predicted it. I predicted it. I only have a bachelor's 
degree in economics. What is wrong with these people? The same thing 
could happen with the RMB, so the 20 cents an hour buying power, which 
is going to be an incredible boon for American industry, is going to 
drop to 10 cents an hour wages. That is not going to buy a heck of a 
lot from here.
  Mr. Speaker, I yield to the gentleman from New Jersey (Mr. Pascrell), 
who has been very patient.
  Mr. PASCRELL. I would like to start by thanking my colleague, the 
gentleman from Oregon (Mr. DeFazio) for his leadership in this area.
  Frankly, I have seen enough ads and watched enough of them, so I do 
not need any retort or debate at this point. Our argument is not with 
the Chinese people, and we need to be very clear about this, but I had 
a horrible dream the other evening. I dreamt after standing with those 
dissidents in front of the Capitol, I dreamt that there was an uprising 
in China against the authoritarian dictatorship, and that we in America 
sided with a government which we have helped prop up. That is a 
nightmare.
  Have we lost our moral compass altogether? The New York Times can try 
to anesthetize this all it wants in its editorials and its big ads, but 
it does not change.
  This vote is not a referendum on one billion people who are forced to 
live under communist tyranny; this vote is about America's relationship 
with the Chinese government.
  We have lost our moral compass to listen to the administration and to 
leadership in this House about where we are to go on this vote. There 
is a reason that the proponents of this flawed deal have been touting 
the national security and theoretical reform benefits they see in this 
package. They know that the argument that this bill is good for our 
working families is plain wrong.
  As China seeks entry into the World Trade Organization and as our 
trade deficit with China soars to record heights, our manufacturing 
jobs are being sucked from our shores, away from our workers. Those 
jobs are going to places like China, where there is very little regard 
for working people, very little regard for their safety, very little 
regard for the environmental conditions within which people work, very 
little regard for health standards.
  When dealing with issues such as this, I find it is best to step back 
and look at exactly what we are doing. What does this vote mean? 
Granting PNTR to China would strip America's ability to keep check on 
the communist regime in China. Granting PNTR to China says that China 
has gained our trust and approval, and I would be saying I believe this 
trade deal is the best thing for working folks

[[Page H3514]]

in my district, in your district, the gentleman from Oregon, in your 
district, the gentlewoman from California.
  I will not do that, because this is a bad deal. The numbers do not 
lie. In New Jersey, we will lose 23,000 jobs. In the United States as a 
whole, we will suffer a net job loss of 872,000 jobs over the same 10 
years. We are not creating jobs in America, we are creating jobs in 
China. And why are we creating jobs in China? Proponents like to talk 
about job creation, although lately they have quieted that message, but 
they do not like publicizing the job loss on our side.
  The real job creation is in China, where United States businesses 
will flock with their factories. Do you remember the words, in May of 
1999, by the former Chief Economic Adviser to President Clinton, when 
she wrote in Business Week Magazine the following. Think of American 
workers reading this, hearing this, whether they are in machine shops, 
whether they are in the textile industries, whether they are making 
shows, whether they are farmers. Think of them hearing these words that 
she wrote: ``The only big change to American markets with China trade 
would be in the textile industry, which is currently protected by 
quotas slated for elimination under the WTO rules. China is among the 
world's lowest-cost producers of textiles, and one of the great 
benefits of WTO membership would be the elimination of U.S. quotas.''
  For an addendum, ``lowest cost producers.'' There is the rub, because 
we could talk about every one of those industries that I have just 
mentioned. What we are going to see is corporate America, part of 
corporate America, move offshore more jobs into China. Why? Let us 
listen to what Ms. Tyson said: ``Because China is among the world's 
lowest cost producers of textiles.''
  Yet, and here is the second rub, when my wife goes into a department 
store to buy a Liz Claiborne dress, she is paying exactly the same 
amount of money most of the time as if that dress was made in the 
United States; and we know it is made for from $7 to $15 in China, 
Korea, Honduras, in Mexico, you name it. Well, where did this money go? 
Whose pockets are enhanced?
  How can we stand before the American people and argue moral 
principles are involved here and that is why we should vote for WTO, 
that is why we should vote for permanent recognition of trade with 
China? What a sad day. It is pathetic, and I do not care whether it is 
coming from that side of the aisle or in my own party. It is not 
acceptable. I have not lost my moral compass, and I will tell that to 
the President, I will tell that to the folks on the other side who are 
in the leadership. You know the movie, you know the movie, it was a 
very nice movie, it was a very interesting movie, Sleeping With the 
Enemy. It was a great movie. I guess we missed the point.
  They will go there, these corporations, and pay, as the gentleman 
from Michigan pointed out, they will pay 33, 13, even 3 cents an hour 
in sweatshops. We are condoning this by our actions. We are propping up 
a dictatorship that has sold to countries military secrets, missile 
secrets, missiles aimed at us. The report is clear. We have all been 
briefed, and when we have been briefed that means it is in The New York 
Times. Nothing special ever goes to a Congressman. It is there. It is 
part of the record, and there is no two ways about it.
  So I say to Ms. Tyson, come to Patterson, come to Pittsburgh, come to 
Toledo and tell the folks who work hard to make ends meet in America, 
to bring food home to their families, tell them they will be better off 
when their jobs shut down.
  Today we had a press conference. Little did I know that one of the 
factories right in back of where I had the press conference is shutting 
down, 110 more jobs. While we do little patterning here, the 
manufacturing is moving offshore. We have lost our moral compass.
  This is not normal trade relations by any stretch of the imagination. 
Our trade deficit with China grows from $7 billion 10 years ago to $70 
billion; and if NAFTA is any model, and the administration will tell 
you there is a big difference, and while I hope there is a big 
difference, everything you told us about NAFTA did not come true.
  It had better be different. What is the difference, if you export the 
jobs to Mexico or if you export the jobs to China? We say ``give us 
your tired, your weary.'' We say ``come to America'' to immigrants. We 
say ``our doors are open.'' Then the very jobs that immigrant is 
working in are the very jobs that we are shipping to the very places 
they came from. The irony of it all.
  We do not need permanent trade relationships with China right now. It 
is bogus. What we need to do is make a commitment to the Chinese people 
that we will never surrender our moral compass, and that the only thing 
we want to be permanent is their commitment to freedom. When the 
Chinese government begins to change, not just by innuendo, but by 
reality, then, then we can talk about PNTR for this great democracy of 
the United States.
  Mr. DeFAZIO. Mr. Speaker, the gentleman has been most eloquent. I 
would note that the gentleman from California came on the floor during 
the debate and asked for time, and I would hope that we could arrange 
actually a time where Members could share an hour, equally, half an 
hour or so on either side, to debate, and would hope that can be 
arranged. I had a number of Members previously waiting on the floor, so 
I was unable to yield to him. Tomorrow night I would hope that perhaps 
we might do that, or even some other special procedure. Since the 
gentleman is Chair of the Committee on Rules, he could make some time 
available for us to do that.
  Mr. Speaker, I yield to the gentlewoman from California (Ms. Pelosi).

                              {time}  2045

  Ms. PELOSI. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman for yielding and for 
calling this Special Order, and I would like to associate myself with 
his remarks that we should have an exchange. I think the American 
people would benefit from that. I have no fear that in the discussion 
our point of view that Permanent Normal Trade Relations for China are 
not appropriate at this time.
  Mr. Speaker, I come to this group, and I commend my colleagues for 
the depth of their knowledge and commitment on this issue, but I come 
as one who supported NAFTA, who has supported almost every trade 
agreement that I have had to vote on. Having said that, I say that some 
of the Members of Congress who did support NAFTA, who now do not 
support this, do so for a very good reason. This is not right, it is 
not ready, it is not fully negotiated. What is the rush?
  Let me just say this. As my colleagues know, over time, there have 
been three areas of concern in this Congress about U.S.-China 
relations; and over the past decade, the situation has not improved. 
Those areas include proliferation of weapons of mass destruction; 
indeed, three pillars of our foreign policy are to stop the 
proliferation of weapons of mass destruction, to promote democratic 
values, and to grow our economy by promoting exports. In all three of 
those areas, this proposal falls very, very short.
  In terms of proliferation of weapons of mass destruction, despite 
administration statements to the contrary, China still continues to 
proliferate weapons, biological, chemical and nuclear weapons 
technology and their delivery systems, the missiles to deliver them, to 
rogue states like Pakistan, Iran, and now Libya. Libya, I might add, 
and this is recent, it is current, it is this spring, it is as we 
speak, the Chinese are improving the technology for Libya's missile 
capability. In a February speech, Secretary of Defense William Cohen 
explained the danger that Libya poses. Libya has chemical capabilities 
and is trying to buy long-range missiles. Rogue states like Libya, Iraq 
and Iran are not trying to build the missiles for regional conflict, 
they want long-range missiles to coerce and threaten us.
  So while China is engaged in this dangerous proliferation to Libya, 
who has been established as a threat publicly by Secretary Cohen, we 
are not overlooking that proliferation; we, this administration, is 
certifying that it is not happening. This country is in such denial 
about China's proliferation activities that it is appalling, and it is 
not in our national security interest for us to proceed in this 
fashion.
  Then we come to the issue of human rights. The administration has 
told us over time that if we engage with China in the manner they 
propose, and by the

[[Page H3515]]

way, I certainly believe that we should engage with China in a 
sustainable way, but if we kowtow to the whim of the regime at every 
turn, that human rights will improve. Well, right now, today, there are 
more people in prison for their religious and political beliefs than at 
any time since the cultural revolution. The State Department's own 
Country Report documents that and the Congressional Commission on 
Religious Freedom also says that China should not get PNTR until there 
is improvement there.
  But that is about human rights and that is about proliferation, and 
others say to us, well, for those reasons you want to sacrifice U.S. 
jobs, the opportunity for U.S. jobs; and that, I say to my colleagues, 
is the grand hoax. The very idea that proponents of PNTR would say that 
for promoting human rights and stopping proliferation, we would 
sacrifice U.S. jobs is ridiculous.
  In fact, as my colleague pointed out, in the past 10 years, the trade 
deficit with China has gone from $7 billion to $70 billion, and it will 
be over $80 billion for the year 2000. Our colleagues who promote this 
say that for every $1 billion of exports produces 20,000 jobs in the 
U.S. Well, by their standard, the $70 billion, just taking this year's 
figure, would cost us 1,400,000 jobs to China with a $70 billion trade 
deficit. Now, they say, oh it does not work in reverse, it just works 
this way. Well, tell that to people who are losing their jobs.
  Now, again, I come to this floor as a free and fair trader, and I 
come from a city built on trade and many people there are not in 
support of my position. But I will tell my colleagues this: they can 
advocate all they want. We have the facts here, and we have a 
responsibility to the public interest, and we must talk about the jobs 
issue.
  People talk, and my colleague from New Jersey has mentioned the 
textile issue. We have already said, textiles are low tech, they will 
go offshore; but that is not all that is going offshore. Many of these 
circuit boards, there is so much that is being done offshore in the 
high-tech industry. Let us take an example: aerospace. Boeing, Boeing, 
Boeing sets our China policy, we know that. But in aerospace, do my 
colleagues know that there is a province in China called Tian Province. 
You probably know it from the clay soldiers that are there, but there 
are also there 20,000 workers who make $60 a month making parts of the 
Boeing airplanes, 20,000 workers. There is a book called Job on the 
Wing, and it describes this transfer of technology and production of 
jobs in the aerospace industry, which is one of the leading advocates 
for the PNTR. No wonder. Philip Condit, the head of Boeing, said when a 
plane flies to China, it is as if it is going home, so much of it has 
been made there.

  So do not talk to us about this being about U.S. jobs. It is largely 
about U.S. investment in China; it is on platforms for cheap labor to 
export back to the U.S. But let us say, let us say it is about what 
they say it is about, that we really are going to have this good deal 
and it is going to create jobs, if the Chinese government complies with 
the terms of the agreement, which as our distinguished whip earlier 
spelled out, their reinterpretation already at the 1999 China-U.S. 
trade agreement, not to mention the fact that they have never honored 
any trade agreement all along the way.
  Workers' rights and what workers make. Today, there was a press 
conference our colleagues had and a worker had just come from China. He 
worked in a group that made $40 a day. Divide that up among 24 workers 
for this particular product. I know the product, but it is up to him to 
say, that worker to divulge that. Mr. Speaker, $40 a day divided up 
among 24 workers for a full day's work. So workers' rights, well, they 
are a competitiveness issue, and although it is a human right as well, 
it is about jobs.
  The environment is a competitiveness issue as well. I was pleased to 
join our colleagues in sending a letter all around talking about the 
disappointment we had that this bilateral agreement, the U.S.-China 
bilateral agreement negotiated by the Clinton administration did not 
prioritize transfer and export of clean energy technology to China. It 
could have, but it did not. Also, it did not obtain a commitment from 
China that it would not use the World Trade Organization to challenge 
invasive species controls under the CITES, and that any trade 
investment agreement with China should place basic environmental 
obligations on U.S. corporations so that they do not escape the 
regulations that are in the U.S. That is a competitiveness issue.
  So here we have a situation where we are helping to despoil the 
environment of China, where we are helping to abuse the workers' rights 
and, by the way, the workers in China whom I have met with have said, 
you are throwing us into the sea when you go down this path. Do not 
salve your own conscience by having some code of conduct or some other 
camouflage, because only we can speak for ourselves; and until we, the 
workers of China, can speak for ourselves and can organize, only then 
can you talk about trade with China lifting up workers in China.
  So here we have this situation where we do not even know if the 
Chinese will agree to it; it is not completely negotiated. The trade 
representative has said the mechanism for compliance has not been 
negotiated yet, and for this we are squandering our values and our 
national security and 1,400,000 U.S. jobs.
  Mr. DeFAZIO. Mr. Speaker, the gentleman from Ohio has been very 
patient. There is only a couple of minutes left, but I understand that 
the gentleman from California (Mr. Dreier) would like to yield to him 
during the next hour. I have another commitment, and I have to leave, 
but he wants to yield time to someone to debate.
  Mr. DREIER. Mr. Speaker, I said I will yield to the gentleman from 
Oregon (Mr. DeFazio).
  Mr. DeFAZIO. Mr. Speaker, I thought the gentleman from California 
might yield to the gentleman from Ohio.
  Mr. Speaker, I yield to the gentleman from Ohio.
  Mr. KUCINICH. Mr. Speaker, may I inquire as to how much time there 
is?
  The SPEAKER pro tempore (Mr. Cook). The gentleman from Oregon has 1 
minute remaining.
  Mr. KUCINICH. Mr. Speaker, this is the beginning of a lively debate 
that will take place over the next few days.
  The administration is attempting to inject this idea of this being a 
national security vote. Well, look at the kinds of high technology 
which we are buying now from China as a result of a $70 billion trade 
deficit where we have forgotten the commitment that we should have to 
this country's security first.
  We are buying now from China, not shipping there. We are buying 
turbojet aircraft engines, turbo propeller aircraft engines, radar 
designed for boat and ship installation, reception apparatus for radio, 
prison binoculars which are military issue, rifles that eject missiles 
by release of air and gas, parts for military airplanes and 
helicopters, parascopes designed to form parts of machines, turbojet 
aircraft engines, transmitters, bombs, grenades, torpedoes, and similar 
munitions of war.
  They are making this now and selling it back to us. What is happening 
with this country? We are forgetting about our own strategic industrial 
base.

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